Nematic aerogel (nAG) supports so-called polar phase in liquid 3He. The experiment [Dmitriev et al, JETP Lett. 112, 780 (2020)] showed that the onset of polar phase inside the nAG is accompanied by emergence of a sound wave with frequency quickly growing with cooling down from transition temperature and reaching a plateau. To describe this behavior, we start by calculating the elastic properties of the dry nematic AG that appear to depend only on Young's modulus of the parent material (e.g. mullite), the volume fraction of the solid phase and the aspect ratio of the representative volume of nAG. The elastic constants are then used to solve elasto-hydrodynamic equations for various sound vibrations of nAG filled with 3He. The (isotropic) first sound and anisotropic second sound in the polar phase are strongly hybridized with fourth sound and standard elastic modes in nAG. The hybrid second and the transverse fourth sound start with zero velocity at the transition, similar to pure 3He, and quickly grow with lowering temperature until they hit the sample finite size cutoff.
This paper proposes an unsupervised anomalous sound detection method using sound separation. In factory environments, background noise and non-objective sounds obscure desired machine sounds, making it challenging to detect anomalous sounds. Therefore, using sounds not mixed with background noise or non-purpose sounds in the detection system is desirable. We compared two versions of our proposed method, one using sound separation as a pre-processing step and the other using separation-based outlier exposure that uses the error between two separated sounds. Based on the assumption that differences in separation performance between normal and anomalous sounds affect detection results, a sound separation model specific to a particular product type was used in both versions. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method improved anomalous sound detection performance for all Machine IDs, achieving a maximum improvement of 39%.
Most existing sound field reconstruction methods target point-to-region reconstruction, interpolating the Acoustic Transfer Functions (ATFs) between a fixed-position sound source and a receiver region. The applicability of these methods is limited because real-world ATFs tend to varying continuously with respect to the positions of sound sources and receiver regions. This paper presents a permutation-invariant physics-informed neural network for region-to-region sound field reconstruction, which aims to interpolate the ATFs across continuously varying sound sources and measurement regions. The proposed method employs a deep set architecture to process the receiver and sound source positions as an unordered set, preserving acoustic reciprocity. Furthermore, it incorporates the Helmholtz equation as a physical constraint to guide network training, ensuring physically consistent predictions.
This study explores how micro-changes in the plucking trajectory of a guitar pick influence the sound of an acoustic guitar. Using a state-of-the-art robotic plucker, a series of measurements has been performed, where the plectrum was moved towards the instrument by a step of 192 micrometers, resulting in an increased attack depth. It has been analysed how the effect of these changes is reflected in loudness, timbre, harmonic content and how the sound progresses during decay. This methodology has been repeated for guitar plectra made from six different materials to investigate how the pick itself influences the effect of a change in the plucking trajectory. The results of the study show that at a low depth the string is not fully excited resulting in weak and markedly altered sound. The range of this effect changes with the mechanical properties of the plectrum material. After this range an increase in depth results in an increase in sound loudness, a decrease in inharmonicity and noisiness and a shift in timbre where the sound becomes fuller in low frequencies and rougher. Presented findings help to understand the nuanced relationship between plucking trajectory and acoustic outpu
Automatic sound classification has a wide range of applications in machine listening, enabling context-aware sound processing and understanding. This paper explores methodologies for automatically classifying heterogeneous sounds characterized by high intra-class variability. Our study evaluates the classification task using the Broad Sound Taxonomy, a two-level taxonomy comprising 28 classes designed to cover a heterogeneous range of sounds with semantic distinctions tailored for practical user applications. We construct a dataset through manual annotation to ensure accuracy, diverse representation within each class and relevance in real-world scenarios. We compare a variety of both traditional and modern machine learning approaches to establish a baseline for the task of heterogeneous sound classification. We investigate the role of input features, specifically examining how acoustically derived sound representations compare to embeddings extracted with pre-trained deep neural networks that capture both acoustic and semantic information about sounds. Experimental results illustrate that audio embeddings encoding acoustic and semantic information achieve higher accuracy in the cla
Performing sound event detection on real-world recordings often implies dealing with overlapping target sound events and non-target sounds, also referred to as interference or noise. Until now these problems were mainly tackled at the classifier level. We propose to use sound separation as a pre-processing for sound event detection. In this paper we start from a sound separation model trained on the Free Universal Sound Separation dataset and the DCASE 2020 task 4 sound event detection baseline. We explore different methods to combine separated sound sources and the original mixture within the sound event detection. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of adapting the sound separation model to the sound event detection data on both the sound separation and the sound event detection.
One way of expressing an environmental sound is using vocal imitations, which involve the process of replicating or mimicking the rhythm and pitch of sounds by voice. We can effectively express the features of environmental sounds, such as rhythm and pitch, using vocal imitations, which cannot be expressed by conventional input information, such as sound event labels, images, or texts, in an environmental sound synthesis model. In this paper, we propose a framework for environmental sound synthesis from vocal imitations and sound event labels based on a framework of a vector quantized encoder and the Tacotron2 decoder. Using vocal imitations is expected to control the pitch and rhythm of the synthesized sound, which only sound event labels cannot control. Our objective and subjective experimental results show that vocal imitations effectively control the pitch and rhythm of synthesized sounds.
Estimating the sound absorption in situ relies on accurately describing the measured sound field. Evidence suggests that modeling the reflection of impinging spherical waves is important, especially for compact measurement systems. This article proposes a method for estimating the sound absorption coefficient of a material sample by mapping the sound pressure, measured by a microphone array, to a distribution of monopoles along a line in the complex plane. The proposed method is compared to modeling the sound field as a superposition of two sources (a monopole and an image source). The obtained inverse problems are solved with Tikhonov regularization, with automatic choice of the regularization parameter by the L-curve criterion. The sound absorption measurement is tested with simulations of the sound field above infinite and finite porous absorbers. The approaches are compared to the plane-wave absorption coefficient and the one obtained by spherical wave incidence. Experimental analysis of two porous samples and one resonant absorber is also carried out in situ. Four arrays were tested with an increasing aperture and number of sensors. It was demonstrated that measurements are fe
In traditional studies on language evolution, scholars often emphasize the importance of sound laws and sound correspondences for phylogenetic inference of language family trees. However, to date, computational approaches have typically not taken this potential into account. Most computational studies still rely on lexical cognates as major data source for phylogenetic reconstruction in linguistics, although there do exist a few studies in which authors praise the benefits of comparing words at the level of sound sequences. Building on (a) ten diverse datasets from different language families, and (b) state-of-the-art methods for automated cognate and sound correspondence detection, we test, for the first time, the performance of sound-based versus cognate-based approaches to phylogenetic reconstruction. Our results show that phylogenies reconstructed from lexical cognates are topologically closer, by approximately one third with respect to the generalized quartet distance on average, to the gold standard phylogenies than phylogenies reconstructed from sound correspondences.
This study addresses the challenges composers and sound designers face in creating and refining tools to achieve their musical goals. Using evolutionary processes to promote diversity and foster serendipitous discoveries, we automate the search through uncharted sonic spaces for sound discovery, arguing that diversity-promoting algorithms can bridge the gap between the theoretical realisation and practical accessibility of sounds. We describe a system for generative sound synthesis combining Quality Diversity (QD) algorithms with a supervised discriminative model, inspired by the Innovation Engine algorithm, and explore different configurations and the interplay between the chosen synthesis approach and the discriminative model. We examine the interaction between Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) graphs, introducing a novel approach that uses multiple specialised CPPNs for different frequency ranges; this yields simpler networks while maintaining performance comparable to single-CPPN setups. We also investigate evolutionary stepping stones by analysing goal switches between musical and non-musical contexts, revealing how lineages t
Modeling sounds emitted from physical object interactions is critical for immersive perceptual experiences in real and virtual worlds. Traditional methods of impact sound synthesis use physics simulation to obtain a set of physics parameters that could represent and synthesize the sound. However, they require fine details of both the object geometries and impact locations, which are rarely available in the real world and can not be applied to synthesize impact sounds from common videos. On the other hand, existing video-driven deep learning-based approaches could only capture the weak correspondence between visual content and impact sounds since they lack of physics knowledge. In this work, we propose a physics-driven diffusion model that can synthesize high-fidelity impact sound for a silent video clip. In addition to the video content, we propose to use additional physics priors to guide the impact sound synthesis procedure. The physics priors include both physics parameters that are directly estimated from noisy real-world impact sound examples without sophisticated setup and learned residual parameters that interpret the sound environment via neural networks. We further impleme
Spectrograms are 2D representations of sound that look very different from the images found in our visual world. And natural images, when played as spectrograms, make unnatural sounds. In this paper, we show that it is possible to synthesize spectrograms that simultaneously look like natural images and sound like natural audio. We call these visual spectrograms images that sound. Our approach is simple and zero-shot, and it leverages pre-trained text-to-image and text-to-spectrogram diffusion models that operate in a shared latent space. During the reverse process, we denoise noisy latents with both the audio and image diffusion models in parallel, resulting in a sample that is likely under both models. Through quantitative evaluations and perceptual studies, we find that our method successfully generates spectrograms that align with a desired audio prompt while also taking the visual appearance of a desired image prompt. Please see our project page for video results: https://ificl.github.io/images-that-sound/
Audio-visual navigation task requires an agent to find a sound source in a realistic, unmapped 3D environment by utilizing egocentric audio-visual observations. Existing audio-visual navigation works assume a clean environment that solely contains the target sound, which, however, would not be suitable in most real-world applications due to the unexpected sound noise or intentional interference. In this work, we design an acoustically complex environment in which, besides the target sound, there exists a sound attacker playing a zero-sum game with the agent. More specifically, the attacker can move and change the volume and category of the sound to make the agent suffer from finding the sounding object while the agent tries to dodge the attack and navigate to the goal under the intervention. Under certain constraints to the attacker, we can improve the robustness of the agent towards unexpected sound attacks in audio-visual navigation. For better convergence, we develop a joint training mechanism by employing the property of a centralized critic with decentralized actors. Experiments on two real-world 3D scan datasets, Replica, and Matterport3D, verify the effectiveness and the rob
This paper aims to develop a holistic evaluation method for piano sound quality to assist in purchasing decisions. Unlike previous studies that focused on the effect of piano performance techniques on sound quality, this study evaluates the inherent sound quality of different pianos. To derive quality evaluation systems, the study uses subjective questionnaires based on a piano sound quality dataset. The method selects the optimal piano classification models by comparing the fine-tuning results of different pre-training models of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). To improve the interpretability of the models, the study applies Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth (ERB) analysis. The results reveal that musically trained individuals are better able to distinguish between the sound quality differences of different pianos. The best fine-tuned CNN pre-trained backbone achieves a high accuracy of 98.3% as the piano classifier. However, the dataset is limited, and the audio is sliced to increase its quantity, resulting in a lack of diversity and balance, so we use focal loss to reduce the impact of data imbalance. To optimize the method, the dataset will be expanded, or few-shot learning
Environment Sound Classification has been a well-studied research problem in the field of signal processing and up till now more focus has been laid on fully supervised approaches. Over the last few years, focus has moved towards semi-supervised methods which concentrate on the utilization of unlabeled data, and self-supervised methods which learn the intermediate representation through pretext task or contrastive learning. However, both approaches require a vast amount of unlabelled data to improve performance. In this work, we propose a novel framework called Environmental Sound Classification with Hierarchical Ontology-guided semi-supervised Learning (ECHO) that utilizes label ontology-based hierarchy to learn semantic representation by defining a novel pretext task. In the pretext task, the model tries to predict coarse labels defined by the Large Language Model (LLM) based on ground truth label ontology. The trained model is further fine-tuned in a supervised way to predict the actual task. Our proposed novel semi-supervised framework achieves an accuracy improvement in the range of 1\% to 8\% over baseline systems across three datasets namely UrbanSound8K, ESC-10, and ESC-50.
In many methods of sound event detection (SED), a segmented time frame is regarded as one data sample to model training. The durations of sound events greatly depend on the sound event class, e.g., the sound event "fan" has a long duration, whereas the sound event "mouse clicking" is instantaneous. Thus, the difference in the duration between sound event classes results in a serious data imbalance in SED. Moreover, most sound events tend to occur occasionally; therefore, there are many more inactive time frames of sound events than active frames. This also causes a severe data imbalance between active and inactive frames. In this paper, we investigate the impact of sound duration and inactive frames on SED performance by introducing four loss functions, such as simple reweighting loss, inverse frequency loss, asymmetric focal loss, and focal batch Tversky loss. Then, we provide insights into how we tackle this imbalance problem.
In contemporary popular music production, drum sound design is commonly performed by cumbersome browsing and processing of pre-recorded samples in sound libraries. One can also use specialized synthesis hardware, typically controlled through low-level, musically meaningless parameters. Today, the field of Deep Learning offers methods to control the synthesis process via learned high-level features and allows generating a wide variety of sounds. In this paper, we present DrumGAN VST, a plugin for synthesizing drum sounds using a Generative Adversarial Network. DrumGAN VST operates on 44.1 kHz sample-rate audio, offers independent and continuous instrument class controls, and features an encoding neural network that maps sounds into the GAN's latent space, enabling resynthesis and manipulation of pre-existing drum sounds. We provide numerous sound examples and a demo of the proposed VST plugin.
We introduce a new system for data-driven audio sound model design built around two different neural network architectures, a Generative Adversarial Network(GAN) and a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of each to achieve the system objectives that neither is capable of addressing alone. The objective of the system is to generate interactively controllable sound models given (a) a range of sounds the model should be able to synthesize, and (b) a specification of the parametric controls for navigating that space of sounds. The range of sounds is defined by a dataset provided by the designer, while the means of navigation is defined by a combination of data labels and the selection of a sub-manifold from the latent space learned by the GAN. Our proposed system takes advantage of the rich latent space of a GAN that consists of sounds that fill out the spaces ''between" real data-like sounds. This augmented data from the GAN is then used to train an RNN for its ability to respond immediately and continuously to parameter changes and to generate audio over unlimited periods of time. Furthermore, we develop a self-organizing map technique f
The drone has been used for various purposes, including military applications, aerial photography, and pesticide spraying. However, the drone is vulnerable to external disturbances, and malfunction in propellers and motors can easily occur. To improve the safety of drone operations, one should detect the mechanical faults of drones in real-time. This paper proposes a sound-based deep neural network (DNN) fault classifier and drone sound dataset. The dataset was constructed by collecting the operating sounds of drones from microphones mounted on three different drones in an anechoic chamber. The dataset includes various operating conditions of drones, such as flight directions (front, back, right, left, clockwise, counterclockwise) and faults on propellers and motors. The drone sounds were then mixed with noises recorded in five different spots on the university campus, with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) varying from 10 dB to 15 dB. Using the acquired dataset, we train a DNN classifier, 1DCNN-ResNet, that classifies the types of mechanical faults and their locations from short-time input waveforms. We employ multitask learning (MTL) and incorporate the direction classification task
We discuss the properties of the two-flavor quark-meson diquark (QMD) model as a renormalizable low-energy model for QCD in the 2SC phase of QCD. The effective degrees of freedom are the mesons (sigma and pions), quarks, and diquarks. Some of the parameters of the model can be determined by expressing them in terms of the vacuum meson masses and the pion decay constant using the on-shell renormalization scheme. The remaining parameters are considered free, although they in principle can be calculated from QCD. The thermodynamic potential is calculated in a mean-field approximation taking only quark loops into account. In this approximation, we derive a set of renormalization group equations for the running masses and couplings. The solutions to these equations are used to improve the thermodynamic potential $Ω$ and thereby thermodynamic quantities. Four parameter sets are chosen and the phase diagram in the $\barμ$--$T$ plane is obtained (with $\barμ={1\over3}μ_B$). We also calculate the speed of sound $c_s$ as a function of $\barμ$ at vanishing temperature. For large values of $\barμ$, the speed of sound approaches the conformal limit $c_s={1\over\sqrt{3}}$ from above, in disagree