Baby Seals Show Off Vocal Skills #ASA183

The pups possess an innate control of their voice and an understanding of rhythm.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 9, 2022 – Humans appear to be one of the only animals capable of speech, which requires a range of skills and mental abilities. Among them, vocal learning — the ability to learn to produce new sounds —is critical for developing language. Only a handful of animals possess this trait, including humans, bats, whales, seals, and elephants.

Andrea Ravignani studies the vocal learning of seal pups. Credit: Connie Edwards/Kleve Zoo

However, simply possessing the ability to create new sounds is not enough to unlock language. Studying whether animals possess additional language-related skills can help us understand what it takes to learn speech and reveal the history of its evolution.

Andrea Ravignani of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics will discuss his work linking vocal learning with vocal plasticity and rhythmic capacity in his session, “Vocal learning, chorusing seal pups, and the evolution of rhythm.” The presentation will take place on Dec. 9 at 9:50 a.m. Eastern U.S. in Grand Hall A, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

Ravignani and colleagues studied seal pups’ vocal plasticity, or how well they can adjust their own voices to compensate for their environment. They found that seal pups can change the pitch and volume of their voices, much like humans. The ability to change volume is common, but changing pitch, or fundamental frequency, is rare in animals.

“Seals may have this capacity due to convergent evolution: vocal plasticity may be a trait which evolved independently in multiple lineages due to similar evolutionary pressures,” said Ravignani. “For the case of humans and seals, plasticity and vocal learning may be associated with either advanced breathing control or singing abilities in both species.”

The team also tested the ability of seal pups to identify rhythmic sounds using recordings of other seals. They altered some of those recordings by changing tempos and adding rhythms to see how the young seals would react. Seal pups paid significantly more attention to recordings with regular rhythms and fast tempos.

“We can conclude that very young and untrained seals can discriminate between other seals’ vocalization based on their rhythmic properties,” said Ravignani. “Another mammal, apart from us, shows rhythm processing and vocalization learning; perhaps these two skills coevolved in both humans and seals.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Improving Child Development by Monitoring Noisy Daycares #ASA183

Noise levels can negatively impact children and staff but focusing on the sound environment can help.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 8, 2022 – During some of their most formative years, many children go to daycare centers outside their homes. While there, they require a supportive, healthy environment that includes meaningful speech and conversation. This hinges on the soundscape of the childcare center.

Understanding the soundscape in a daycare center can improve childhood development. Credit: George G. Meade Public Affairs Office

In his presentation at the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Kenton Hummel of the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL) will describe how soundscape research in daycares can improve child and provider outcomes and experiences. The presentation, “Applying unsupervised machine learning clustering techniques to early childcare soundscapes,” will take place on Dec. 8 at 11:25 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Summit A room, as part of the meeting running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

“Few studies have rigorously examined the indoor sound quality of childcare centers,” said Hummel. “The scarcity of research may deprive providers and engineers from providing the highest quality of care possible. This study aims to better understand the sound environment of childcare centers to pave the way toward better childcare.”

The goal of the research is to understand the relationship between noise and people. High noise levels and long periods of loud fluctuating sound can negatively impact children and staff by increasing the effort it takes to communicate. In contrast, a low background noise level allows for meaningful speech, which is essential for language, brain, cognitive, and social/emotional development.

Hummel is a member of the UNL Soundscape Lab led by Dr. Erica Ryherd. Their team collaborated with experts in engineering, sensing, early childcare, and health to monitor three daycare centers for 48-hour periods. They also asked staff to evaluate the sound in their workplace. From there, they used machine learning to characterize the acoustic environment and determine what factors influence the child and provider experience.

“Recent work in offices, hospitals, and schools has utilized machine learning to understand their respective environments in a way that goes beyond typical acoustic analyses,” said Hummel. “This work utilizes similar machine learning techniques to build and expand on that work.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Whispers from the Deep Sea: The Subtle Sounds of Hydrothermal Vents #ASA183

Passive acoustic monitoring can characterize the sounds of hydrothermal vents, informing the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining and possibly locating similar sites throughout the solar system.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 8, 2022 – Deep-sea hydrothermal vents host unique life that survives without sunlight, and they play a significant role in the cycle of heat, water, and chemicals within the ocean. But long-term monitoring of these vents is difficult because of their hot and caustic characteristics.

Ocean Networks Canada’s hydrophone and the Deep Acoustic Lander are used to monitor hydrothermal vents. Credit: Ocean Networks Canada

In his presentation, “The soundscape of two deep-sea hydrothermal vent sites,” Brendan Smith will describe how hydrophones can listen to the sounds of these vents, informing the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining and assisting with interplanetary exploration. The 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America will run Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel, and Smith’s session will take place on Dec. 8 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the North Coast A room.

Smith and his PhD supervisor Dr. David Barclay used hydrophones operated by Ocean Networks Canada in the Pacific Ocean and the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory in the Atlantic Ocean to monitor two vents on the seafloor. Barclay also developed a custom autonomous device that helps determine the source of a sound, which Smith will deploy during a research cruise in 2023. Both are noninvasive ways to study the vents, and both are sustainable in the long term because they work from a safe distance.

Hydrothermal vents produce subtle sounds near the low end of the human hearing range. These noises fluctuate with the flow and temperature of the vent, and biological sources nearby can also contribute to the soundscape.

“Ultimately, our objective is to find the relationship between vent parameters such as flow rate or temperature and the sound they produce,” Smith said. “It is also important to understand all of the contributions to the soundscape at hydrothermal vents, not just the sounds produced by the vents themselves. Surface weather, marine life, and anthropogenic sources such as shipping all contribute to the soundscape.”

Proposed industrial use of hydrothermal vents through deep-sea mining would alter their soundscape and impact the surrounding organisms. Understanding the acoustics in the vicinity could help predict and prevent environmental impacts.

“Characterizing the sound produced by hydrothermal vents can also help us locate new, unexplored vent sites from a long distance,” said Smith. “This could be used to help find new vent sites on Earth, but also elsewhere in the solar system, such as Saturn’s moon Titan or Jupiter’s moon Europa.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

How Behind-the-Scenes Sound Mixing Makes Movie Magic #ASA183

Capturing consistent room tones and ambience enhances dialogue and draws the audience in.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2022 – If you’ve ever watched a movie where the audio is out of sync, it quickly becomes obvious that smooth, consistent sound is critical for movie enjoyment, especially during dialogue. Even slight discrepancies in background noise can disrupt a moviegoer’s experience.

Jeffrey Reed demonstrates the behind-the-scenes audio engineering required to recreate the acoustics of a movie set. Credit: Jeffrey Reed

At the upcoming meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Jeffrey Reed of Taproot Audio Design will demonstrate the behind-the-scenes audio engineering required to recreate the acoustics of movie sets and locations. During the session, “Modern movie sound: reality and simulated reality,” Reed will share short clips of film to compare the original recording to the studio mixed product. The presentation will take place on Dec. 7 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Summit A room at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel, as part of ASA’s 183rd meeting running Dec. 5-9.

“Nearly everything you hear in a film has been added later or enhanced for effect. Consistency in background noise has a major impact, especially on dialogue in a movie,” said Reed. “Sometimes every single line of dialogue in a scene can have a different noise profile – the sound in the background varies and makes the sound choppy and disjointed. It’s up to us to smooth that out.”

Modern movie sound mixing uses techniques like impulse responses to reproduce dialogue and other sounds. These methods are crucial to align what moviegoers see and hear and keep them engaged in the story.

An impulse response is a short recording that allows audio engineers to recreate the acoustics of a room. Sonic qualities are recorded when a sound reverberates off the unique layout of a space. The impulse recording is then applied to the audio mix to digitally recreate the sound of that space and make the resulting scene of a film as believable as possible.

“There are a lot of moving parts to a film mix, from dialog, effects, and the ever-important musical score,” said Reed. “Each and every one is crucial to a film, and the joy of mixing is finding out what needs to be where at the right time. When it’s all said done though, dialog is king in a film mix and everything must carefully revolve around it.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Helping Acoustic Concepts Resonate with Students #ASA183

An experimental music piece can help teach concepts of resonance in a more interesting way.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2022 – “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.” With these words, Alvin Lucier begins a fascinating recording where his voice warps and becomes indistinguishable over time — solely because of how sound reflects in the room. For physics students, this audio can be used to reveal details of the surrounding room and teach important lessons about acoustic resonance.

When a sound is made and recorded in a room, then replayed and rerecorded repeatedly, it becomes distorted. Frequencies that correspond to the room itself are emphasized. Credit: Andy Piacsek

Andy Piacsek, of Central Washington University, will discuss how he employs Lucier’s project in the classroom during his talk, “Students are sitting in a room.” The presentation will take place on Dec. 7 at 12:10 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Lionel room, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

To create this interesting audio, Lucier recorded seventy seconds of speech in a room, played it back over a speaker, and repeatedly rerecorded the result. Eventually, the feedback overwhelms the original recording, and the words are replaced by a collection of distorted frequencies.

In the first iteration of Lucier’s recording, his speech contains the typical range of sound frequencies that make up a human voice. When sounds at most frequencies bounce off the walls in the room, they get jumbled together and eventually fade out. But some frequencies ‘fit’ perfectly in the distances between opposite walls, and these frequencies resonate and grow louder with each recorded iteration.

“Each pair of walls has a set of natural frequencies,” said Piacsek. “By analyzing the frequencies that make up the recording, especially in the later stages, students can determine which frequencies are resonances of the room. The tricky part is figuring out which frequencies go with which pair of walls. This is a bit of a puzzle… and puzzles are fun!”

After identifying the resonant frequencies, students can apply their knowledge of physics to calculate the distance between pairs of walls, and therefore the size of the room Lucier used for his recording. More advanced students can try to make a version of the recording in their own rooms and see if their calculations match their measured room dimensions.

“At the introductory level, especially, many students come to a science class with the notion that science is dry and abstract, not something they identify with,” said Piacsek. “When they see how their classroom learning applies to scenarios they can relate to, it becomes less abstract and they remember it better.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Text-to-Audio Models Make Music from Scratch #ASA183

Much like machine learning can create images from text, it can also generate sounds.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2022 – Type a few words into a text-to-image model, and you’ll end up with a weirdly accurate, completely unique picture. While this tool is fun to play with, it also opens up avenues of creative application and exploration and provides workflow-enhancing tools for visual artists and animators. For musicians, sound designers, and other audio professionals, a text-to-audio model would do the same.

The algorithm transforms a text prompt into audio. Credit: Zach Evans

As part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Zach Evans, of Stability AI, will present progress toward this end in his talk, “Musical audio samples generated from joint text embeddings.” The presentation will take place on Dec. 7 at 10:45 a.m. Eastern U.S. in the Rail Yard room, as part of the meeting running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

“Text-to-image models use deep neural networks to generate original, novel images based on learned semantic correlations with text captions,” said Evans. “When trained on a large and varied dataset of captioned images, they can be used to create almost any image that can be described, as well as modify images supplied by the user.”

A text-to-audio model would be able to do the same, but with music as the end result. Among other applications, it could be used to create sound effects for video games or samples for music production.

But training these deep learning models is more difficult than their image counterparts.

“One of the main difficulties with training a text-to-audio model is finding a large enough dataset of text-aligned audio to train on,” said Evans. “Outside of speech data, research datasets available for text-aligned audio tend to be much smaller than those available for text-aligned images.”

Evans and his team, including Belmont University’s Dr. Scott Hawley, have shown early success in generating coherent and relevant music and sound from text. They employed data compression methods to generate the audio with reduced training time and improved output quality.

The researchers plan to expand to larger datasets and release their model as an open-source option for other researchers, developers, and audio professionals to use and improve.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.