The New Zealand Acoustical Society The New Zealand Acoustical Society is delighted to invite you to attend the International Symposium on Sustainability in Acoustics (ISSA 2010) being held in Auckland, New Zealand 29-31 August 2010. ISSA 2010 is a symposium on sustainability for researchers, practitioners, legislators, and local body officers in the areas of […]
Listen to the world’s first audio recording!
U.S. researchers discovered a sound recording from 1860. It is probably the world’s oldest audible recording of a human voice. Read more and listen to how it sounds! According to the encyclopaedia, it was Thomas Edison who designed the first sound recorder. His recitation of “Mary had a little lamb” from 1877 has been considered […]
Sound Planning – web portal to be explored
www.ljudplanering.se (sound planning) is a gathering place for many aspects of sound design and sound in the city – a live forum (in Swedish – at least so far) that is continuously updated with new experiences and knowledge. Here you can listen to city sounds, and compare the various solutions in the design affects the […]
Acoustic city planners wanted!
Sound policies in public environments usually have the approach of protecting us from, for instance noise. Lately adding sound for various reasons has been applied. How are we actually affected or influenced by sound? Perhaps we should employ acoustic city planners? At least this is what Björn Hellström suggests! In this article (in Swedish) Swedish […]
Study shows that musicians are better in distinguishing sounds in background noise
Musicians, trained to hear sounds embedded in a rich network of melodies and harmonies, are primed to understand speech in a noisy background. “The study points to a highly pragmatic side of music’s magic,” said Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, where the research […]
Interesting article on auralization of spaces
Michael Vorländer from Aachen University in Germany contributed with a very interesting feature article on auralization of spaces in Physics Today (June 2009). It is important to be able to re-create the acoustic sensation of various kinds of spaces. The best possible future scenario would be to already at a design stage, be able to […]
Zebrafish might save human hearing!
The most common cause of hearing loss is damage to the hair cells in the inner ear. Once hair cells die, humans (like other mammals) aren’t able to grow new ones. Zebrafish, unlike humans, are able to regenerate their damaged hair cells. US researchers hope knowledge about this can help humans in the future. A […]
Shopping music – influencing you either you like it or not!
Earlier this year the founder of the “elevator music”, Muzak, went bankrupt! But the business of background music, making you shop more, is still successful. Matching the music with the target group is important! It is a matter of finding the appropriate sound level. Too high sound level might be disturbing. But then again, some […]
Only 1 of 10 Swedish local authorities has an action plan towards noise in schools
Few local authorities in Sweden do something active as to reduce noise and high sound levels in schools. Only 12 % of the local authorities have an action plan, reveals an investigation done by “Lilla Aktuellt” (Swedish TV-program for young people). In spite of knowing that noise and high sound levels indeed are work environment […]
Guidelines for Community Noise – WHO
When looking for a thorough overview of the research on how noise affects people I always still refer to the document “Community Noise” prepared for the World health Organisation (WHO). It used to be a book, but has for many years existed on the web as well. Here you can find the documentation edited by […]
