Due to recent developments in concert hall design, there is an increasing interest in the analysis of sound energy decays consisting of multiple exponential decay rates. It has been considered challenging to estimate parameters associated with double-rate (slope) decay characteristics, and even more challenging when the coupled-volume systems contain more than two decay processes. To meet the need of characterizing energy decays of multiple decay processes, this work investigates coupled-volume systems using acoustic scale-models of three coupled rooms. Two Bayesian formulations are compared using the experimentally measured sound energy decay data. A fully parameterized Bayesian formulation has been found to be capable of characterization of multiple-slope decays beyond the single-slope and double-slope energy decays. Within the Bayesian framework using this fully parameterized formulation, an in-depth analysis of likelihood distributions over multiple-dimensional decay parameter space motivates the use of Bayesian information criterion, an efficient approach to solving Bayesian model selection problems that are suitable for estimating the number of exponential decays. The analysis methods are then applied to a geometric-acoustics simulation of a conceptual concert hall. Sound energy decays more complicated than single-slope and double-slope nature, such as triple-slope decays have been identified and characterized.
Critical illness in COVID-19 is an extreme and clinically homogeneous disease phenotype that we have previously shown1 to be highly efficient for discovery of genetic associations2. Despite the advanced stage of illness at presentation, we have shown that host genetics in patients who are critically ill with COVID-19 can identify immunomodulatory therapies with strong beneficial effects in this group3. Here we analyse 24,202 cases of COVID-19 with critical illness comprising a combination of microarray genotype and whole-genome sequencing data from cases of critical illness in the international GenOMICC (11,440 cases) study, combined with other studies recruiting hospitalized patients with a strong focus on severe and critical disease: ISARIC4C (676 cases) and the SCOURGE consortium (5,934 cases). To put these results in the context of existing work, we conduct a meta-analysis of the new GenOMICC genome-wide association study (GWAS) results with previously published data. We find 49 genome-wide significant associations, of which 16 have not been reported previously. To investigate the therapeutic implications of these findings, we infer the structural consequences of protein-coding variants, and combine our GWAS results with gene expression data using a monocyte transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) model, as well as gene and protein expression using Mendelian randomization. We identify potentially druggable targets in multiple systems, including inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).
One of the most thrilling cultural experiences is to hear live symphonyorchestra music build up from a whispering passage to a monumental fortissimo. The impact of such a crescendo has been thought to depend only on the musicians' skill, but here we show that interactions between the concert-hall acoustics and listeners' hearing also play a major role in musical dynamics. These interactions contribute to the shoebox-type concert hall's established success, but little prior research has been devoted to dynamic expression in this three-part transmission chain as a complete system. More forceful orchestral playing disproportionately excites high frequency harmonics more than those near the note's fundamental. This effect results in not only more sound energy, but also a different tone color. The concert hall transmits this sound, and the room geometry defines from which directions acoustic reflections arrive at the listener. Binaural directional hearing emphasizes high frequencies more when sound arrives from the sides of the head rather than from the median plane. Simultaneously, these same frequencies are emphasized by higher orchestral-playing dynamics. When the room geometry provides reflections from these directions, the perceived dynamic range is enhanced. Current room-acoustic evaluation methods assume linear behavior and thus neglect this effect. The hypothesis presented here is that the auditory excitation by reflections is emphasized with an orchestra forte most in concert halls with strong lateral reflections. The enhanced dynamic range provides an explanation for the success of rectangularly shaped concert-hall geometry.perception | performance | architecture
Reverberation is essential for the realistic auralisation of enclosed spaces. However, it can be computationally expensive to render with high fidelity and, in practice, simplified models are typically used to lower costs while preserving perceived quality. Ambisonics-based methods may be employed to this purpose as they allow us to render a reverberant sound field more efficiently by limiting its spatial resolution. The present study explores the perceptual impact of two simplifications of Ambisonics-based binaural reverberation that aim to improve efficiency. First, a “hybrid Ambisonics” approach is proposed in which the direct sound path is generated by convolution with a spatially dense head related impulse response set, separately from reverberation. Second, the reverberant virtual loudspeaker method (RVL) is presented as a computationally efficient approach to dynamically render binaural reverberation for multiple sources with the potential limitation of inaccurately simulating listener's head rotations. Numerical and perceptual evaluations suggest that the perceived quality of hybrid Ambisonics auralisations of two measured rooms ceased to improve beyond the third order, which is a lower threshold than what was found by previous studies in which the direct sound path was not processed separately. Additionally, RVL is shown to produce auralisations with comparable perceived quality to Ambisonics renderings.
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When sound reflects from an irregular architectural surface, it spreads spatially and temporally. Extensive research has been devoted to prediction and measurement of diffusion, but less has focused on its perceptual effects. This paper examines the effect of temporal diffusion on echo threshold. There are several notable differences between the waveform of a reflection identical to the direct sound and one from an architectural surface. The onset and offset are damped and the energy is spread in time; hence, the reflection response has a lower peak amplitude, and is decorrelated from the direct sound. The perceptual consequences of these differences are previously undocumented. Echo threshold tests are conducted with speech and music signals, using direct sound and a simulated reflection that is either identical to the direct sound or has various degrees of diffusion. Results indicate that for a speech signal, diffuse reflections are less easily detectable as a separate auditory event than specular reflections of the same total energy. For a music signal, no differences are observed between the echo thresholds for reflections with and without temporal diffusion. Additionally, echo thresholds are found to be shorter for speech than for music, and shorter for spatialized than for diotic presentation of signals.
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