Archives of Acoustics

In October 2011 I was nominated by the President of the Audio Engineering Society as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. My responsibility began in November. Due to large workload of new duties, with this issue I will end my work as Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Acoustics.

Beginning from the next issue of 2012, the new Editor-in-Chief, professor Andrzej Nowicki, the Director of the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research (IPPT PAN) of Polish Academy of Sciences will take over the editorial duties. His scientific achievements in acoustics will guarantee the quality of the journal's further development towards strong international position.

I was fortunate to have followed in the footsteps of such outstanding Editors-in-Chief of Archives of Acoustics as profs. Leszek Filipczy?ski and Tadeusz Powa?owski, and to have served them both as Associate Editor. I will always be grateful for the possibility to learn editorial skills from them, and to continue the valuable work of my predecessors.

Available methods for room-related sound presentation are introduced and evaluated. A focus is put on the synthesis side rather than on complete transmission systems. Different methods are compared using common, though quite general criteria. The methods selected for comparison are: Intensity Stereophony after Blumlein, vector-base amplitude panning (VBAP), 5.1-Surround and its discrete-channel derivatives, synthesis with spherical harmonics (Ambisonics, HOA), synthesis based on the boundary method, namely, wave-field synthesis (WFS), and binaural-cue selection methods (e.g., DiRAC). While VBAP, 5.1-Surround and other discrete-channel-based methods show a number of practical advantages, they do, in the end, not aim at authentic sound-field reproduction. The so-called holophonic methods that do so, particularly, HOA and WFS, have specific advantages and disadvantages which will be discussed. Yet, both methods are under continuous development, and a decision in favor of one of them should be taken from a strictly application-oriented point of view by considering relevant application-specific advantages and disadvantages in detail.

A verification study of ultrasound transmission numerical simulation results with experiment results is presented in this paper. The work considers a model of a transformer tank which is filled with electro insulating oil. In the experiment, performed under laboratory conditions, an ultrasound wave is generated by a piezoelectric transducer that is fixed in the centre of the tank and measured by another transducer mounted inside the tank at three distances: 10, 20 and 30 cm from the sound source. The transducer is able to measure and generate acoustic waves in the ultrasound frequency band up to 1 MHz. The simulation considers numerical calculation of acoustic pressure distribution inside the tank in which acoustic source emits waves with frequency equal to 100 kHz. Verification analysis has confirmed consistency of the numerically calculated values with the measurement results.

A new approach to acoustic quality assessment of churches during simulation tests is proposed in the article. The numerical global index, based on four partial indices: reverberation, speech intelligibility, music sound index and a proposed new one - sound strength index, assesses the acoustic parameters of the model of the tested church in a complex manner.

The global single number index was obtained from 17 simulations of acoustic adaptation options of the investigated church's interior. The equation of the approximate global index has been obtained by means of singular vectors, obtained from Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the Index Observation Matrix of Simulation Variants (IOMSV). The weights of four partial indices and a universal equation of the global index have been calculated using the SVD technique to solve the problem of correlated acoustical parameters. The global index may be a helpful tool during simulation tests of acoustic quality assessment of churches. The proposed final equation of the global index does not require knowledge of the SVD technique and the values of acoustic parameters preferred for churches. Therefore the methodology proposed is easily applicable.

In the areas of acoustic research or applications that deal with not-precisely-known or variable conditions, a method of adaptation to the uncertainness or changes is usually necessary. When searching for an adaptation algorithm, it is hard to overlook the least mean squares (LMS) algorithm. Its simplicity, speed of computation, and robustness has won it a wide area of applications: from telecommunication, through acoustics and vibration, to seismology. The algorithm, however, still lacks a full theoretical analysis. This is probabely the cause of its main drawback: the need of a careful choice of the step size - which is the reason why so many variable step size flavors of the LMS algorithm has been developed.

This paper contributes to both the above mentioned characteristics of the LMS algorithm. First, it shows a derivation of a new necessary condition for the LMS algorithm convergence. The condition, although weak, proved useful in developing a new variable step size LMS algorithm which appeared to be quite different from the algorithms known from the literature. Moreover, the algorithm proved to be effective in both simulations and laboratory experiments, covering two possible applications: adaptive line enhancement and active noise control.

The purpose of the study was to compare auditory judgments of sound clarity of music examples recorded in a concert hall with predictions of clarity made from the impulse response signal recorded in the same hall. Auditory judgments were made with the use of two methods: by rating sound clarity on a numerical scale with two endpoints, and by absolute magnitude estimation. Results obtained by both methods were then compared against the values of clarity indices, C80 and C50, determined from the impulse response of the concert hall, measured in places in which the microphone was located during recording of music examples. Results show that auditory judgments of sound clarity and predictions made from the C80 index yield a similar rank order of data, but the relation between the C80 scale and perceived sound clarity is nonlinear. The data also show that the values of C80 and C50 indices are in very close agreement.

The paper presents the optimization problem for the multi-element synthetic transmit aperture method (MSTA) in ultrasound imaging applications. The optimal choice of the transmit aperture size is made as a trade-off between the lateral resolution, penetration depth and the frame rate. Results of the analysis obtained by a developed optimization algorithm are presented. The maximum penetration depth and lateral resolution at given depths are chosen as optimization criteria. The results of numerical experiments carried out in MATLAB® using synthetic aperture data of point reflectors obtained by the FIELD II simulation program are presented. The visualization of experimental synthetic aperture data of a tissue mimicking phantom and in vitro measurements of the beef liver performed using the SonixTOUCH Research system are also shown.

The acoustic climate assessment needed for the selection of solutions (technical, legal and organisational), which will help to minimise the acoustic hazards in the analysed areas, is realised on the basis of acoustic maps. The reference computational algorithms, assigned to them, require very thorough preparation of input data for the considered noise source model representing - in the best possible way - the acoustic climate. These input data are burdened with certain uncertainties in this class of computational tasks. The uncertainties are related to the problem of selecting proper argument values (from the interval of their possible variability) for the modelled processes. This situation has a direct influence on the uncertainty of acoustic maps.

The idea of applying the interval arithmetic for the assessment of acoustic models uncertainty is formulated in this paper. The computational formalism assigned to the interval arithmetic was discussed. The rules of interval estimations for the model solutions determining the sound level distribution around the analysed noise source - caused by possible errors in the input data - were presented. The application of this formalism was illustrated in uncertainty assessments of modelling acoustic influences of the railway noise linear source on the environment.

Simultaneous perception of audio and visual stimuli often causes concealment or misrepresentation of information actually contained in these stimuli. Such effects are called the "image proximity effect" or the "ventriloquism effect" in the literature. Until recently, most research carried out to understand their nature was based on subjective assessments. The authors of this paper propose a methodology based on both subjective and objectively retrieved data. In this methodology, objective data reflect the screen areas that attract most attention. The data were collected and processed by an eye-gaze tracking system. To support the proposed methodology, two series of experiments were conducted - one with a commercial eye-gaze tracking system Tobii T60, and another with the Cyber-Eye system developed at the Multimedia Systems Department of the Gdańsk University of Technology. In most cases, the visual-auditory stimuli were presented using a 3D video. It was found that the eye-gaze tracking system did objectivize the results of experiments. Moreover, the tests revealed a strong correlation between the localization of a visual stimulus on which a participant's gaze focused and the value of the "image proximity effect". It was also proved that gaze tracking may be useful in experiments which aim at evaluation of the proximity effect when presented visual stimuli are stereoscopic.

The acoustic properties of the sitar string are studied with the aid of a physical model. The nonlinearity of the string movement caused by the bridge acting as an obstacle to the vibrating string is of special interest. Comparison of the model's audio output to recordings of the instrument shows interesting similarities. The effects dispersion and bridge have on the sound of the instrument are demonstrated in the model.

A sonic crystal consists of a finite-size periodic array of scatters embedded in a background material. One of the fascinating properties of sonic crystals is the focusing phenomenon. In this study, the near field focusing effect of a solid-air 2D sonic crystal lens with a square lattice configuration is investigated in the second frequency band. The band structure and equifrequency contour of the crystal are analyzed to reveal the dispersion of an acoustic wave on the crystal structure. The frequency dependence of the acoustic wave focalization by the sonic crystal flat lens is demonstrated via Finite Difference Time Domain simulation results and experimental measurements.

Dynamics of a weakly nonlinear and weakly dispersive flow of a gas where molecular vibrational relaxation takes place is studied. Variations in the vibrational energy in the field of intense sound is considered. These variations are caused by a nonlinear transfer of the acoustic energy into energy of vibrational degrees of freedom in a relaxing gas. The final dynamic equation which describes this is instantaneous, it includes a quadratic nonlinear acoustic source reflecting the nonlinear character of interaction of high-frequency acoustic and non-acoustic motions in a gas. All types of sound, periodic or aperiodic, may serve as an acoustic source. Some conclusions about temporal behavior of the vibrational mode caused by periodic and aperiodic sounds are made.

Several methods can be applied for analyses of the acoustic field in enclosed rooms namely: wave propagation, geometrical or statistical analysis. The paper presents problems related to application of the boundary elements method to modelling of acoustic field parameters. Experimental and numerical studies have been combined for evaluation of acoustic impedance of the material used for the walls of a model room. The experimental studies have been carried out by implementing a multichannel measuring system inside the constructed model of an industrial room. The measuring system allowed simultaneous measurements of the source parameters - the loudspeaker membrane vibration speed, the acoustic pressure values in reception points located inside the model space as well as phase shifts between signals registered in various reception points. The numerical modelling making use of the acoustic pressure values measured inside the analyzed space allowed determination of requested parameters of the surface at the space boundary.

The paper presents a classification of the healthy skin and the skin lesions (basal cell carcinoma) basing on a statistics of the envelope of ultrasonic echoes. The echoes envelopes distributions were modeled using Rayleigh and K-distribution. The distributions were compared with empirical data to find which of them better models the statistics of the echo-signal obtained from the human skin. The results indicated that the K-distribution provides a better fit.

Also, a characteristic parameter of the K-distribution, the effective number of scatterers (M), was investigated. The values of the M parameter, obtained for the skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma), were lower as compared to those obtained for the healthy skin. The results indicate that the statistical quantitative ultrasound parameters have a potential for extracting information useful for characterization of the skin condition.

Virtual or active acoustics refers to the generation of a simulated room response by means of electroacoustics and digital signal processing. An artificial room response may include sound reflections and reverberation as well as other acoustic features mimicking the actual room. They will cause the listener to have an impression of being immersed in virtual acoustics of another simulated room that coexists with the actual physical room. Using low-latency broadband multi-channel convolution and carefully measured room data, optimized transducers for rendering of sound fields, and an intuitive touch control user interface, it is possible to achieve a very high perceived quality of active acoustics, with a straightforward adjustability. The electroacoustically coupled room resulting from such optimization does not merely produce an equivalent of a back-door reverberation chamber, but rather a fully functional complete room superimposed on the physical room, yet with highly selectable and adjustable acoustic response. The utility of such active system for music recording and performance is discussed and supported with examples.

Additional sound sources are used as actuators in the vast majority of active noise reduction systems. One of the possible opportunities to extend the field of applications of active noise reduction systems is using active structures of variable sound insulation. The paper presents an analysis of ways of reducing noise with a structure of variable sound insulation consisting of a metal plate, active elements (Macro Fiber Composite), and a control system. The paper presents results of acoustic radiation simulations and measurements of sound intensity generated by the structure under the influence of stimulation by an acoustic wave. Simulations of mechanical vibrations and acoustic radiation for the plate were performed with the finite element method and ANSYS software. Simulation results made it possible to select locations for gluing the active elements and sensors. Analyses of the sound pressure level in the space to which the plate is radiating made it possible to determine dominant frequencies in the characteristics and, as a result, indicate vibration modes that can be reduced. Sound intensity measurements were performed with a three-way probe of USP mini Microflown. Results of simulations and measurements show that it is possible to achieve an improvement of the insulating power of a metal plate by approx. 10 dB.

The 11th School on Acousto-optics and its Appli-cations was held during the ICU'2011 - International Congress on Ultrasonics'2011, Gdansk, Poland, 5-8 September 2011, incorporated within the Congress as one of the six structured sessions named as Acousto-optics in the first and the second days being one of the four parallel sessions of other ultrasonic topics of the Congress.

About 60-80 people attended the acousto-optics sessions where 16 papers were presented by participants from Algeria, Belgium, Brasile, France, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Russia.

Traditionally you are invited to acquaint yourselves with some abstracts of lectures submitted to the 40th Winter School on Vibroacoustical Hazards Suppressions. This national School is traditionally held at the turn of February and March and is organized in different places of Silesian Beskidy Mountains. This year it is again held in Szczyrk.

This year we celebrate the jubilee edition of the School. Because of this anniversary the conference apart from standard organizers, i.e. Upper Silesian Division of the Polish Acoustical Society and Institute of Physics - Science-Didactic Center at the Silesian University of Technology, has also a co-organizer - the Committee on Acoustics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Moreover there are two splendid honorary patrons - Prof. Zbigniew Engel, president of the Committee on Acoustics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Andrzej Bluszcz, director of the Institute of Physics - Science-Didactic Center at the Silesian University of Technology.