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 […]
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Work noise increases risk of hearing loss
Photograph: hear it.org – nursery teachers wearing hearing protection Daily exposure to excessive noise in the workplace is the primary factor in many cases of hearing loss in the working population. For more information read more about this and a series of articles published by hear it.org regarding excessive noise for office workers, teachers, nursery […]
Test codes for sound absorption measurements
Nils-Åke Andersson CEN/TC 126, Building acoustics, has created a working group, WG 11, to develop Test Codes for suspended, acoustic ceilings. WG 11 started its work about a year ago with Nils-Åke Andersson from Saint-Gobain Ecophon as convener and has now about 15 participants from around Europe. The reason doing this work is the problems […]
Reverberation Time is not enough….
Monika Rychtarikova Shortly after her presentation, Monika Rychtarikova was interviewed by Marielle Klijn. The title of her presentation was: “speech transmission index and articulation index in the context of open plan offices“. One of the conclusions of her session is that reverberation time is not an adequate quantity to fully describe the acoustical comfort. Please […]
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 […]
Test Code for sound absorption measurements
CEN/TC 126, Building acoustics, has created a working group, WG 11, to develop Test Codes for suspended, acoustic ceilings. WG 11 started its work about a year ago with Nils-Åke Andersson from Saint-Gobain Ecophon as convener and has now about 15 participants from around Europe. The reason doing this work is the problems with differences […]
A Unique Acoustical Experience At The Palais de la Découverte, IN PARIS
Some partners of the Week of Sound have collaborated to provide the visitors of the Palais de la Découverte in Paris with a unique acoustic corridor walk through experience. The corridor offers a unique acoustical experience for those heading to the « Sounds and Vibrations section » of the Palais. In a recent Note Acoustique […]
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 […]
Peter Zumthor get Pritzker Prize
Peter Zumthor, Swiss architect, sometimes called “the poet of the silence”, was awarded a Pritzker Prize – one of the highest recognitions for architects. Zumthor is known for his approach to architecture, which assumes multisensual perception. While some have called his architecture quiet, his buildings masterfully assert their presence, engaging many of our senses, not […]
