When Max Schich @schichmax & Mikhail Tamm invited Carla Scaletti to @cudanlab on Morse Code Day, their discussion took an unexpected turn along the path to 'Ensoniment'. Check out the lecture/discussion on data sonification & analytical listening youtu.be/hQXgs2os4vc?...

Benjamin Van Doren is making Chicago safer for millions of birds by installing acoustic monitors on the tops of skyscrapers. Most birds fly at night so the best way to track & identify them is by sound which is processed in near real time & shared on a public dashboard. news.wttw.com/2026/05/05/i...

Thanks Max! Looking forward to meeting with the CUDAN Open Lab!

A new kind of bass trap! Low-frequency sound absorption achieved by replacing the high-stiffness neck of a Helmholtz resonator w/ a soft, viscoelastic cylindrical shell for tunable viscoelastic damping. Greater than 97% absorption of 227 to 329 Hz with deep-subwavelength thickness (λ/15 at 227 Hz).

Bumble bees learned to discriminate rhythmic patterns; generalized those patterns to slower & faster rates; and transferred learning of 2 vibrational patterns to their equivalent flashing light patterns. Suggests that bumble bees have truly flexible rhythm perception. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Researchers design a passive acoustic scattering structure that converts broadband white-noise into an acoustic rainbow — passively decomposing a radiated sound into its spatio-spectral components with “above unity” efficiency. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org

"La sonificazione qui non sostituisce le misurazioni, non sostituisce l'analisi quantitativa e non è marketing. Serve a rivelare pattern in serie temporali molto dense.Il passaggio dall'intuizione percettiva alla misurazione è ciò che rende il metodo interessante" sbircialanotizia.it/articoli/202...

Excited to share results from our new PNAS paper. We studied PNIPAM—a shape-shifting polymer that collapses from an extended coil to a compact globule near body temperature — making it a prime candidate for drug delivery systems and soft robotics.

For those interested in the "Auditory Analytics" method used to analyze this data, the full methodology was just published yesterday in the Journal of Chemometrics: doi.org/10.1002/cem....

Hearing relies on the ear actively enhancing its responsiveness. New research shows mammalian cochlea performs amplification, frequency tuning, compressive nonlinearity & generation of distortion products locally & near criticality at a Hopf bifurcation. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Isn’t it time we added "Analytical Listening" to the scientific method? In our talk @FlatironInst, we make the case for #AuditoryAnalytics — sonification as part of the research cycle. Watch the 15' talk by M. Gruebele, K Hebel, C. Scaletti: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJOV... #sonification #DataScience

"[E]very design is a decision, and every decision shapes the future of musical thinking." Andrew Telichan-Phillips interviews the developers of SuperCollider, ChucK, Max, and Kyma, concluding that "symbolic systems do not merely describe the world; they organize it." direct.mit.edu/comj/article...

Synchronizing movement to music is a hallmark of human culture. New study demonstrates that macaques can spontaneously synchronize to a beat, contradicting the “vocal-learning hypothesis” that only species with learned complex vocalizations can synchronize. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

And this vocoder! mixwiththemasters.com/videos/rich-...

Otophysans, known for their enhanced hearing comprise 2/3 of freshwater fish. Recent discovery of a fossil places their origin ~154 million years ago. Their distinctive hearing abilities evolved in conjunction with fusion of hearing ossicles & freshwater adaptations. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The Science is Sound! From acoustic analogs of electron entanglement, to positioning heart cells, to hydrogen bond sonification & more, check out the July Shaastra cover story by Pallab Roygupta on some unexpected ways sound is being used to probe nature. shaastramag.iitm.ac.in/lead-story/s...

SonicBoom, an autonomous robot that uses sound to sense objects in visually cluttered environments. Small differences in signal intensity & phase across an array of contact mics can localize the sound source & thus the point of contact with accuracy of ~0.4 to 2 cm spectrum.ieee.org/farm-robots-...

Can the sound of laughter encourage optimistic behavior? Study shows that bonobos approach ambiguous stimuli to search for rewards more often after hearing laughter. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Concert for pipe organ & live Kyma electronics: 5 June 6:30 pm St Paul's Cathedral London. While performing the pipe organ, Franz controls Kyma processing with an EEG scanner & a MIDI glove! www.stpauls.co.uk/whats-on/cel...

Kyma 7.44 is HERE! New synthesis/processing Sound objects, !SongPosition from MIDI, new Smalltalk messages, roll the dice on a single component of VCS, selectable MPE mode, Community Library access & tons of UI/workflow improvements. Free update from the Help menu in #Kyma #SoundDesign #MusicTech

Prosody — pitch contour, stress, rhythm & loudness of speech — found to have its own vocabulary, semantics & simple syntax. Study finds Intonation Units (IUs) which when stripped of text consist of a pitch contour — as an element of a prosodic vocabulary doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

What’s Behind the ‘Pop and Slosh’ When Opening a Beer? Using high-speed video, audio recordings, & computational fluid dynamics simulations, researchers say the sound is explained by a sudden expansion of CO2 + a drop in temp to -50C which slows the speed of sound publishing.aip.org/publications...

Audible enclaves: Delivering audio to a targeted listener located at the intersection of 2 nonlinear ultrasonic beams without disturbing others nearby www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

In memory of Kaija Saariaho, the Sons of Chipotle (Anssi Karttunen + John Paul Jones) are performing w/ piano, cello, various controllers & live Kyma processing this Saturday 15 March 2025 @ the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam — part of the first Saariaho Festival news.symbolicsound.com/2025/02/sons...

Study of human hand claps finds Helmholtz resonators to be a good model for the dominant sound generation mechanism & for physically separating factors contributing to different aspects of the sound. doi.org/10.1103/Phys...

Check out Cork by Phil Maguire & Anne La Berge (flutes, Kyma System, laptops & synthesizer), mastered by Jim O'Rourke. On March 7, Bandcamp waives their revenue share & passes the funds directly to artists maguirelaberge.bandcamp.com/album/cork

Hearing triggered by molecular 'spring': Researchers at Göttingen’s Max Planck Institute identify an elastically suspended molecular spring that opens an ion channel in the human ear: "it is not the spiral but the flexible joint that bends under mechanical tension” www.mpinat.mpg.de/4945389/pr_2...

Franz Danksagmüller: live Ciné-concert: Kyma electronics & 1937 Wurlitzer organ to accompany Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Friday 7 March at 8 pm in Geneva at Collége Claparède. Masterclass on Thursday 6 March 2 pm. news.symbolicsound.com/2025/02/metr...

A novel method uses sound (24 kHz/400W) to change glass to have either a hydrophobic or a charged surface. Sonochemical modification has applications in filtration systems & biofuel cells advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

From an interview with Lowell Pickett, Senior Audio Engineer at Zoox: "A well-considered audio experience improves workplaces and recreational spaces alike." According to Lowell, "Every company should have an audio professional on staff!" news.symbolicsound.com/2025/02/driv...

Aminoglycosides (AGs) antibiotics are ototoxic, causing irreversible hearing loss in millions annually. By inhibiting GABARAP expression in inner ear hair cells, researchers successfully prevented AG-induced hair cell death & subsequent hearing loss www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

U of Chicago researchers demonstrate multi-phonon entanglement between two physically separated acoustic wave resonators. [Reminds me of Huygens' "odd kind of sympathy"?] www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Study published in Science reveals that humpback whale vocalizations have a statistical structure similar to that of human language. Shane Gero suggests this structure might exist because whale songs are communication systems transmitted through social learning www.science.org/content/arti...

A spherical 10-100 µm microrobot converts acoustic energy into thrust for velocities up to 300 body lengths per second. Resonance of a trapped bubble disrupts acoustic streaming symmetry for multiple frequency-dependent boundary-free 3D locomotion modes. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The sound of a virus! Study tracks acoustic vibrations of a single virus using ultrafast spectroscopy. The acoustic spectrum reveals vibrational modes associated with virus morphology, viral envelope protein interactions & acoustic mode-coupling w/the local environment. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Auditory system's ability to follow cycle-by-cycle fluctuations or Temporal Fine Structure (TFS) is found to contribute to resilience to effects of reverberation & is associated with faster response times, indicating reduced listening effort.  doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Study observes chimpanzees producing rhythmic displays—suggesting that mechanisms for rhythm production may be shared between humans & non-human primates. They recorded isochronous rhythms in vocal (pants, grunts & hoots) as well as in motoric (swaying & stomping) behaviors. doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

First issue of ‘eighth nerve’ for 2025 finds the Kyma Community zeitgeist trending toward human mechanization, way-finding, questions of what is “life” and what is “live”, the fall of empire, and secrets…#Kyma #SoundDesign news.symbolicsound.com

Songbirds migrating at night may use sounds to coordinate with each other. University of Illinois researchers use ML to analyze 18,300 hours of recordings & detect signature flight calls of 25 species while the rest of the world sleeps @uofilsystem.bsky.social aces.illinois.edu/news/songbir...

Can you imagine hearing & making sounds in your mind? Are they as vivid as sounds in the real world? This article in @NautilusMag describes “anauralia” — the lack of hearing any sound in your head nautil.us/people-who-c...

Fascinating to hear about how the sound designers at Phaze UK transformed the "crowd sound" into one of the major characters for Gladiator II!

Horses exposed to music for 1 hour a day for a week showed an increase in serotonin levels, serum calcium levels, and hemoglobin concentration, as well as a reduction in lymphocytes. Suggesting that music may promote the well-being of stabled horses. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Any mechanical harmonic oscillator is in 2-way communication with its environment; detailed information about an inhomogeneous environment can be extracted from correlations of the noise signals generated by one or more acoustic sensors. doi.org/10.1038/s413...

Thank you, Really Nice Audio! www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Et8...

Donate your ears to science? On The Music Lab site, you can play games (Tone Guesser, Call of the Wild, Test your musical IQ, etc) to help researchers at University of Auckland learn how the human mind creates and perceives music. www.themusiclab.org

University of Auckland is hosting a conference on the ‘Mind’s Ear and Inner Voice’ 14-16 April 2025 in Auckland — including anauralia (silent mind) and hyperauralia (the experience of extremely vivid auditory imagery). www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024... Submit an abstract: anauralia.com/conference

New research finds that neurons in the midbrain respond more strongly to coincident tactile + auditory stimulation than to either modality alone. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Misophonia—a strong emotional response triggered by sounds like food-slurping, knuckle-cracking, pen-tapping, nose-sniffling. UIUC researchers are curious whether the triggers are the same in different cultures. Find out how you can participate in the study here: publish.illinois.edu/misophonia/

Using hairlike structures on their legs, spiders detect mosquitos by the frequency of their wing beats. When researchers approach a spider w/ a tuning fork vibrating at the same frequency, the spider releases a strand of sticky silk to capture the tuning fork. www.science.org/content/arti...

Very excited that the Kyma folks wrote a profile about how Kyma was used for sound processing and synthesis on my new album. news.symbolicsound.com/2024/12/the-...