Subject: [AUDITORY] Book =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=9C100_stories_of_sound_in_100_words_each=E2=80=9D?= From: Bomjun Kwon <alist@xxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 23:22:56 -0500 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>=EF=BB=BFDear fellow Auditory-lovers, I want to introduce something you might find interesting. I have written=20 a book for the general public. The tentative title is "100 stories of=20 sound in 100 words each." Yes, the total number of words of the main=20 text is 10,000 indeed! It is a collection of short essays on various=20 topics of acoustics, audio, music, speech and hearing. It is definitely=20 not a textbook; rather it is meant to be both entertaining and=20 enlightening, and ultimately inspiring. It should be a light reading but=20 with a long-lasting touch. Personally, it was a long overdue project. I started it a while ago (5-6=20 years ago?) and finished the first draft about 2 years ago. I tried to=20 publish it with a publisher, but it's going nowhere. So far, everyone I=20 talked to about this liked it; but I'm certain that no one would pay=20 money for it. OK. I get it. I'm probably going for a self-publishing=20 route, aka a money-draining (not money-grabbing) route. Now, I'm not asking you to pay money, but can I ask you to pay your=20 attention instead? I am going to share some parts of the book with this=20 community, and I would like to hear from you. Comments, suggestions,=20 anyone? Nice ones would be good. Nasty ones would still be of use=E2=80=94= then=20 I would know there was a success at least in the noise marketing. Below you'll see the table of contents. Have an idea of what these 100=20 stories are like. In a separate thread, I will post a few samples.=20 Depending on your reactions, I may post more, or less. Also, if you have=20 anything that you want to see, make a request here. I may post it if I'm=20 in a good mood. Bomjun Kwon bjkwon@xxxxxxxx Former auditory scientist/professor/researcher/church choir accompanist Current Audio DSP/Software Engineer/Creator of=20 AUXLAB/Pianist/Father/Husband/Progressive Evangelical=20 Christian/Uncertified Feminist TABLE OF CONTENTS------------------- FUNDAMENTALS 1. Do you know sound? 2. Sound as a wave 3. Frequency of a sound 4. Sound--tiny power, huge impact 5. Resonance--Birds of a feather flock together 6. Breaking a wine glass with her voice 7. Waveform 8. Fundamental frequency, harmonics, and a pure tone 9. Spectrum 10. Attributes of sound 11. What is pitch? 12. Spectrogram PHYSICS OF SOUNDS 13. The Doppler effect and an ice cream truck 14. Resonance--good vibration 15. Resonance--bad vibration 16. Electric filter vs acoustic filter 17. Loud not necessarily intense 18. Public announcements and speeches without modern technology 19. Outdoor concert is best at night 20. Can you hear your own voice? 21. Impedance matching HEARING 22. How do we hear sounds? 23. 0 dBSPL--the lowest sound level human can hear? 24. Acoustic reflex 25. Peripheral hearing 26. Echolocation 27. Missing fundamental frequency 28. Hearing low pitch without low frequencies 29. Pitch of atonal sound 30. If you mix two pure tones with frequencies of 100 Hz and 102 Hz, 31. Then what happens when you mix 100 Hz and 150 Hz? 32. Hmm, what about 100 Hz and 200 Hz? 33. Here's a twist--what about 100 Hz and 201 Hz? 34. Why is static noise sometimes soothing? 35. Hearing with two ears 36. Following an object moving up/down HEARING HEALTH 37. My ear hurts. Am I going deaf? 38. My ear still hurts. Am I really OK? 39. A preventable cause of hearing loss 40. Do we know when a sound is too loud? 41. Dangerous noise sources in everyday life 42. Hyperacusis and that sound of fingernails scraping a chalkboard 43. We are bound to be deaf 44. Deaf people don't have silence 45. Would you rather be blind or be deaf? 46. How it works: a cochlear implant 47. Understanding speech with cochlear implants 48. How well do cochlear implants work? 49. What does the sound sound like through cochlear implants? AUDIO TECHNOLOGIES 50. Audiophiles 51. Analog vs digital 52. Digitizing 53. Reverberation is magic 54. HiFi is not enough--toward the recreation of the sound field 55. MIDI music can't beat human music 56. Studio recordings can't beat live music. 57. Reasons to avoid cheap headphones 58. Foley artists 59. Backmasking and satanism in rock music 60. Why we should give another look at LP records CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT MUSIC 61. Music--a rule-bound language 62. Is music universal? 63. Flexibility of musical pitch 64. Voice pitch, musical pitch 65. Perfect pitch: a flashy word 66. Pseudo-perfect pitch: not so flashy but real 67. Unison and octave 68. Pythagoras, the world's first acoustician 69. Frequencies of musical notes 70. Equal temperament scale---a great compromise 71. No Tower of Babel for music 72. What's the deal with 12 notes in an octave? 73. Piano tuners must have a great sense of pitch, right? SPEECH COMMUNICATION--VOICING YOURSELF AND HEARING OTHERS 74. How it's made: your voice 75. Formants 76. Recognizing speech--bottom up 77. Recognizing speech--top down 78. Phonetics lost. Miserably. 79. Then, what good is phonetics? 80. How do we tell "bay" from "pay?" 81. Categorical perception 82. Korean Kim vs American Kim 83. How do we tell "bay" from "day"? 84. Non-categorical perception and learning foreign languages 85. Why formants are not a robust indicator of vowels 86. How do we tell a man's voice from a woman's? 87. Voice, masculinized or feminized 88. Voice of transgender people SOUND BEYOND SOUND 89. What is sound, anyway? 90. Overcoming noise 91. Can we run away from sound? 92. Auditory inception 93. Can you really hear the wind? 94. Pursuit of silence 95. Silence is a mirage 96. Though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not=20 understand 97. See what you hear. Hear what you see. 98. Infrasound 99. Audiographic memory 100. The best thing you can do to a dying person--say something nice