Subject: Re: environmental non-noises From: Valeriy Shafiro <Valeriy_Shafiro@xxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:01:18 -0500 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Ferenc, I would recommend trying to spectrally smear your sounds with a vocoder. This can make many environmental sounds unrecognizable (at least without training) while preserving some of their original acoustic characteristics. Depending on your specific stimuli, this may work better for some sounds than for others. You can get an idea of what it may sound like here: http://www.rushu.rush.edu/cds/arl/DEMOS/CIwebdemo/ Additional info can be found in my dissertation (pardon the plug) that can be downloaded here http://www.rushu.rush.edu/cds/arl/Publications/Shafiro_dissertation.pdf or in Brian Gygi's 2004 JASA article (the abstract can be viewed here: http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JASMAN000115000003001252000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes) Hope this helps, Valeriy ------------------------------------------------------------- Valeriy Shafiro Communication Disorders and Sciences Rush University Medical Center Chicago, IL office (312) 942 - 3298 lab (312) 942 - 3316 email: valeriy_shafiro@xxxxxxxx -----AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx> wrote: ----- To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx From: Honbolygó Ferenc <hf@xxxxxxxx> Sent by: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx> Date: 03/22/2007 07:51AM Subject: environmental non-noises Dear List members, We are currently working on an experiment about the semantical processing of environmental noises. We are trying to do a similar task as the lexical decision task with words and nonwords, but with environmental noises and "non-noises". The problem is that we have a hard time creating non-noises which are quite environmental noise-like, but are not recognizable. We tried almost every distortion methods used in the literature (reversing, spectrally-rotating, scrambling the parts) but the sounds are always pretty much recognizable by most people. Does anyone have any idea on how to create such non-recognizable non-noises based on existing environmental noises? Or is this idea just not feasible, because people will always think that what they heard is something real? Thanks, Ferenc Honbolygó -- Ferenc Honbolygó Research Institute for Psychology, HAS Department of Psychophysiology Research Group of Developmental Psychophysiology H-1394 Budapest, P.O.Box 398. Web: http://humlab.cogpsyphy.hu/ E-mail: hf@xxxxxxxx Tel: +361 354-2390 Fax: +361 354-2416