Applied sciences

Archives of Acoustics

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Archives of Acoustics | 2024 | vol. 49 | No 1

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Abstract

The present research investigated the effects of short-term musical training on speech recognition in adverse listening conditions in older adults. A total of 30 Kannada-speaking participants with no history of gross otologic, neurologic, or cognitive problems were divided equally into experimental (M = 63 years) and control groups (M = 65 years). Baseline and follow-up assessments for speech in noise (SNR50) and reverberation was carried out for both groups. The participants in the experimental group were subjected to Carnatic classical music training, which lasted for seven days. The Bayesian likelihood estimates revealed no difference in SNR50 and speech recognition scores in reverberation between baseline and followed-up assessment for the control group. Whereas, in the experimental group, the SNR50 reduced, and speech recognition scores improved following musical training, suggesting the positive impact of music training. The improved performance on speech recognition suggests that short-term musical training using Carnatic music can be used as a potential tool to improve speech recognition abilities in adverse listening conditions in older adults.
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Authors and Affiliations

Akhila R. Nandakumar
1
Haralakatta Shivananjappa Somashekara
1
ORCID: ORCID
Vibha Kanagokar
1
ORCID: ORCID
Arivudai Nambi Pitchaimuthu
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore Manipal Academy of Higher Education
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Abstract

The different mechanical properties of the materials from which the tailpieces are made have a noticeable effect on the acoustic performance of the violin. These elements are made today from ebony, rosewood, boxwood, aluminium, or plastic. The aim of this study was to check the exact impact of tailpieces made of different materials on the frequency response function (FRF) of a violin’s bridge and the timbre of the instrument’s sound. For this purpose, the bridge FRF measurement was carried out, and a psychoacoustic test was conducted. The material from which the tailpiece is made to the greatest extent affects the modal frequencies in the range 530–610 Hz (mode B1+), which mainly manifested itself in a change in the instrument’s timbre in terms of the brightness factor. The study showed that the lighter the tailpiece, the darker the sound of the violin. It was also revealed that the selection of accessories affects factors such as openness, thickness, and overall quality of the sound.
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Authors and Affiliations

Adam Łapiński
1
Ewa Skrodzka
2
ORCID: ORCID
Andrzej Wicher
2
ORCID: ORCID

  1. The Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznan Poznan, Poland
  2. Department of Acoustics, Faculty of Physics Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract

The Franssen illusion, or Franssen effect (FE), is one of the auditory spatial illusions. Few studies have explored the FE, and the mechanisms underlying it remain unknown. The present study was conducted to clarify the FE occurrence with different tasks and presentation modes in young adults. It also sought to investigate possible neurophysiological similarities between interaural time difference (ITD) cue processing and FE perception. FE perception was evaluated using two different tasks and two presentation modes (i.e., insert phones and loudspeakers). Sound reflections (reverberation) were presented in the diffuse field (loudspeaker mode). ITD performance was investigated using different stimuli delivered via insert phones. No significant difference between the two FE perception tasks was found ( F 1,25 = 0.138, p = 0.713). However, the FE perception showed a significant difference between the two presentation modes (F 1,25 = 434.03, p < 0.001). Spearman’s correlation did not reveal a significant relationship between FE perception and ITD scores ( p > 0.05).
The current findings show the importance of reverberation in the FE occurrence. Also, the non-significant correlation between the results of the behavioral binaural temporal resolution test and FE perception in young people with normal temporal resolution may indicate that room reflections (reverberation) complicate the ability to process ITDs (rather than poor ITD processing for the “steady state” portion of signal).
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Authors and Affiliations

Mehri Maleki
1
Mohsen Ahadi
1
ORCID: ORCID
Amirsalar Jafarpisheh
2
Amin Asgharzadeh
3
Alireza Akbarzadeh Baghban
4
Reyhane Toufan
1

  1. Rehabilitation Research Center, Department of Audiology School of Rehabilitation Sciences Iran University of Medical Sciences
  2. University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences Tehran, Iran
  3. Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine Iran University of Medical Sciences Tehran, Iran
  4. Proteomics Research Center, Department of Biostatistics School of Allied Medical Sciences Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences Tehran, Iran
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Abstract

Recent papers and studies over the course of last three years have shown that COVID-19 has a negative impact on the speech communication quality between people. This paper presents an influence analysis of the curvature shape of protective transparent shields on the speech signal. Five shields made of the same material and dimensions but with different curvatures were analyzed, from a completely flat to a very curved shield which has the same shape of curvature at its top and bottom and covers the entire face. The influence of the shield is analyzed with two types of experiments – one using dummy head with integrated artificial voice device, and the other using real speakers (female and male actors). It has been shown that usage of protective shields results in a relative increase in the speech signal level, in the frequency range of around 1000 Hz, compared to the situation when protective shields are not used. The relative increase in speech signal levels for large-curvature shields can be up to 8 dB. The possible causes of this phenomenon have been analyzed and examined.
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Authors and Affiliations

Miloš Bjelic
1
ORCID: ORCID
Miomir Mijic
1
ORCID: ORCID
Tatjana Miljkovic
1
ORCID: ORCID
Dragana Šumarac Pavlovic
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade Belgrade, Serbia
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Abstract

This work aims to further compensate for the weaknesses of feature sparsity and insufficient discriminative acoustic features in existing short-duration speaker recognition. To address this issue, we propose the Bark-scaled Gauss and the linear filter bank superposition cepstral coefficients (BGLCC), and the multidimensional central difference (MDCD) acoustic feature extracted method. The Bark-scaled Gauss filter bank focuses on low-frequency information, while linear filtering is uniformly distributed, therefore, the filter superposition can obtain more discriminative and richer acoustic features of short-duration audio signals. In addition, the multi-dimensional central difference method captures better dynamics features of speakers for improving the performance of short utterance speaker verification. Extensive experiments are conducted on short-duration text-independent speaker verification datasets generated from the VoxCeleb, SITW, and NIST SRE corpora, respectively, which contain speech samples of diverse lengths, and different scenarios. The results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the existing acoustic feature extraction approach by at least 10% in the test set. The ablation experiments further illustrate that our proposed approaches can achieve substantial improvement over prior methods.
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Authors and Affiliations

Yunfei Zi
1
Shengwu Xiong
1

  1. School of Computer and Artificial Intelligence, Wuhan University of Technology Wuhan, China
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Abstract

The flow-induced noise mechanism of a 5000 rpm high-speed gear pump is explored. On the basis of the CFD technology and the Lighthill acoustic analogy theory, a numerical model of the flow-induced noise of a high-speed gear pump is constructed, and the effect of oil suction pressure (0.1–0.2 MPa) on the internal flow field and flow-induced noise characteristics of the high-speed gear pump is investigated. To evaluate the accuracy of the numerical simulation, a noise testing platform for high-speed gear pumps was developed. Adding an oil replenishment groove to the high-speed gear pump suppresses its flow-induced noise. The results indicate that the discrete noise at the fundamental frequency and its harmonic frequency is the primary component of the flow-induced noise of the pump and that the oil-trapped area is the principal source of vibration. The overall sound pressure level of flow-induced noise in the inlet and outlet areas decreases with distance from the oil-trapped area, and the sound pressure level in the outlet area is greater than that in the inlet area. The oil replenishment groove may considerably minimize cavitation noise, enhance the oil absorption capacity, and reduce the outer field’s overall sound pressure level by 4–5 dB.
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Authors and Affiliations

Peng Zhan
1
Yan Qiang
1
Zhiyuan Jiang
1
Runxue Yang
1
Liejiang Wie
1

  1. Energy and Power Engineering College, Lanzhou University of Technology Qilihe District, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, P.R. China
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Abstract

The almost unlimited possibilities of modern computational tools create the temptation to study phenomena related to the operation of engineering objects exclusively using complex numerical simulations. However, the fascination with multi-parametric complex computational models, whose solutions are obtained using iterative techniques, may result in qualitative discrepancies between reality and virtual simulations. The need to verify on real objects the conclusions obtained from numerical calculations is therefore indisputable. The enormous cost and uniqueness of large-scale test stands significantly limit the possibility of conducting tests under real conditions. The solution may be an experiment focused on testing features relevant to the given task, while minimising the dimensions of the objects under consideration. Such conditions led to the concept of conducting a series of field experiments to verify the effectiveness of prototype track components, which were developed using numerical simulations to reduce the noise caused by passing trains. The main aim of this study is to examine the acoustic efficiency of prototype porous concrete sound absorbing panels, in relation to the ballasted and ballastless track structures. Presented results of the proposed unconventional experiments carried out on an improvised test stand using the recorded acoustic signals confirm the effectiveness of the developed vibroacoustic isolators.
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Authors and Affiliations

Cezary Kraśkiewicz
1
ORCID: ORCID
Grzegorz Klekot
2
ORCID: ORCID
Piotr Książka
3
Artur Zbiciak
1
ORCID: ORCID
Przemysław Mossakowski
1
ORCID: ORCID
Patrycja Chacińska
3
Anna Al Sabouni-Zawadzka
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Faculty of Civil Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology
  2. Faculty of Automotive and Construction Machinery Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology
  3. National Research Institute, Department of Environmental Acoustics, Institute of Environmental Protection Warsaw, Poland
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Abstract

The emergence of high-intensity focused ultrasound applications brings great potential to establish noninvasive therapeutic treatment in place of conventional surgery. However, the development of ultrasonic technology also poses challenges to the design and manufacture of high-power ultrasound transducers with sufficient acoustic pressure. Here, the design of a sector vortex Archimedean spiral phased array transducer that is able to enhance focal acoustic pressure is proposed by maximizing the filling factor of the piezoelectric array. The transducer design was experimentally verified by hydrophone measurements and matched well with acoustic simulation studies. The focal deflection was shown to be feasible up to ±9 mm laterally and up to ±20 mm axially, where the effective focal acoustic pressure can be maintained above 50% and the level of the grating lobe below 30%. Furthermore, a homogeneous pressure distribution without secondary focus was observed in the pre-focal region of the transducer. The rational design of a high-intensity focused ultrasound transducer indicates promising development in the treatment of deep tissue thermal ablation for clinical applications.
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Authors and Affiliations

Xiaodan Lu
1
Deping Zeng
2

  1. State Key Laboratory of Ultrasound in Medicine and Engineering, College of Biomedical Engineering Chongqing Medical University Chongqing, China
  2. National Engineering Research Center of Ultrasound Medicine Chongqing, China
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Abstract

The normal mode solution for the form function and target strength (TS) of a solid-filled spherical shell is derived. The calculation results of the spherical shell’s acoustic TS are in good agreement with the results of the finite element method (FEM). Based on these normal mode solutions, the influences of parameters such as the material, radius, and thickness of the inner and outer shells on the TS of a solid-filled spherical shell are analyzed. An underwater spherical shell scatterer is designed, which uses room temperature vulcanized (RTV) silicone rubber as a solid filling material and does not contain a suspension structure inside. The scatterer has a good TS enhancement effect.
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Authors and Affiliations

Bing Jia
1 2
Jun Fan
1
Gui-Juan Li
2
Bin Wang
1
ORCID: ORCID
Yun-Fei Chen
2

  1. Key Laboratory of Marine Intelligent Equipment and System Ministry of Education Shanghai Jiao Tong University
  2. Science and Technology on Underwater Test and Control Laboratory Dalian, Liaoning, China
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Abstract

The Kuroshio Extension front (KEF) considerably influences the underwater acoustic environment; however, a knowledge gap persists regarding the acoustic predictions under the ocean front environment. This study utilized the high-resolution ocean reanalysis data (JCOPE2M, 1993–2022) to assess the impact of the KEF on the underwater acoustic environment. Oceanographic factors were extracted from the database using the Douglas-Peucker algorithm, and acoustic propagation characteristics were obtained using the Bellhop raytracing model. This study employed a backpropagation neural network to predict the acoustic propagation affected by the KEF. The depth of the acoustic channel axis and the vertical gradient of the transition layer of sound speed were identified as the fundamental factors influencing the first area of convergence, with correlations between the former and the distance of the first convergence zone ranging from 0.52 to 0.82, and that for the latter ranging from −0.42 to −0.7. The proposed method demonstrated efficacy in forecasting first convergence zone distances, predicting distances with less than 3 km error in >90% of cases and less than 1 km error in 68.61% of cases. Thus, this study provides a valuable predictive tool for studying underwater acoustic propagation in ocean front environments and informs further research.
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Authors and Affiliations

Weishuai Xu
1
Lei Zhang
2
Hua Wang
2

  1. No. 5 Student Team, Dalian Naval Academy Dalian, Liaoning, China
  2. Department of Military Oceanography and Hydrography and Cartography Dalian Naval Academy Dalian, Liaoning, China
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Abstract

The paper presents the concept of the method of determining the direction of ultrasonic signal arrival, i.e., the azimuth and elevation angles. This method is an extension of the previous approach which was proposed to determine only the azimuth angle. The approach is based on the indirect phase determination. This makes it possible to tolerate spacing of receivers greater than half the wavelength of the received signal. At the same time, it provides increased measurement accuracy and reduced hardware requirements. To check the robustness of the method, simulations were carried out for the geometric arrangement of the receivers of the sonar module, for which the method was then implemented. This sonar module was used in the conducted experiments. The results of these simulations and experiments are included in the paper and discussed.
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Authors and Affiliations

Bogdan Kreczmer
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Department of Cybernetics and Robotics, Faculty of Electronics, Photonics and Microsystems Wrocław University of Science and Technology Wrocław, Poland
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Abstract

Due to space limitations during installation, reducing low-frequency noise has always been a challenging area. Sub-wavelength structures are typically favored in such scenarios for noise reduction. This paper explores the potential of micro-slit panels (MSP) for low-frequency sound absorption. To further optimize the panel thickness, coupled MSPs (CMSP) with a distance between two MSPs of less than 1 mm are proposed. Firstly, the low-frequency absorption performances of a single MSP based on two optimized schemes – the cavity-depth optimal scheme (COS) and the panel thickness optimal scheme (TOS) – are examined and compared with those of existing ultrathin metamaterials. The results demonstrate that MSP has significant potential for low frequency sound absorption, and COS allows for a smaller overall structural thickness but a larger panel thickness than TOS. Secondly, to reduce the panel thickness, the CMSP is developed and the theoretical model of its acoustic impedance is established and validated by experiments. Then, based on the theoretical model, the low-frequency absorption potential of CMSP is optimized using COS. The results show that both the overall thickness and the panel thickness of the CMSP absorber are reduced while maintaining better performance. Furthermore, the proposed absorber achieves a subwavelength scale since its total thickness can be as small as 0.138λ.
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Authors and Affiliations

Yujie Qian
1
Zhengyuan Gao
1
Jie Zhang
1

  1. College of Information Science and Engineering, Hohai University Changzhou, China
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Abstract

The underwater acoustic communication (UAC) operating in very shallow-water should ensure reliable transmission in conditions of strong multipath propagation, significantly disturbing the received signal. One of the techniques to achieve this goal is the direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technique, which consists in binary phase shift keying (BPSK) according to a pseudo-random spreading sequence.
This paper describes the DSSS data transmission tests in the simulation and experimental environment, using different types of pseudo-noise sequences: m-sequences and Kasami codes of the order 6 and 8. The transmitted signals are of different bandwidth and the detection at the receiver side was performed using two detection methods: non-differential and differential.
The performed experiments allowed to draw important conclusions for the designing of a physical layer of the shallow-water UAC system. Both, m-sequences and Kasami codes allow to achieve a similar bit error rate, which at best was less than 10 −3. At the same time, the 6th order sequences are not long enough to achieve an acceptable BER under strong multipath conditions. In the case of transmission of wideband signals the differential detection algorithm allows to achieve a significantly better BER (less than 10 −2) than nondifferential one (BER not less than 10 −1). In the case of narrowband signals the simulation tests have shown that the non-differential algorithm gives a better BER, but experimental tests under conditions of strong multipath propagation did not confirm it. The differential algorithm allowed to achieve a BER less than 10 −2 in experimental tests, while the second algorithm allowed to obtain, at best, a BER less than 10 −1. In addition, two indicators have been proposed for a rough assessment which of the detection algorithms under current propagation conditions in the channel will allow to obtain a better BER.
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Authors and Affiliations

Jan H. Schmidt
1
Iwona Kochańska
1
Aleksander M. Schmidt
1

  1. Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunication and Informatics, Department of Signals and Systems Gdansk University of Technology Gdansk, Poland
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Abstract

Courts in Poland, as well as in most countries in the world, allow for the identification of a person on the basis of his/her voice using the so-called voice presentation method, i.e., the auditory method. This method is used in situations where there is no sound recording and the perpetrator of the criminal act was masked and the victim heard only his or her voice. However, psychologists, forensic acousticians, as well as researchers in the field of auditory perception and forensic science more broadly describe many cases in which such testimony resulted in misjudgement. This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to investigate, in a Polish language setting, the extent to which the passage of time impairs the correct identification of a person. The study showed that 31 days after the speaker’s voice was first heard, the correct identification for a female voice was 30% and for a male voice 40%.
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Authors and Affiliations

Stefan Brachmański
1
ORCID: ORCID
Bartosz Hus
1
Piotr Staroniewicz
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Faculty of Electronics, Photonics and Microsystems, Department of Acoustics, Multimedia and Signal Processing Wrocław University of Science and Technology

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