Page 8 - Spring2022

From the Editor
Arthur N. Popper
Readers of Acoustics Today (AT) have potential influence of the mother singing or speaking often commented that the maga- on brain development.
zine covers are attractive and well designed. In fact, we take great pride in our covers and seek to make them
interesting and eye-catching. In deciding on our cover image, our first choice is to have a figure from an article, but if there is no figure that excites our cover selection team, we invite an artist to create an illustration that rep- resents one of the articles.
Once we have selected the figure, we turn it over to our production group, Opus Design. Opus creates several cover designs that are reviewed by the cover selection team who then makes the final decision on a cover. Once the issue is published, we offer the author of the cover article a high-resolution image of the cover. But if anyone would like a copy of a cover, email me (apopper@umd.edu) and we will try and provide you with a high-resolution PDF or JPEG.
The first article in this issue, by H. Timothy Bunnell, addresses the science behind the artificial voices such as Siri and Alexa that we deal with every day. Tim talks about the different approaches that have been used in speech synthesis and how they have changed over the years.
This is followed by an article by Brandon M. Casper and Matthew A. Babina who discuss human hearing under- water. A major takeaway from the article is that humans are not adapted to hearing underwater and we don’t do nearly as well as fishes or marine mammals. In trying to focus on this comparison, the authors found a wonderful photo from a 1929 paper that is the cover of this issue. As an aside, the person at the left in the picture is one of the early experts on fish hearing, Karl von Frisch who won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In the third article, Patrick O. Kanold writes about how the “wiring” of the auditory region of the brain during fetal development is influenced by early audi- tory experiences. In doing this, Patrick considers the
In the next article, Robert A. Lutfi and Christopher A. Brown write about the fascinating scholarly contributions of former Acoustical Society of America (ASA) President William A. (Bill) Yost. Bill has made lasting contributions to our understanding of how humans perceive sound, and the article not only talks about these contributions but also puts them into a more general perspective of human hearing. You can learn more about human hearing at https://bit.ly/AT-psychoacoustics.
I found the fifth article by Christina J. Naify, Kathryn H. Matlack, and Michael R. Haberman of particular interest because it covers a topic I’ve heard about but know nothing about, additive manufacturing. Addi- tive manufacturing uses three-dimensional printers to
“build” objects that can range in size from tiny circuits to houses. The article provides a wonderful overview and introduction to the topic and focuses the application of the technique to diverse areas of acoustics.
The final article by Sean E. Olive is one that most ASA members will easily relate to, the quality of headphones that many of us use on a daily basis. Sean takes the reader through how headphone quality is evaluated and describes how manufacturers determine what listeners prefer in headphones. Sean does not make any recom- mendations as to what headphones to get, but I suspect that many of us will start to use his information when we consider purchasing new headphones.
This issue has three “Sound Perspectives” essays. The first one is the last essay in our “Ask an Acoustician” series. The series will be replaced by a new series of essays, again to be developed and “organized” by AT Associate Editor Micheal Dent. Be sure and look for that series in the next AT issue.
In deciding that this would be our last essay in this series, Micheal decided that I should be the subject. I will admit that I was rather reluctant to do this at first, but I was persuaded to agree. I found that answering
8 Acoustics Today • Spring 2022