Basic Acoustics +

Digital Signal Processing

September 11, 2014

Road Map!

For today:

Part 1: Go through a review of the basics of (analog)

acoustics.

Part 2: Converting sound from analog to digital format.

Any questions so far?

Part 1: An Acoustic Dichotomy

Acoustically speaking, there are two basic kinds of

sounds:

1. Periodic

= an acoustic pattern which repeats over time

The period is the length of time it takes for the

pattern to repeat

Periodic speech sounds = voiced segments + trills

2. Aperiodic

Continuous acoustic energy which does not exhibit

a repeating pattern

Aperiodic speech sounds = fricatives

The Third Wheel

There are also acoustic transients.
= aperiodic speech sounds which are not continuous
i.e., they are usually very brief
Transient speech sounds:
stop release bursts
clicks
also (potentially) individual pulses in a trill
Lets look at the acoustic properties of each type of sound
in turn

Acoustics: Basics

How is a periodic sound transmitted through the air?
Consider a bilabial trill:

Fad

Pin

Fad

What does sound look like?

Air consists of floating air molecules
Normally, the molecules are suspended and evenly
spaced apart from each other

What happens when we push on one molecule?

What does sound look like?

The force knocks that molecule against its neighbor

The neighbor, in turn, gets knocked against its neighbor

The first molecule bounces back past its initial rest position

initial rest position

What does sound look like?

The initial force gets transferred on down the line

rest
rest
position #1
position #2

The first two molecules swing back to meet up with each
other again, in between their initial rest positions
Think: bucket brigade

Compression Wave

A wave of force travels down the line of molecules
Ultimately: individual molecules vibrate back and forth,
around an equilibrium point

The transfer of force sets up what is called a

compression wave.
What gets compressed is the space between molecules
Check out what happens when we blow something up!

Compression Wave

area of high pressure

(compression)

area of low pressure

(rarefaction)

Compression waves consist of alternating areas of

high and low pressure

Pressure Level Meters

Microphones
Have diaphragms, which move back and forth with air
pressure variations
Pressure variations are converted into electrical
voltage
Ears
Eardrums move back and forth with pressure variations
Amplified by components of middle ear
Eventually converted into neurochemical signals
We experience fluctuations in air pressure as sound

Measuring Sound

What if we set up a pressure level meter at one point in the
wave?

Time

pressure level meter

Sine Waves

The reading on the pressure level meter will fluctuate
between high and low pressure values
In the simplest case, the variations in pressure level will
look like a sine wave.

pressure

time

Other Basic Sinewave concepts

Sinewaves are periodic; i.e., they recur over time.
The period is the amount of time it takes for the pattern
to repeat itself.
A cycle is one repetition of the acoustic pattern.
The frequency is the number of times, within a given
timeframe, that the pattern repeats itself.
Frequency = 1 / period
usually measured in cycles per second, or Hertz
The peak amplitude is the the maximum amount of
vertical displacement in the wave
= maximum (or minimum) amount of pressure

Waveforms

A waveform plots air pressure on the y axis against time on
the x axis.

Phase Shift

Even if two sinewaves have the same period and
amplitude, they may differ in phase.
Phase essentially describes where in the sinewave cycle
the wave begins.

This doesnt affect the way that we hear the waveform.

Check

out: sine waves vs. cosine waves!

Complex Waves

It is possible to combine more than one sinewave together
into a complex wave.
At any given time, each wave will have some amplitude
value.
A1(t1) := Amplitude value of sinewave 1 at time 1
A2(t1) := Amplitude value of sinewave 2 at time 1
The amplitude value of the complex wave is the sum of
these values.
Ac(t1) = A1 (t1) + A2 (t1)

Complex Wave Example

Take waveform 1:
high amplitude
low frequency
Add waveform 2:

low amplitude
high frequency
=
The sum is this
complex waveform:

A Real-Life Example

480 Hz tone

620 Hz tone

the combo = ?

Spectra

One way to represent complex waves is with waveforms:
y-axis: air pressure
x-axis: time
Another way to represent a complex wave is with a power
spectrum (or spectrum, for short).
Remember, each sinewave has two parameters:
amplitude
frequency
A power spectrum shows:
amplitude on the y-axis
frequency on the x-axis

One Way to Look At It

Combining 100 Hz and 1000 Hz sinewaves results in
the following complex waveform:
a
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
time

The Other Way

The same combination of 100 Hz and 1000 Hz
sinewaves results in the following power spectrum:
a
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
frequency

The Third Way

A spectrogram shows how the spectrum of a complex
sound changes over time.
f
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

time

1000 Hz

100 Hz

intensity (related to amplitude) is represented by
shading in the z-dimension.

Fundamental Frequency

One last point about periodic sounds:
Every complex wave has a fundamental frequency (F0).
= the frequency at which the complex wave pattern
repeats itself.
This frequency happens to be the greatest common
denominator of the frequencies of the component waves.
Example: greatest common denominator of 100 and
1000 is 100. (boring!)
GCD of 480 and 620 Hz is 20.
GCD of 600 and 800 Hz is 200, etc.

Aperiodic sounds

Not all sounds are periodic
Aperiodic sounds are noisy
Their pressure values vary randomly over time

white noise

Interestingly:
White noise sounds the same, no matter how fast or
slow you play it.

Fricatives

Fricatives are aperiodic speech sounds

[s]

[f]

Aperiodic Spectra

The power spectrum of white noise has component
frequencies of random amplitude across the board:

Aperiodic Spectrogram

In an aperiodic sound, the values of the component
frequencies also change randomly over time.

Transients

A transient is:
a sudden pressure fluctuation that is not sustained
or repeated over time.
An ideal transient waveform:

A Transient Spectrum

An ideal transient spectrum is perfectly flat:

As a matter of fact

Note: white noise and a pure transient are idealizations
We can create them electronically
But they are not found in pure form in nature.
Transient-like natural sounds include:
Hand clapping
Finger snapping
Drum beats
Tongue clicking

Click Waveform

initial impulse

some periodic
reverberation

Click Spectrum

Reverberation emphasizes some frequencies more than

others

Click Spectrogram

initial impulse

some periodic
reverberation

Part 2: Analog and Digital

In reality, sound is analog.
variations in air pressure are
continuous
= it has an amplitude value at all
points in time.
and there are an infinite number
of possible air pressure values.

Back in the bad old days,
acoustic phonetics was strictly
an analog endeavor.

analog clock

Part 2: Analog and Digital

In the good new days, we can
represent sound digitally in a
computer.
In a computer, sounds must be
discrete.
everything = 1 or 0

Computers represent sounds as
sequences of discrete pressure
values at separate points in time.
Finite number of pressure values.
Finite number of points in time.

digital clock

Analog-to-Digital Conversion

Recording sounds onto a computer requires an analog-todigital conversion (A-to-D)

When computers record sound, they need to digitize

analog readings in two dimensions:
X: Time (this is called sampling)
Y: Amplitude (this is called quantization)

quantization

sampling

Thanks to Chilin Shih for making these materials available.

Sampling Example

e
d
u
t
i
l
p
m
a

0
0
0
0
1 o
0
0
o
0
0
o
0
1
- 0

o
o

o
o

20

o
o

40
60
nominal time

80

o
100

Sampling Example

Sampling Rate

Sampling rate = frequency at which samples are taken.
Whats a good sampling rate for speech?
Typical options include:
22050 Hz, 44100 Hz, 48000 Hz
sometimes even 96000 Hz and 192000 Hz
Higher sampling rate preserves sound quality.
Lower sampling rate saves disk space.
(which is no longer much of an issue)
Young, healthy human ears are sensitive to sounds from
20 Hz to 20,000 Hz

One Consideration

The Nyquist Frequency
= highest frequency component that
can be captured with a given sampling
rate
= one-half the sampling rate

Harry Nyquist
(1889-1976)

Problematic Example:
100 Hz sound
100 Hz sampling rate

samples

Nyquists Implication

An adequate sampling rate has to be
at least twice as much as any frequency components in
the signal that youd like to capture.

100 Hz sound
200 Hz sampling rate

samples 1

Sampling Rate Demo

Speech should be sampled at at least 44100 Hz
(although there is little frequency information in speech
above 10,000 Hz)

44100 Hz
22050 Hz
11025 Hz (watch out for [s])
8000 Hz
5000 Hz