Joseph Lin over at Time has taken a look at what he considers the most annoying sounds – perhaps unsurprisingly, the vuvuzela is on the list.. 
The use of vuvuzelas — a long plastic horn popular with South African soccer fans — at the World Cup has sparked debate about the level of tolerable noise at a sporting event. Here’s a look at some other sounds that are not music to our ears
Check out the full list over at the Time site.
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact
sound research 
recording, sounds — 
The Voice Neurocognition Laboratory has set up a range of tests to assess your voice recognition skills. Try it out over at the site below
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research voice recognition, voices — Over at the Noise Jockey blog, Nathan reflects on the relationship between creativity and the body:
In 2005, I heard a 1993 radio interview with Frank Conroy, a now-deceased fiction writer, and he described how he preferred writing in bed. He spoke with another author who did this also. Nelson’s own take on it is that he wrote best when his mind flowed without concern for his surrounding. Staying in bed was a strategy to disconnect his brain from his body to facilitate creative flow. The less he was aware of his body, the more his mind could reel and wander.
While Conroy might have had a self-destructive streak, something about this insight seemed familiar. I started to notice my own patterns and methods for staying creative and generating ideas, and realized that, indeed, the idea of disassociating the body from the mind is something that I also do.
Over the years, I’ve learned to obey these rhythms and how to use them in order to stay creative in a deadline-centered world.
Read Nathan’s full post right here.
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research creativity, flow, structure, the creative process, workflow — There’s an interesting read over in The Independent’s science section on the audio in horror films:
It is probably the most scary scene in cinematic history. The shower curtain is drawn back and actress Janet Leigh lets out a spine-chilling scream that warps into a frenzied cacophony of staccato music as she confronts an unseen, dagger-wielding madman.
When Alfred Hitchcock put the soundtrack to his 1960 masterpiece Psycho he was almost certainly unaware that the discordant musical notes he was adding to the disturbing shower scene were in fact based on the sort of non-harmonic sounds used in the distress calls of wild animals.
Scientists have found that many of the emotionally-evocative moments in some of the most popular films are enhanced with a sound score that exploits the human brain’s natural aversion to the “non-linear” sounds widely used in the animal kingdom to express fear and distress.
Read the full article here.
(via Designing Sound)
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research Electronic Musician takes a look at how audio data compression works in this comprehensive feature:
Audio- (as well as video-) data reduction, also known as data compression, is one of the most important media technologies to come along in recent years. Many capabilities that you take for granted — streaming audio, fast music downloads, and DVD surround sound, to name a few — simply would not exist without the ability to reduce audio data to a fraction of its size while retaining most of its fidelity.
But many people have only a vague idea of how those key technologies operate. Other articles in EM have covered the how-tos of compression in various formats. This one examines the principles that underlie audio-data compression in order to help you get the most from the technology. When you know what’s under the hood, you’re in a better position to understand when using audio-data reduction is appropriate, what the impact will be on fidelity, and how to select the right data-reduction scheme for the application.
Read the full feature on audio data compression here.
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research audio data, compression, formats — Science Friday demonstrates a series of fascinating patterns generated by sound at various frequencies – have a look:
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research frequencies, patterns, sound, waves — Great talks & examples by John Schaefer, Jamshed Barucha, scientist Daniel Levitin, Professor Lawrence Parsons and Bobby McFerrin on music and how it affects us – from the World Science Festival.
Part One:
World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 1 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
Part Two:
World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 2 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research interview, music — There’s an interesting podcast up on The Guardian’s website on why humans make and listen to music, featuring science writer and former editor at Nature, Philip Ball.
(via @paulhigham)
Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact sound research composing, music — You are currently browsing the archives for the sound research category.
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