Across Acoustics

You may have heard of deepfakes—AI clones of people used to create lifelike video and audio to manipulate an audience. AI cloning technology, however, has much broader applications than just subterfuge. In this episode, we talk with Patti Adank (University College London), who studied the intelligibility of voice clones compared to their natural counterparts and sheds light on some potential benefits of this technology.

Associated paper: Patti Adank and Han Wang. "Voice clones are easier to understand in noise than their human originals: The voice cloning intelligibility benefit." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 159 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0043094.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

How is climate change impacting the Arctic Ocean? It can be hard to track these changes, but researchers have been using acoustic signals transmitted beneath the ice to learn more. In this episode, we talk with Matthew Dzieciuch and Peter Worcester of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Hanne Sagen of the Nansen Center about an international effort to use acoustic thermometry to better understand the changing ocean.

Associated paper: Matthew A. Dzieciuch, Hanne Sagen, Peter F. Worcester, Espen Storheim, F. Hunter Akins, Stein Sandven, John A. Colosi, John N. Kemp, and Geir Martin Leinebø. "Transarctic acoustic transmissions during the Coordinated Arctic Acoustic Thermometry Experiment in 2019–2020." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 159, 1071–1085 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0042233.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

As anyone in ocean acoustics will tell you, sound is essential for much of the work done underwater, whether that be navigation, sensing objects, or passively monitoring wildlife. While much research has been done about sandy ocean floors, scientists still have a lot to learn about muddier regions with mixtures of different types of sediment. In this episode, we talk with two editors and a researcher involved with the recent JASA Special Issue on Assessing Sediment Heterogeneity on Continental Shelves and Slopes: Preston Wilson (University of Texas at Austin), David Knobles (Platt Institute of Nuclear Physics and Cosmology), and Kyle Becker (University of Washington).

Read all the articles from the special issue here!

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

With the development of automatic speech recognition has come a new type of technology, designed to give the user advice on how to speak better. In this episode, we talk with Nicole Holliday (University of California, Berkeley) about some of the issues that can arise with the use of these technologies, from their nebulous definitions of "good communication" to the impact they could have at businesses that use these technology to evaluate employees.

Associated paper: Nicole R. Holliday. "Socially prescriptive speech technologies: Linguistic, technical, and ethical issues." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 158, 4361–4369 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039685.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.

Do you find the sound of people chewing unbearably annoying? Or perhaps you can't stand to be near folks who are typing on noisy keyboards, fidgeting with their pens, or rustling a plastic bag of chips. The term for this sort of aversion is misophonia. Even if you don't personally deal with this issue, you may know someone who does. In this episode, we talk with Benjamin Kirby (Wichita State University) and Olivia Zant (University of North Texas), whose recent JASA Express Letters article, “Psychoacoustic Assessment of Misophonia,” touches on this topic.

Associated paper: Benjamin J. Kirby, Alaina Cunningham, and Olivia Montou Zant. "Psychoacoustic assessment of misophonia." JASA Express Lett. 5, 094401 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039238.

Read more from JASA Express Letters.
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.
Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.