Search Results (355)

In response to the stress commonly experienced by young people in high-pressure daily environments, a music-based stress-relief interactive system was developed by integrating music-assisted care with emotion-sensing technology. The design principles of the system were established through a literature review on stress, music listening, emotion detection, and interactive devices. A prototype was created accordingly and refined through interviews with four experts and eleven users participating in a preliminary experiment. The system is grounded in a four-stage guided imagery and music framework, along with a static activity model focused on relaxation-based stress management. Emotion detection was achieved using a wearable EEG device (NeuroSky’s MindWave Mobile device) and a two-dimensional emotion model, and the emotional states were translated into visual representations using seasonal and weather metaphors. A formal experiment involving 52 users was conducted. The system was evaluated, and its effectiveness confirmed, through user interviews and questionnaire surveys, with statistical analysis conducted using SPSS 26 and AMOS 23. The findings reveal that: (1) integrating emotion sensing with music listening creates a novel and engaging interactive experience; (2) emotional states can be effectively visualized using nature-inspired metaphors, enhancing user immersion and understanding; and (3) the combination of music listening, guided imagery, and real-time emotional feedback successfully promotes emotional relaxation and increases self-awareness. Full article

In this paper, a set of digital signal processing (DSP) procedures tailored for the analysis of complex musical tones with prominent inharmonicity is presented. These procedures are implemented within a MATLAB-based application and organized into three submodules. The application follows a structured DSP chain: basic signal manipulation; spectral content analysis; estimation of the inharmonicity coefficient and the number of prominent partials; design of a dedicated filter bank; signal decomposition into subchannels; subchannel analysis and envelope extraction; and, finally, recombination of the subchannels into a wideband signal. Each stage in the chain is described in detail, and the overall process is demonstrated through representative examples. The concept and the accompanying application are initially intended for rapid post-processing of recorded signals, offering a tool for enhanced signal annotation. Additionally, the built-in features for subchannel manipulation and recombination enable the preparation of stimuli for perceptual listening tests. The procedures have been tested on a set of recorded tones from various string instruments, including those with pronounced inharmonicity, such as the piano, harp, and harpsichord. Full article

This paper presents a novel cochlear implant (CI) sound coding strategy called Spectral Feature Extraction (SFE). The SFE is a novel Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based Continuous Interleaved Sampling (CIS) strategy that provides less-smeared spectral cues to CI patients compared to Crystalis, a predecessor strategy used in Oticon Medical devices. The study also explores how the SFE can be enhanced into a Temporal Fine Structure (TFS)-based strategy named Spectral Event Extraction (SEE), combining spectral sharpness with temporal cues. Background/Objectives: Many CI recipients understand speech in quiet settings but struggle with music and complex environments, increasing cognitive effort. De-smearing the power spectrum and extracting spectral peak features can reduce this load. The SFE targets feature extraction from spectral peaks, while the SEE enhances TFS-based coding by tracking these features across frames. Methods: The SFE strategy extracts spectral peaks and models them with synthetic pure tone spectra characterized by instantaneous frequency, phase, energy, and peak resemblance. This deblurs input peaks by estimating their center frequency. In SEE, synthetic peaks are tracked across frames to yield reliable temporal cues (e.g., zero-crossings) aligned with stimulation pulses. Strategy characteristics are analyzed using electrodograms. Results: A flexible Frequency Allocation Map (FAM) can be applied to both SFE and SEE strategies without being limited by FFT bandwidth constraints. Electrodograms of Crystalis and SFE strategies showed that SFE reduces spectral blurring and provides detailed temporal information of harmonics in speech and music. Conclusions: SFE and SEE are expected to enhance speech understanding, lower listening effort, and improve temporal feature coding. These strategies could benefit CI users, especially in challenging acoustic environments. Full article

This paper presents an analysis of G. P. Telemann’s Sonata in C Major for Recorder and Basso Continuo (TWV 41:C2, Allegro), with the aim of investigating the occurrence of perceptual streams. The presence of perceptual streams in musical works helps to organise the sound stimuli received by the listener in a specific manner. This enables each listener to perceive the piece in an individual and distinctive manner, granting primacy to selected sounds over others. Directing the listener’s attention to particular elements of the auditory image leads to the formation of specific mental representations. This, in turn, results in distinctive interpretations of the acoustic stimuli. All of these processes are explored and illustrated in this analysis. Full article

This study investigates the relationship between gender and global media consumption habits, platform preferences, and engagement types. Prior research suggests that gender significantly influences media preferences, with men being traditionally engaged with news, action-oriented content, and competitive media, and women with entertainment, lifestyle, and social media-driven content. The current primary quantitative research is based on a questionnaire that was distributed online and answered by 292 respondents, equally distributed between men and women. The research findings showed that men are more likely to consume news, video games, and discussion-based media. On the other hand, women showed higher engagement with entertainment content, music, and listening-based media. Pearson’s correlation analysis, conducted using SPSS (v23), further confirmed these gendered preferences. Despite the persistence of traditional gendered media patterns, this research also identified the areas in which digital platforms seem to facilitate more balanced engagement across the two genders. Full article

Western written travel narratives are a byproduct of the privileging of vision as the primary means of knowledge production, an epistemology often imposed on indigenous peoples through colonial practices. In contrast, indigenous cultures in Brazil have long relied on listening as a central way of engaging with their environment. In the present essay, I examine how listening practices appear in the written accounts produced by members of three foreign river expeditions in Brazil from the 16th to the 20th century. I analyzed travel accounts from Gaspar de Carvajal’s Relación del Nuevo Descubrimiento del Famoso Río Grande (XVI century), Hercules Florence’s Voyage Fluvial du Tieté à l’Amazone (XIX), and Theodore Roosevelt’s In the Jungles of Brazil (XX). To explore what these travelers might have heard, I also collaborated with a sound designer to create a soundscape using actual recordings of local fauna and indigenous chants and music. The results show a variety of listening modes put into practice such as conquest-driven, scientific observation, contemplation, and hunting-focused and aesthetic appreciation. These narratives illustrate how European epistemologies reinforced Western dominance by shaping both colonial encounters and scientific approaches to Brazilian wilderness exploration. Full article

Background/Objectives: This study examined the effect of sound preference on loudness tolerance (LTLs) and preferred listening levels (PLLs) using personal listening devices (PLDs). The implication of this relationship on hearing health promotion counseling and practices using PLDs is discussed. Methods: Participants were 50 individuals, aged 21 to 90 years, with normal hearing or hearing loss. Listeners rated several sound samples (i.e., music, running speech, and machinery noise) played through a PLD using earphones according to their sound preference (i.e., enjoyable, acceptable, and unpleasant) and then self-adjusted the volume setting to their LTL and PLL for a sound sample in each sound preference category. Results: Most listeners judged music (70%) as enjoyable, running speech (54%) as acceptable, and machinery noise (84%) as unpleasant. No significant differences were found in LTLs according to sound preference, but PLLs for enjoyable sounds occurred at significantly higher levels compared with those deemed acceptable or unpleasant. Conclusions: Listeners using PLDs perceived LTLs and PLLs differently according to their sound preferences. PLLs occurred at significantly higher volumes for sounds deemed enjoyable when using PLDs. The implication is that hearing health counseling should include information to PLD users on the potential of altered loudness perception with enjoyable sounds, which may lead to higher and riskier PLD listening levels. Full article

Background: Listening to music has been widely reported to improve resistance exercise performance. However, few studies have considered lyrical content. The act of using explicit language has been shown to alter performance and psychophysiological responses to exercise. Although explicit language is widely used in mainstream music, it is unknown if altering explicit lyric content in music influences performance and psychophysiological responses to resistance exercise. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of censoring explicit lyrical music on bench press performance and psychophysiological responses to exercise. Methods: In a counterbalanced crossover manner, resistance-trained males (n = 11) were subjected to two conditions, namely (1) explicit music (EM) or (2) censored music (CM). Following a warm-up, music played continuously as participants completed 2 sets × 2 repetitions as explosively as possible, while a linear position transducer monitored the mean velocity of the barbell. Participants then completed 3 sets × repetitions to failure (RTFs) at 60% of a 1-repetition maximum (1-RM) separated by 2 min of rest. Motivation to exercise, psychological arousal, and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were measured post-exercise. Total RTFs, mean velocity, motivation, psychological arousal, and RPE were compared between music conditions. Results: Findings show that total RTFs (p = 0.012) was significantly lower with CM versus EM, while mean velocity (p = 0.844) was not different between conditions. Psychological arousal (p = 0.005) and motivation (p = 0.002) were lower with CM versus EM. CM also resulted in a higher RPE (p = 0.011) compared to EM. Conclusions: Findings suggest that CM results in worse repetition volume compared to EM during resistance exercise but does not influence explosive ability. Changes in performance may be due to underlying decreases in motivation and psychological arousal. CM may also cause less dissociation, as evidenced by a higher RPE. Future research investigating the effects of lyrical content on exercise performance is warranted to further support current findings. Full article

Theaters in ancient Pompeii played a vital role in Roman entertainment, shaping the auditory experiences of spectators. This study examines the acoustic properties of the Amphitheater, the Grand Theater, and the Odeon using impulse response (IR) analysis to reconstruct their soundscapes. Next, the study considers the impact of typical musical instruments, vocal performances, and ambient sounds—such as gladiatorial combat—on these spaces’ acoustics. Findings reveal significant differences in reverberation times, sound clarity, and spatial characteristics, shaped by each theater’s design. These sites, preserved after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, provide a unique opportunity to analyze how architecture influenced sound propagation. The Amphitheater, with its vast open structure, enhanced large-scale events, while the Grand Theater’s semi-enclosed design balanced musical and theatrical performances. The Odeon, the most intimate of the three, prioritized speech clarity. These insights highlight how Roman architects engineered performance spaces to accommodate diverse entertainment forms. By combining acoustic measurements with historical context, this research offers a deeper understanding of ancient Pompeii’s soundscapes and the auditory experiences of its inhabitants and offers insights for composition and soundscape creations that take inspiration from these prominent historical architectural and cultural icons whilst exploring its potential within contemporary immersive listening practices. Full article

Sustainability has gained significant importance in today’s educational context due to growing environmental concerns. This highlights the need to address this concept in teacher education so that future educators are equipped to help students develop competencies in this area. This study explores the use of soundscapes in environmental education, focusing on exploratory listening in relation to natural and urban sounds within the context of sustainability. The study examined the ability of 151 pre-service teachers (62 in music education and 89 in general education) to identify, characterize, and respond emotionally to these sounds. The methodology included an ad hoc task based on Schafer’s principles to identify sound elements, the PANAS questionnaire to assess emotional states before the listening activity, and a questionnaire to evaluate the emotions experienced during the task. The results indicate limited competence in characterizing sound elements, with music education students performing better than their general education peers. Furthermore, natural environments were associated with positive emotions, while urban environments elicited negative feelings, with no significant differences between the two groups. These findings underscore the importance of integrating soundscape awareness into university curricula to promote greater environmental consciousness and emotional well-being. Full article

Live music can afford novel, transformative aesthetic interactions for individual audience members. Nevertheless, concert research tends to focus on shared experience. In this paper we offer an account of exploratory listening that foregrounds embodied–enactive engagement and affective resonance through close analysis of the music, physiological measurements, and reflections from interviews. Our analysis centres on data collected from two musician audience members about one specific piece out of a larger interdisciplinary project involving concerts given by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and The Norwegian Radio Orchestra in March and June of 2024. Through the combination of in-depth phenomenological interviews with musically skilled audience members and measurements of breathing and body motion, we explore aesthetic enactment beyond common patterns of ‘synchronised’ response, focusing on audience members’ experiences of Harald Sæverud’s ‘Kjempeviseslåtten’ (The Ballad of Revolt) (1943). We find forms of absorbed, both imaginative and embodied involvement, of listeners enacting meaningful contact with, and pathways through, the music that in some ways corroborate crowd patterns but also reveal exploratory expertise and idiosyncratic affective orientations. Full article

This paper integrates concepts from neurobiology, marketing and musicology to propose a causal model of music appreciation and exploratory listening, using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) and structural equation models (SEMs). The key concepts are music appreciation (measured on a scale from 1 to 10), evaluations, experiences and the qualities of musical features, which the listeners explore and describe from a first-person perspective. The qualities are understood in terms of a satisfaction or dissatisfaction rating of operational features. The development of the causal model is based on a reiterative methodology involving surveys. Applying the causal model to a large survey of 800 listeners reveals that listeners adopt a slightly different causal pathway for their appreciation of liked versus disliked music. When listeners dislike music, the source of their dissatisfaction is more consistently attributed to the perceived or missed musical qualities rather than to their personal experiences. The iterative methodology and causal modeling offer a foundation for further investigation and refinement in various listening contexts. Full article

One of the quintessential goals of musical instrument acoustics is to improve the perceived sound produced by, e.g., a violin. To achieve this, the connections between physical (mechanical and geometrical) properties and perceived sound output need to be understood. In this article, a single facet of this complex problem will be discussed using experimental results obtained for six violins of varying back arch height. This is the first investigation of its kind to focus on back arch height. It may serve to inform instrument makers and researchers alike about the variation in sound that can be achieved by varying this parameter. The test instruments were constructed using state-of-the-art methodology to best represent the theoretical case of changing back arch height on a single instrument. Three values of back arch height ($12.1$, $14.8$ and $17.5$ mm) were investigated. The subsequent perceptual tests consisted of a free sorting task in the playing situation and three two-alternative forced choice listening tests. The descriptors “round” and “warm” were found to be linked to back arch height. The trend was non-linear, meaning that both low- and high-arch height instruments were rated as possessing more of these descriptors than their medium-arch height counterparts. Additional results were obtained using stimuli created by hybrid synthesis. However, these could not be linked to those using real playing or recordings. The results of this study serve to inform violin makers about the relative importance of back arch height and its specific influence on sound output. The discussion of the applied methodology and interpretation of results may serve to inform researchers about important new directions in the field of musical instrument acoustics. Full article

Exploratory listening encompasses the various ways, contexts, and levels of attention with which listeners engage with their sonic environment. This paper presents findings from qualitative research conducted with audience members during the Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons concert tour. During these events, attendees encountered music from the widely successful indie video game, reorchestrated in a new context. Just as the game encourages exploration through open-ended gameplay, the concerts prompt listeners to explore how the rearranged music refers to and diverges from its use in the game. Findings suggest that attendees deployed their attention to divergent aspects of the music. While some attendees focused on specific musical aspects like recognizable melodies and instrumentation, others focused on the broader audiovisual and community aspects of the performance. Results also indicate that highly immersed listeners experience diverse thoughts, including those not directly about the immediate musical content. Positioning music-evoked imaginings as a way listeners become immersed in musical experiences, we report on how exploratory listening shapes the dynamics of attention, immersion, and enjoyment within musical and audiovisual contexts. Full article

Hundreds of millions of migrants experience frequent homesickness that affects their psychological wellbeing. This study integrates the job-demands–resources model and temporal comparison theory to examine how music listening and similar activities involving coworker homophily and roommate homophily influence the relationship between homesickness and burnout. Our analysis of survey data from 2493 migrant workers reveals that off-work music listening strengthens the positive relationship between homesickness and burnout. Furthermore, coworker homophily and roommate homophily enhance the strength of the interaction between off-work music listening and homesickness as a predictor of burnout. Our findings demonstrate how seemingly supportive job resources can transform into psychological demands and thus have important theoretical and managerial implications. Full article