Across Acoustics
The official podcast of the Acoustical Society of America's Publications' Office. Highlighting authors' research from our four publications - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA), and Acoustics Today.
Episodes
69 episodes
Student Paper Competition: A Small Ship-Like Structure, Underwater Micronavigation, and Rotorcraft Noise
This episode, we talk to a few of the latest round of POMA Student Paper Competition winners from the 186th ASA Meeting in Ottawa about their exciting research endeavors:- Using a small-scale ship-like structure to test noise mitigation tec...
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49:54
An Ultrasound-Based Touchscreen
Current touchscreen technology has its limitations. In this episode, we talk with Jérémy Moriot (Université de Sherbrooke) about his team's development of an ultrasound-based system that not only can work with various types of surfaces, but can...
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20:56
Continuous Active Sonar's Impact on Killer Whales
When pulsed active sonar was found to cause mass strandings of whales, researchers turned to the quieter continuous active sonar for underwater monitoring. In this episode, Brian K. Branstetter (Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Paci...
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13:03
How Classroom Acoustics Fail Autistic Students and Teachers
We know noisy classrooms and learning environments can negatively impact students and teachers. However, these problems can be compounded for those with autism. We talk to Carmen Rosas-Pérez (Heriot-Watt University) about her research to better...
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47:49
Can Sound Be Used to Diagnose Arteriosclerosis?
Because cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death, researchers have been looking for ways to diagnose it early. Low-frequency sounds have been used to assess the elasticity of blood vessels, but until now, the elastic w...
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20:02
Ultrasound Transducers for Measuring Martian Wind Speeds
We have yet to fully understand the wind on Mars, even though it transfers heat, momentum, and molecules from the surface. Traditionally, heat loss and motion detectors have been used to measure wind speeds. Robert D. White (Tufts University) d...
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14:39
Acousto-Optics: Sensing Sound with Light
In this episode, we dive into the world of acousto-optics, where light is used to visualize and measure sound-- particularly acoustic phenomena that are difficult to observe. Samuel Verburg (Technical University of Denmark) and Kenji Ishikawa (...
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19:17
New Research Roundup: Music as Noise, Instruments as Dynamic Sound Sources, and Modeling Piano Soundboards
This episode highlights three recent articles from the field of musical acoustics. First, we talk to Elvira Brattico (Aarhus University) about her research into what causes a person to experience music as noise. Next, Stefan Weinzierl (Technica...
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57:34
Why don't speech recognition systems understand African American English?
Most people have encountered speech recognition software in their day-to-day lives, whether through personal digital assistants, auto transcription, or other such modern marvels. As the technology advances, though, it still fails to understand ...
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17:18
Student Paper Competition: Emotions of Drums, Acoustic Black Holes, Ocean Noise, and More!
This episode, we talk to a new round of POMA Student Paper Competition winners from the 185th ASA Meeting in Sydney about their exciting research endeavors:- An analysis of how drums convey emotion- A method to assess stress caused by v...
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53:07
Measuring the Big Impact Vibration Has on Tiny Microphones
The tiny microphones used inside hearing aids can be very sensitive to vibration of the device, resulting in annoying feedback. Testing how sensitive these microphones are to vibration has been a problem that plagued engineers. In this episode,...
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38:05
We Don't All Talk the Same: Teaching Linguistic Diversity
Speech Science courses are a key component to the curriculum within a variety of disciplines, but coursework is frequently lacking in terms of representation of those from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In this episode, we talk ...
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44:21
Lincoln Center and the Greatest Acoustic Failure of the 20th Century
In the aftermath of World War II, New York City wanted to built a new home for its orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and secure its place a cultural center of the world. In this episode, we talk to the Paul H. Scarbrough (Akustiks, LLC) abo...
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44:38
Deep Faking Room Impulse Responses
It's not always feasible to measure the sound field generated by an acoustic source; instead, scientists have to model to come up with a best guess for the missing pieces of the sound field. In this episode, we talk to Efren Fernandez-Grande an...
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23:22
Late Night Mystery Calls in the Mariana Archipelago
While analyzing acoustic data from the Mariana Archipelago, Angela Szesciorka (Oregon State University) noticed something funny: a signal unlike any other she'd seen. It showed up over and over, and only seemed to occur at night. In this episod...
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13:07
Conservation Bioacoustics: Listening to the Heartbeat of the Earth
Recent advances in technology have allowed scientists to gather larger quantities of acoustic data from locations more remote than ever before. As a result, the study of animal sounds can be used to inform species or habitat conservation and na...
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42:12
What is an acoustic metamaterial?
Metamaterials have been a hot topic in the acoustics community since the late 1990s, but there's no consensus among researchers as to what a metamaterial actually is or when they first came about. Christina Naify (University of T...
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24:54
Quiet Down! Lowering the Recommended Occupational Noise Exposure Limit
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) recommended exposure limit for occupational noise is often cited as the upper limit for loudness in all situations-- but that's not actually the case. Worse, the limit may not ...
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21:25
Speech research methods and gender-diverse speakers
Traditionally, speech researchers have asked participants to classify speakers on a binary scale for gender. However, as our understanding of gender changes, so must our research methods. In this episode, we talk to Brooke Merritt (University o...
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16:33
How well can infants distinguish unfamiliar voices?
Infants can distinguish caregivers' and other familiar voices early in life, and can even tell the difference between two unfamiliar female voices. In this episode, we talk to Madeleine Yu (University of Toronto) about her research into infants...
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10:52
What is silence?
More precisely, is silence the absence of sound? (What is sound, anyway?) In this episode, we get a little philosophical, talking with Bill Yost (Arizona State University) about what sound is and the role perception plays in our understanding o...
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40:43
Wait, What's That?: Weird Data in Underwater Acoustics
Oftentimes, when a scientist studying underwater acoustics begins an experiment, they have a specific goal in mind... but then there's a bloop or a crackle they don't expect, or the instruments are saying the ocean floor is at 500 meters instea...
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46:46
Student Paper Competition: Chicago
Another meeting, another round of amazing student research! This episode, we talk to winners of the POMA Student Paper Competition from the 184th meeting of the ASA about their research into using machine learning to model concert hall reverber...
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1:19:00
Exploring Timbre of Stradivari Violins
Why is the sound quality of some violins preferred over others? In this episode, we talk to Carlo Andrea Rozzi (National Research Council of Italy) and Massimo Grassi (University of Padova) about the myth surrounding Stradivari violins as...
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42:21
Optimizing Concrete Floors for Building Acoustics
The manufacturing and production of concrete construction building materials creates roughly 10% of global carbon emissions. As a result, architectural engineers are trying to find new ways to reduce the amount of concrete used in their buildin...
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19:10