This Week in Sound: “Vigilance in Response to Noise Playback”
These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the January 23, 2024, issue of the Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound. This Week in Sound is the best way I’ve found to process material I come across. Your support provides resources and encouragement. Most issues are free. A weekly annotated ambient-music mixtape is for paid subscribers. Thanks.
▰ BIG FLOCK: Noise pollution has numerous impacts on nature, including making birds flock together: “Why might birds become more social when exposed to noise? The researchers have a few ideas. One possibility is that since traffic noise makes it more difficult to hear the approach of predators, the birds seek safety in numbers. Indeed, studies of other species have noted increased vigilance in response to noise playback. … Another possibility is that the increased social behavior acts as a buffer to the stress of noise pollution. Scientists have measured increased stress hormones in response to noise in some species. Being more social may mediate the effects of noise-induced stress.”
▰ CITIZEN WATCH: A biodiversity effort in Rwanda focuses on birds — and bird song: “At present, the first ever Rwandan citizen science initiative, which has been running since 2021, focuses on equipping young students, many from rural communities, with the skills to observe, audio record, and scientifically label birds by their sounds, songs, and calls. … By using affordable sound recording equipment aimed at entry-level citizen scientists, participants are trained in audio-data collection, verification, preparation, and storage for both higher-level scientists and other citizen scientists. Currently, different existing teams deployed across birding hotspots in Rwanda are divided into categories, including recordists and verifiers.”
▰ I, ME, MINE: It’s quite incredible how much control people playing games have to personalize the environments and interfaces that define those games, case in point this list of eight mods for Minecraft, all related to sound, such as “effects like realistic reverb, attenuation, and simulated sound absorption,” and “increased variety of sounds that can occur when you’re exploring a specific biome or region,” and “higher-quality, rain, thunder, and other atmospheric and immersive sounds in-game,” and a detailed ability “to disable any default sound within the game through a custom settings menu.”
▰ QUICK NOTES: Turn It Up: The voice AI company ElevenLabs has gained an $80M investment. ▰ On the Make: AI vocal deepfakes hit the presidential primary New Hampshire. ▰ Read It: Google Chrome for Android now has a “text-to-speech” feature. ▰ Outboard Motor: If your listening habits are as technologically mediated as mine, then you may appreciate the idea that a synthesizer musician, Richard Brewster, can identify unused outputs from the circuitry of a commercial product and then devise an extension module to take advantage of them. ▰ Soup Sound: What you hear matters when you eat. ▰ Head Games: The more I read about Apple’s new VR goggles, the more I wonder how many of the interface advancements in other Apple products, such as the “Spatial audio follows head movements” setting in MacOS, were developed in tandem. ▰ Great Shakes: The Shriek of the Week is the Great Tit, of whose noise-making we’re told, “It’s all very confusing to the human ear, and one credible explanation for their extensive repertoire is that it’s designed to be confusing — to other great tits.” ▰ Smart Alecs: An upgrade of Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, could come with a subscription price. ▰ Beat It: The perception of rhythm is inherent in being human. (Thanks, Glenn Sogge!) ▰ Sing-Along: A car with a built-in karaoke machine. (Thanks, Rich Pettus!)
