Nov. 20 2000
Nov. 24 2000
Nov. 27 2000
Dec. 4 2000 Oct. 30 2000
Nov. 20 2000
Acoustic Ecology business meeting at The Peter Wall Institute.
Nov. 24 2000
Nov. 27 2000
The talk will be at the Acoustic Ecology meeting
October 30th 4pm @ The Peter Wall Institute
Title: Physical and Physically-Inspired Models for Sound Synthesis
Perry R. Cook
Princeton University Computer Science (also Music)
Historical and recent research on musical instrument modeling
and real-time computer-mediated musical performance will be
reviewed. Then these models and others will be discussed for
their capability to synthesize real-world (non-musical) sounds.
Both human/object interactions (gestures) and object sound
production mechanisms form the basis for determining a suitable
synthesis model for each type of sound. Sound synthesis models
which will be presented include waveguide models, modal models,
a new hybrid waveguide/modal model, and hybrid physical/
statistical particle models. The power of many of these
models comes from the fusion of physical acoustics research
with modern digital signal processing techniques. Sound files,
video clips, and real-time demos will be presented.
Perry Cook received a BA in music from the University of Missouri
at Kansas City Conservatory of Music, a BSEE from the University
of Missouri Engineering School, and Masters and PhD degrees in
Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He served as
Technical Director for the Center for Computer Research in Music
and Acoustics,researching computer simulation of sound sources
and musical instruments. He now is Assistant Professor of Computer
Science at Princeton University, with a joint appointment in Music.
AGENDA:
1. Update from teams:
a. Qualitative Team (Bill & Janet J)
i. project plans
ii. hiring plans
b. VR Team (Murray & Dinesh)
i. planning framework (Murray & Kees)
ii. hiring plans
c. other team news (please let me know if you wish to contribute
items)
2. Spring Symposium on "The Listening Brain" in conjunction with Brain
Research Centre
a. discussion of proposal: one day on behavioral/neuroscience
research and one day on computational acoustics research
b. ideas for presenters to invite
3. Connection between Acoustic Ecology project and Institute for Computer
Information and Cognitive Systems CFI plans
3. Connection between Acoustic Ecology project and Institute for Computer
Information and Cognitive Systems CFI plans
a. space
b. short- and long-term relationship
4. National Networks of Centres of Excellence in Rehabilitation
Engineering (Kathy to update on proposal)
5. Do we need to consult with University Industry Liaison Office??
6. Website Development (Kathy & Kees)
7. Schedules for next term (bring info on your availability so we can
book rooms for seminars/planning meetings)
November 24th noon Acoustic Ecology talk at PWIAS
"Relations between sensory and cognitive aging: Contributions
of sensory declines and losses in processing speed to speech
comprehension in older adults."
Bruce Schneider
Professor,
Department of Psychology,
University of Toronto
A number of studies have shown that both hearing
status and speed of processing are strongly correlated with
both cognitive performance and age. Indeed, these two factors
account for almost all of the age-related variance in
cognitive performance. This suggests two possible reasons
for age-related declines in cognitive performance. First, on
cognitive tasks with an auditory component, declines in
hearing status could affect performance because the
information is degraded. Second, in any task, such as
comprehension of spoken speech, declines in speed of
processing could result in poorer comprehension, because the
rate of incoming information exceeds the processing speed of
the older adult. In a series of experiments the relative
contributions of each of these factors was studied.
Preliminary results suggest that, in speech perception and
speech comprehension tasks, information degradation rather
than a loss in processing speed is primarily responsible for
age-related declines on auditory tasks.
Biographical Information.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University,
Bruce Schneider taught for several years at Columbia
University in New York, before moving to the University of
Toronto, where he is now Professor and an Associate Chair in
the Department of Psychology. He has served on the grant
review panels for both NSERC and MRC, and is currently an
Associate Editor of Perception & Psychophysics, the head of a
Canadian Institutes of Health Research Group on "Sensory and
Cognitive Aging," a friend and adjunct member of Institute
for Hearing Accessibility Research at UBC, and an external
expert for the UBC Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
Major Thematic Project on "Acoustic Ecology".
SPEAKER: Murray Hodgson
TITLE: Rating and ranking UBC classrooms for speech quality and
evaluating new designs and renovations
Nov. 27 4pm @ The Peter Wall Institute
A model has been developed for predicting the speech quality of an
arbitrary classroom in an arbitrary state of occupancy. The development
of this model will be described, and its assumptions and limitations
discussed. The model was applied to rate and rank-order the speech
quality of all unrestricted UBC classrooms. The results, and their
implications for optimal classroom design, will be discussed. The model
has also been used to evaluate new classroom designs and recent
classroom renovations. The results of this work, and its implications,
will also be presented.
Biographical Information:
Dr. Hodgson graduated from Queen's University, Ontario with a
B. Sc. (Hons) in Physics and Mathematics in 1974. He then obtained a
M. Sc. in Sound and Vibration Studies in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Acoustical
Engineering in 1983 from the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
Since then he has worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of
Architecture, Cambridge University, UK, as an acoustical consultant for
the Walker-Beak-Mason Partnership, UK, as a University Research Fellow
in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sherbrooke University,
Quebec, and as a Research Associate in the Institute for Research in
Construction at the National Research Council, Ottawa.
Dr. Hodgson's major professional expertise and research interests are in
the measurement, characterization, prediction and control of sound
fields in rooms - especially workrooms, such as industrial workshops,
classrooms and offices. Other major interests include active noise
control, the prediction and measurement of the acoustical properties of
room surfaces and of sound-absorbing materials for noise control, and
the subjective impact of sound fields. He teaches undergraduate and
graduate courses on acoustics, noise control and vibration to engineers
and occupational hygienists, supervises undergraduate projects in
Mechanical, Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as Physics and
Engineering Physics, and supervising graduate students on research
projects in acoustics. He is the author of over 140 scientific
publications.
Murray Hodgson is currently Professor of the School of Occupational and
Environmental Hygiene and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at
the University of British Columbia, and Director of the School. He is
also a member of the UBC Centre for Integrated Computer Systems Research
(CICSR) and the UBC Institute for Hearing Accessibility Research
(IHEAR). He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) in the Institute of
Mechanical Engineers, UK.
Dec. 4 2000
SPEAKER: Kees van den Doel, Computer Science, UBC TITLE: Interactive Audio Synthesis for Virtual Reality ABSTRACT: The sounds made by solid objects which we manipulate directly by touch are important in interacting with our environment because they provide useful information about the physical attributes of the object, its environment, the contact events, the material composition of the object, the shape and size, the place of impact on the object, and the location and environment of the object. In order to create the sounds of objects like this in an interactive digital environment, such as a video game or a simulation, we need real-time audio synthesis, as we do not know the stimulus of the (virtual) objects before they occur, and sustained intimate user interaction like touching and scraping an object needs a continuously parametrizable sound. In this talk I will present ongoing work on physics based audio synthesis for such environments. The principles used for modeling and synthesizing these types of sounds are explained and I will present a number of demos.
Apr. 9 2001
Presenter: Rushen Shi Topic: Speech Input and infants Processing of Basic Syntactic Categories Brief Biography: Rushen Shi: Master's degree (1991) and Ph.D. (1995) in linguistics from Brown University. Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in psychology from UBC (1995-97). Assistant Professorin speech science at UBC (1997-2000), and now Research Associate for Acoustical Ecology program (March-August 2000). Abstract: In a series of studies we have explored the possibility that infants break into the syntactic system of language by first establishing the most basic, universal, binary distinction of lexical and grammatical categories. We argued that this fundamental distinction may play an important role in subsequent language development such as in the segmentation of words from continuous speech, in the learning of word meaning and in the formation of more refined syntactic categories. Lexical category includes open-class categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Grammatical category includes closed-class categories such as prepositions, auxiliaries, etc.. Before examining infants processing of lexical and grammatical categories, we analyzed acoustical and phonological properties of these two categories in spontaneous speech directed to infants learning English, Mandarin and Turkish. In each language, lexical and grammatical items differed significantly on numerous measures such as vowel duration, syllable complexity, etc. Furthermore, simulations with self-organizing neural networks conducted for each language supported the conclusion that the combined multidimensional cues are sufficient to guide the assignment of words to the two fundamental categories. In the next study we found that newborn infants are able to categorically discriminate lexical and grammatical words. This suggests that a biologically given initial perceptual mechanism is sensitive to the constellation of acoustical and phonological cues that human languages use to signal fundamental linguistic distinctions such as that of lexical and grammatical categories. Subsequent experiments showed that by 6 months infants prefer to listen to lexical over grammatical words. English-learning and Chinese-learning infants produced comparable pattern of results towards the same stimuli, suggesting that the more complex and interesting acoustic and phonological form of lexical words was the basis for infants preference. In our current work we are testing the hypothesis that grammatical words serve as a means for the initial segmentation of lexical words from continuous speech in 8-month-old infants. The use of these cues by infants suggests important implications for how other listeners may rely on these cues, especially in challenging acoustical environments.
Page maintained by Kees van den Doel
Sound-effects for the webpages are synthesized in real-time using the JASS system developed for this project.
