No abstract

It is well recognized that professional musicians are at risk of hearing damage due to the exposure to high sound pressure levels during music playing. However, it is important to recognize that the musicians' exposure may start early in the course of their training as students in the classroom and at home. Studies regarding sound exposure of music students and their hearing disorders are scarce and do not take into account important influencing variables. Therefore, this study aimed to describe sound level exposures of music students at different music styles, classes, and according to the instrument played. Further, this investigation attempted to analyze the perceptions of students in relation to exposure to loud music and consequent health risks, as well as to characterize preventive behaviors. The results showed that music students are exposed to high sound levels in the course of their academic activity. This exposure is potentiated by practice outside the school and other external activities. Differences were found between music style, instruments, and classes. Tinnitus, hyperacusis, diplacusis, and sound distortion were reported by the students. However, students were not entirely aware of the health risks related to exposure to high sound pressure levels. These findings reflect the importance of starting intervention in relation to noise risk reduction at an early stage, when musicians are commencing their activity as students.

Small rooms, such as the ones specifically designed for listening to amplified music, like control rooms in recording studios, face the problem of lowfrequency over-enhancement by acoustic resonances. Several devices have been developed to tackle this problem, such as Helmoltz resonators. The number of controlled acoustic modes depends on several factors among which are the central frequency chosen, the modal density in that frequency range, and the coupling between the resonator and the room. In this paper we suggest that the efficiency of such resonators may be significantly improved if, instead of using basic Helmholtz or devices with uniform cross-section, more complex shapeoptimized resonators are used, in order to cope with a larger number of undesirable acoustic modes. We apply optimization techniques to the uncoupled resonator, developed in our previous work, in order to obtain the optimal shapes for devices that resonate at a design set of acoustic eigenvalues, within imposed physical and/or geometrical constraints. One-dimensional and threedimensional finite element models were implemented. The one-dimensional model was coupled to optimization techniques in order to achieve the design goal. We illustrate the proposed approach with two examples of resonator shapes and different design sets of absorption frequencies. © 2007 Institute of Noise Control Engineering.

Linearised models are often invoked as a starting point to study complex dynamical systems. Besides their attractive mathematical simplicity, they have a central role for determining the stability properties of static or dynamical states, and can often shed light on the influence of the control parameters on the system dynamical behaviour. While the bowed string dynamics has been thoroughly studied from a number of points of view, mainly by time-domain computer simulations, this paper proposes to explore its dynamical behaviour adopting a linear framework, linearising the friction force near an equilibrium state in steady sliding conditions, and using a modal representation of the string dynamics. Starting from the simplest idealisation of the friction force given by Coulomb's law with a velocity-dependent friction coefficient, the linearised modal equations of the bowed string are presented, and the dynamical changes of the system as a function of the bowing parameters are studied using linear stability analysis. From the computed complex eigenvalues and eigenvectors, several plots of the evolution of the modal frequencies, damping values, and modeshapes with the bowing parameters are produced, as well as stability charts for each system mode. By systematically exploring the influence of the parameters, this approach appears as a preliminary numerical characterisation of the bifurcations of the bowed string dynamics, with the advantage of being very simple compared to sophisticated numerical approaches which demand the regularisation of the nonlinear interaction force. To fix the idea about the potential of the proposed approach, the classic one-degree-of-freedom friction-excited oscillator is first considered, and then the case of the bowed string. Even if the actual stick-slip behaviour is rather far from the linear description adopted here, the results show that essential musical features of bowed string vibrations can be interpreted from this simple approach, at least qualitatively. Notably, the technique provides an instructive and original picture of bowed motions, in terms of groups of well-defined unstable modes, which is physically intuitive to discuss tonal changes observed in real bowed string.