Sound Studies - Science topic

Dear musicians and music lovers,

let me confess my thoughts about music. I voiced some of these thoughts in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_rational_thought_exist_without_language

However, taking advantage of a happy opportunity, I would like to duplicate it in order to receive suggestions and recommendations.

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Most recently, I met an amazing family:

Father - Alexey Grigoriev - composer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ahtD7xa6rQ

Mother - Maria Bessonova - violinist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_8Lmg3juqs&list=RDi_8Lmg3juqs&start_radio=1&t=39

The oldest son Ivan Bessonov - pianist, composer and winner of the competition (First place) "Eurovision of classical music 2018" in Edinburgh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqlahEMriRs

The middle son of Danila Bessonov is a violinist and a

winner of competition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ns2Ux-PNSk (performed by Sarasate - Gypsy melodies with his elder brother)

The younger son Nikita Bessonov - the violinist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8tBRNjB2R8 - brothers perform their composition

According to the father, a new renaissance must come, because new classical musical compositions are necessary. In a narrow family circle, this family performs only its own compositions.

Hi Jonas, thank you for your answer. It certainly is close to the topic. I think I found what I was looking for. Actually, it was a study by one of the researchers here at the IHR: 

Briley PM, Krumbholz K. The specificity of stimulus-specific adaptation in human auditory cortex increases with repeated exposure to the adapting stimulus. J Neurophysiol [Internet]. 2013;110(12):2679–88. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24047909

This study was able to show adaptation as a function of adapter-probe frequency separation. Adaptation is stronger when there is no Δf, but it is still present (although in a lesser degree; 50% adaptation) when the Δf is as high as 1.5 octaves.

Hope this is useful for others.

Kind regards

Nuno

Van Leeuwen's Speech Music Sound may also be relevant to your multi-modal perspective, providing terminologies and various examples.   

I would hope so Eugene, I have never heard of a sample library copyrighting their descriptions, but I suppose it is possible. The sensible course of action would be to write to the publishers of the sample libraries and seek permission to use what you want. You could offer them a copy of your research - I imagine most would be very happy to accommodate you.

There is no general method to establish a correspondence between the two measurements.

To establish a "correspondence" you will need characterization and modelling tools. There is also conditions on the tested material.

In a Kundt's tube, the acoustic excitation is plane waves at normal incidence thus the TL should rather be called normal Sound Transmission Loss (nSTL).

You also have samples with small dimensions and this will tremendously impact your nSTL at low frequencies (when the wavelength in air is very much larger than these dimensions). Indeed, the nSTL can reach high values at low frequencies as long wavelengths will not be able to propagate through a small sized sample and will be reflected. This is a measurement artifact you will not see (or to a lesser extent) in ISO 140-3 measurements.

When the frequency increases you should find a nSTL following the mass-law behavior.

At even higher frequencies you might find bending vibrations of your homogeneous sample. From the frequency positions of these vibrations you can estimate the elastic parameters of your samples. Of course this is easier if your sample is made of an isotropic material and its first bending frequency is below the highest frequency of plane waves assumption in the Kundt's tube. Honestly, if one of these 2 conditions is not fulfilled, forget the Kundt's tube.

If everything is OK at the previous step, from the mass and elastic parameters of your sample estimated from a Kundt's tube measurement you can estimate the sound transmission loss for a larger sample (~ 10 square meters is required by ISO 140-3) and for a diffuse sound field with a modeling tool.

Finally, you're right, there is no ISO standard for the measurement of the normal Sound Transmission Loss while there is the ASTM E2611. The ISO is aware of this point and a working group should start a discussion about it in the next few months.

Hi Mariana, Marianne Rasmussen, Ana Atem and I have a paper coming out in Aquatic Mammals in September covering our studies of playbacks to white-beaked dolphins. We played back tones up to 250 kHz and artificial buzzes, some highpass filtered at 150 kHz.  Yours, Lee

Plants of tree habit have the tendency to absorb and dissipate sound energy and hence act as buffer zone. Trees are planted along highways and other noisy places to mitigate the hazard of noise pollution. Certain trees are found very effective in reduction of noise pollution. Polyalthia longifolia of Annonaceae family is the best example of such type of tree species. The other suitable tree species are Azadirachta indica (Meliaceae), Tamarindus indicus (Fabaceae), Aegle marmelos (Rutaceae) etc.

I do not think either option is definitely better than another. The key question is how are you going to work on your recordings. If your target reproduction system is a multichannel loudspeaker system, then definitely go for ambisonics, but remember your listener must have his head positioned exactly in the sweet spot to hear correctly.  You will not have a problem of non-individualised HRTF in the recording. The binaural option is an obvious solution if your primary listening tool is headphones, and if you are to be the main listener, then recording binaurally with your own ears seems a better option. If you have both reproduction and recording systems available, then try both and decide which works better for you. If you need to purchase a multichannel system but your budget allows, then also go for ambisonics. A 16 channel system would be fine, inexpensive monitors like Genelec 6010 are OK.  A nearly as good result will be obtained with just 10 speakers: 6 around the listener in the horizontal plane at the level of the ears and four around an elevated horizontal plane.

     

Analysis may not be a problem because quantitative, qualitative techniques or mixed methods can be applied depending on the data and your research objective. However data availability will be a nightmare especially in East Africa. If there is a regulator or a registrar of such companies in your country and your country supports research under strict research protocol, then one way is to collaborate with the regulator and sell the idea of the benefits of such research. You may get some sketch reports from the regulators. In Kenya for example, the registrar of companies should be receiving returns from companies each year, but it is a very sensitive area that one cannot determine what is available or not. Moreover, most of them are lawyers whose main interests are legal requirements. So most people have ended their research with publicly quoted companies where data is available.

You may also end up approaching the family companies through a questionnaire on the challenges and issues with financial reporting. Most likely they prepare minimal accounts for tax or bank loans. You could then use exploratory studies applying qualitative techniques to see whether this people actually do any financial reporting. Remember , financial reporting is for public interest entities where professional institutes prescribe accounting standards and regulators expect corporate governance and so demands that financial reports be prepared. Other entities do not have an obligation to prepare such reports and so most if not all do not prepare them. In any case to whom will they be prepared for.

You may also liaise with global development partners who train and guide some of these SMEs. For example IFC\World bank sometimes trains SMEs on corporate governance (reporting and disclosures for credit acquisition), some universities teach entrepreneurs basic business skills and financial planning and the world bank also runs financial inclusion projects in rural areas and these can be good starting points for collaboration and understanding of what these businesses do.

Finally, any one with experience with family owned firms can tell us how much the owners are willing tell the public.

Best and good luck in your studies

Erick Outa