Winter 2019

Volume 15 | Issue 4 Winter 2019
A Publication of the Acoustical Society of America
The Underwater
Sounds of Glaciers
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

• Taking the Pulse of Our Ocean World • Bearing Fruit: Plant Bioacoustics
is Blossoming
• Music and the Brain
• As We Enter the Second Century
• The Dawn of Ultrasonics and the Palace
of Electroacoustics...
of Science
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Volume 15 | Issue 4 | Winter 2019
Acoustics
Today
A Publication of the Acoustical Society of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
8 From the Editor

10 From the President
Featured Articles Sound Perspectives

12 The Underwater Sounds of Glaciers – Grant B. Deane, 64 Ask an Acoustician – Adrian KC Lee and Micheal L. Dent
Oskar Glowacki, Erin C. Pettit, and M. Dale Stokes
68 Preparing for the International Year of Sound 2020 –
The underwater sounds of glaciers are a powerful remote L. Keeta Jones
sensing tool for monitoring changing conditions in
polar regions.
Departments
20 Taking the Pulse of Our Ocean World – David R. Dall’Osto
The lost San Juan submarine was triangulated by the 69 Foundation Report – James H. Miller
precision CTBT hydroacoustic network which has great
70 Obituary
potential for ocean science.
William J. Cavanaugh | 1929–2019
29 Music and the Brain – Psyche Loui and Alexander Belden 72 ASA Press Announcements
Activity and connectivity throughout the human brain Waves with Power-Law Attenuation – Sverre Holm
enable the complex experience of music.
Acoustics – Allan D. Pierce
38 The Dawn of Ultrasonics and the Palace of Science – 74 Classifieds, Business Directory, Advertisers Index
Kenneth S. Suslick
Ultrasonics research in the United States began in a
secretive private laboratory built in the mansion of the About The Cover
investment banker Alfred Lee Loomis.
47 Bearing Fruit: Plant Bioacoustics is Blossoming – Photograph of a tidewater glacier, from the
article “The Underwater Sounds of Glaciers.”
Aaron M. Thode
Snowfall in the accumulation zone feeds the
There is growing interest in how plants transmit, reflect, glacier that ends with its terminus in the fjord.
generate, and perhaps even respond to sound. Photograph by Dale Stokes.
55 As We Enter the Second Century of Electroacoustics... –

Stephen C. Thompson
A look back at a century of electroacoustic transducers and
systems and an attempt to look forward.
4 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2019

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Winter 2019 | Acoustics Today | 5
Editor Acoustical Society of America
Arthur N. Popper | [email protected] Victor W. Sparrow, President
Peggy B. Nelson, Vice President
Associate Editor
Diane Kewley-Port, President-Elect
Micheal L. Dent | [email protected]
Stan E. Dosso, Vice President-Elect
Book Review Editor Judy R. Dubno, Treasurer
Philip L. Marston | [email protected] Christopher J. Struck, Standards Director
Susan E. Fox, Executive Director
ASA Publications Staff
Kat Setzer, Editorial Assistant | [email protected] ASA Web Development Office
Helen A. Popper, AT Copyeditor | [email protected] Daniel Farrell | [email protected]
Visit the online edition of Acoustics Today at AcousticsToday.org
ASA Editor In Chief
James F. Lynch
Allan D. Pierce, Emeritus
Publications Office
P.O. Box 809, Mashpee, MA 02649
Follow us on Twitter @acousticsorg (508) 534-8645
Please see important Acoustics Today disclaimer at www.acousticstoday.com/disclaimer.
Acoustical Society of America

The Acoustical Society of America was founded in 1929 “to increase and diffuse the knowledge of acoustics and to promote its practical
applications.” Information about the Society can be found on the Internet site: www.acousticalsociety.org.
The Society has approximately 7,000 members, distributed worldwide, with over 30% living outside the United States.
Membership includes a variety of benefits, a list of which can be found at the website:
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are possible. Instructions for applying can be found at the Internet site above.
Acoustics Today (ISSN 1557-0215, coden ATCODK) Winter 2019, volume 15, issue 4, is published quarterly by the Acoustical Society of America, Suite 300,1305 Walt
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From the Editors | Arthur N. Popper and Micheal Dent
the membership in these three TCs but average only 12.3%

of the membership in all the other TCs. This means that
the women we can call on to do articles is biased toward
three TCs, thereby impacting a “prime directive” for AT
that stipulates that we work to having a balance of articles
across all TCs.
So, the question arises as to how to increase the number of

women lead authors of AT articles without impinging (too
This “From the Editor” was written by both Arthur Popper much!) on our goal of having subject matter diversity. Adding
(editor) and Micheal Dent (associate editor). We jointly wrote to the immediate challenge is that the content of issues in AT
this piece because it arose from Micheal’s question to Art about is set 12-18 months in advance of an issue date to give authors
the lack of women as first authors of articles in some issues sufficient time to fit writing articles into their already very busy
of Acoustics Today (AT). As a consequence of this question, schedules. And when we look at forthcoming issues, men are
we decided to review the distribution of articles by women the preponderance of authors, so we have a lot of catching
in AT along with our overall goal to, over multiple issues of up to do.
AT, ensure that articles reflect the technical committee (TC)
diversity of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).1 Still, we want to address this problem by increasing the number
of articles led by women as soon as we can. Therefore, with
What we realized as we started to analyze the articles is that the strong support of ASA Editor in Chief Jim Lynch, we are
we could do better in ensuring that we have women taking going to increase the number of articles (assuming we can get
the lead in articles in AT. That is, other than in our special fall authors) in many of the upcoming “filled” issues so that there
2018 issue (see bit.ly/2m8eDpJ), Micheal was right in observ- is at least one, and better yet two, articles with women as lead
ing that a number of issues of AT have had few or no women as authors in all issues. We have also already asked that TC chairs
lead authors on articles. This is of considerable concern to us recommend women in their TCs who might write articles. And
because the one thing that we have tried to do is to use AT to at the advice of several women leaders in the ASA to whom we
help increase the visibility and impact of women in acoustics have reached out, we will look outside the ASA membership to
in general and in the ASA in particular, not only through the invite women in several technical areas to be lead authors on
special issue but also by having regular “Sound Perspectives” AT articles, with a secondary goal of introducing these women
essays from our Women in Acoustics Committee. to the Society.
So, we started to ask how we can rectify this situation. We Finally, we are using this editorial to ask the general ASA
quickly realized, however, that there are two issues that stand membership for ideas on how we can increase diversity in AT
in the way of ensuring such diversity. First, women currently authorship (and this request is not limited to gender!). In par-
make up 18.6% of ASA members. This means that the pool of ticular, we would very much value suggestions from individuals
female ASA members that we can draw on to write articles for from groups underrepresented as AT authors who might poten-
AT is small. Importantly, this also highlights the issue of ASA tially write articles for AT. If you have ideas, feel free to write
member diversity and inclusion, with AT authorship being either of us ([email protected] or [email protected]). We can
only a small part. promise that every suggestion will receive a thoughtful response
and be given substantial consideration.
Second, the majority of women in ASA are in three TCs: Animal
Bioacoustics, Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, and Now to this issue. In our first article, Grant Dean, Oskar
Speech Communication. Combined, women make up 36% of Glowacki, Erin Pettit, and M. Dale Stokes discuss underwa-
ter sounds produced by glaciers. In this article, we learn that
glacier sound provides long-range insight into changing condi-
1
We thank ASA Past President Judy Dubno and incoming ASA President
Diane Kewley-Port as well as ASA Editor in Chief Jim Lynch for very helpful tions in polar regions. The second article, by David Dall’Osto,
comments on earlier drafts of this essay. We also thank the ASA office for also deals with underwater sound propagation but for very dif-
providing some of the data used herein. ferent purposes. In his article, Dave discusses how underwater

systems developed to monitor nuclear testing can also be used As part of his discussion, Steve talks about the evolution of
to understand other issues such as climate change. many devices that have helped shape our lives and our research.
In the third article, Psyche Loui provides insight into how the As usual, this issue includes an “Ask an Acoustician” essay. The
brain deals with music. In her article, we learn that music elicits piece here is about Adrian KC Lee. KC is well-known to many in
complex neural activity and that this activity differs for differ- the ASA as an active contributor to our Society and particularly
ent aspects of the musical experience. Our fourth article fits for his contributions to ASA publications (see bit.ly/2kSQROr).
with our interests in learning about the history of research in So, it is a delight to learn more about KC as a scientist and as
acoustics. In his article, Kenneth Suslick presents a history of an individual.
research in ultrasonics. He does this by introducing a number
of fascinating individuals who did truly imaginative work in Our second essay is by ASA Education and Outreach Coor-
interesting places. And, in passing, Ken mentions the origin dinator L. Keeta Jones as part of her series in AT about both
of the term used for men’s formal wear! outreach and education. In her essay, Keeta focuses on the
International Year of Sound (IYS), something ASA members
The fifth article, by Aaron Thode, derives from a special ses- will be hearing about over the coming year (2020) because,
sion that Aaron organized at an ASA meeting. The topic, plant as Keeta points out, the ASA is strongly committed to its
bioacoustics, is something most of us have never thought about. participation in the IYS.
The article introduces us to the idea that plants not only influ-
ence sounds in their environment, but that sound may also In closing, we want again to ask ASA members to con-
play a role in plant biology. sider ways in which we can increase (all kinds of) diversity
in AT. If you have ideas, or suggestions for authors and
Our final article, by Stephen Thompson, returns to the theme articles, please email either of us, or chat with us at any
of history in a discussion of the first century of electroacoustics. ASA meeting.
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05.03.2019 Today
From the President | Vic Sparrow
Government Relations, and targeted a wide segment of the ASA membership. An

Advocacy, and the Acoustical email survey was put into place so that members not at an
Society of America ASA meeting would be included. The survey was sent out by
the AIP at the end of March 2019, and the survey was closed
Who should speak up for mid-April 2019.
acoustics and advocate for
acoustics on behalf of the The AIP survey on ASA and Government Advocacy was pre-
members of the Acoustical pared by the Statistical Research Center (SRC) of AIP, and
Society of America (ASA)? the introductory email noted that the “ASA currently does
Do you think the ASA and its members should be available not participate in advocacy efforts in the halls of Congress or
to provide technical expertise to help answer important ques- with agency heads; other scientific societies do and have been
tions being decided by the US Congress? Do you think that doing so for many years. We want your opinion on whether
the ASA and its members should be requesting additional ASA should actively participate in government advocacy and,
funding from the United States for acoustics research and if so, how we should proceed.” In addition, the email to fill
fellowship and scholarship opportunities for students with out the survey contained the words “Today I am writing to
interests in acoustics and related areas? ask your help determining how the ASA can best interact
with the US Federal Government to engage and inform leg-
As a reminder, the bylaws of the Society state: “The purpose islators and agency staff members to recognize important
of the Society is to generate, disseminate, and promote the scientific acoustics contributions. We want to hear from all
knowledge and practical applications of acoustics.” The ASA members, both in the US and abroad. We recognize that
2019–2021 Strategic Leadership Plan (see bit.ly/2kvjcde) goes scientific research spans geographic and national boundar-
further, saying: “The Society is respected and matters to gov- ies and is funded by many sources. It is vital that everyone
ernments and to the society at large; public and private sector participate to help us plan our next steps.” In the end, the
decision makers and influencers look to ASA for its expertise.” SRC received 1,911 responses from 5,800 deliverable emails,
for a 33% response rate. Responses were received from all
As mentioned in Lily Wang’s summer 2019 column (Acoustics the ASA TCs, with 64% from US members and 36% from
Today 15(2), 7-9; see bit.ly/2myJlsx), there were four new task non-US members.
forces formed to address key points that came out of the Tucson
ASA Strategic Summit in 2019. Task Force C was charged Some of the key findings from the survey include:
to “Improved Communications and Public Relations,” and • When asked “Not including yourself, whom do you rely
one of their major goals is to “expand the relevancy of the on to advocate for acoustics,” almost three-fourths of
ASA to all stakeholders, including those in K-12 pipelines, respondents (73%) said they rely on the ASA to advocate
funding agencies, governing bodies that oversee public policy, for acoustics and 15% said they relied on no one;
industry, academia and society at large.” So, the charge of Task • When asked “Do you believe ASA should advocate to the
Force C is quite large, with one role contributing to establish- US Federal Government for acoustics,” 69% responded
ing better relations with the US Federal Government. yes, 4% no, 20% I am not sure, and 11% no opinion;
• The US members alone were asked “If you were sitting in
Why are we so sure we need to go in this direction? In May your congressman/senator’s office, what would you like to
2018, a quick verbal survey was taken at 12 of the 13 technical ask for,” and out of a long list the top four responses were
committee (TC) meetings held at the Minneapolis (MN) ASA • More funding for science agencies to support applied
meeting. Jennifer Greenamoyer of the government relations research in acoustics (64%);
team at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) was on hand • More funding for science agencies to support basic
to help assess the feedback that was being received. The sense research in acoustics (59%);
of several executive council (EC) members was that a formal • More funding for graduate education related to
poll should be taken of ASA members to collect statistical acoustics (42%); and
data on the topic of government relations and advocacy. In • More funding to support outreach educating the
fall 2018, the EC agreed to go forward with such a survey public on the importance of acoustics (40%).

• When asked which of a long list of activities the ASA that your thoughts get to the appropriate people on the ASA
should pursue in the next three to five years, the top three EC, Task Force C, and the ASA Panel on Public Policy and
responses were at ASA headquarters.
• Comment on legislation and regulations affecting
acoustics (64%); The ASA has never been involved in government advocacy
• Place op-eds supporting acoustics in key publications before, but it is clear that a large fraction of the ASA mem-
(e.g., The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The bership wants this. Legally, the ASA is allowed to do this
Washington Post) (51%); and type of lobbying, so long as it grows to be no larger than a
• Submit written congressional testimony on subjects small part of our overall budget. Our members overwhelm-
of importance to acoustics (46%). ingly say that we need to be available to the US government
to answer important questions. And if the regulators cut
Interestingly, all of these responses are “Society-wide” activ- our acoustics budgets year after year and no one cries “help,”
ities, and grassroots activities that could be taken on by then those funding cuts become permanent. Clearly, we
individuals were not rated as high. have to be our own advocates. No one will do it for us. And
the ASA membership deserves a scientific society that will
Given these survey results, the question now is, where do we stand up for its members and work hard on their behalf.
go from here? The AIP government relations team has made
some suggestions of activities that the ASA could take up to On another topic, I am very happy to report that the ASA
become more involved in government advocacy, and here is has just completed a search for its first paid finance director.
a partial list: The purpose of this finance director is to work closely with
• First, develop a set of principles of engagement regarding both the ASA Executive Director and Treasurer to provide
ASA advocacy to ensure advocacy efforts are bipartisan leadership and direction to the finance functions of the
and are focused on constructive engagement; Society, including directing, recommending, implementing,
• Second, define an advisory structure and policy/process and monitoring financial policies and procedures and devel-
guidelines, perhaps to advise the ASA EC; oping financial reports understandable by ASA members.
• Pilot test some grassroots activities that have been suc- The finance director will be responsible for managing the
cessful for other scientific societies, especially bringing day-to-day financial activities and will oversee the monthly,
EC members or a small set of volunteers to Capitol Hill year-end, and annual budgeting as well as all aspects of the
for congressional visits day once a year; annual audit. The finance director will be the primary staff
• Clearly define what specific funding requests would look member from ASA headquarters to act as liaison to the ASA
like, to be prepared for having something to say to con- Audit, Finance, and Investments Committees as well as to
gressional offices and at hearings; the Acoustical Society Foundation Board.
• Develop two or three overarching advocacy messages and
another two or three specialized or targeted messages to The search came to a successful conclusion in September
guide advocacy efforts; and 2019 when Michael (Mike) R. McGovern, CPA, was named
• Add a part-time or full-time ASA staff member or buy as the first ASA Finance Director. Mike’s main areas of
AIP supplemental services to help establish an advo- expertise include nonprofit financial leadership and in
cacy program. corporate finance and accounting, and from earlier in his
career, he has experience working on Wall Street. He made
Moving forward with any of these ideas needs to be con- many connections there that could eventually be a benefit
sidered carefully by everyone in the ASA but particularly to the ASA. From the interview process, I can attest that
by the EC and Task Force C on Improved Communications Mike is very hands on, easy to talk to, good at explaining
and Public Relations. So now is an important time for you complex topics, and genuinely dedicated to ensuring the
to provide YOUR input. If you have strong feelings, one way short- and long-term financial success of the ASA. He will
or the other, about any of these recommendations or if you report to Executive Director Susan Fox, and he will be
have other ideas that you want to put forth, please let me regularly attending our ASA meetings. Please join me in
know ([email protected]), and I will be sure welcoming Mike!

The Underwater Sounds of Glaciers
Grant B. Deane The underwater sounds of glaciers are a powerful remote sensing tool for monitoring
Email: changing conditions in polar regions.
[email protected]
Introduction and Motivation
Oskar Glowacki The stability of major ice sheets in polar regions are linked to sea level rise and
Email: the input of fresh meltwater into sensitive regions of the thermohaline circulation
[email protected] system (the oceanic salt and heat conveyor belt), two critical issues related to global
change. Estimates of the future contributions to sea level rise from the melting of
M. Dale Stokes glaciers in Greenland alone range from 0.3 m to 3 m for the year 2100 (Berwyn,
Email: 2018). Moreover, the recent acceleration of mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet
[email protected] (GrIS), which quadrupled from 1992–2001 to 2002–2011 (Figure 1), led to a global
mean sea level rise of 7-8 mm between 1992 and 2011 (Shepherd et al., 2012).
Address:
Global glacier melt (small glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets) currently contributes
Marine Physical Laboratory
almost 1 mm/yr to the total sea level rise (Zemp et al., 2019). In addition to con-
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
tributing to sea level rise, the freshening of surface waters affects global-scale heat
University of California,
transport by weakening the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Bamber
San Diego (UCSD)
et al., 2012). For these and other reasons, understanding the mass loss of glaciers
Code 0206
is an important problem.
La Jolla, California 92093-0206
USA
Here we focus on studying the behavior of tidewater glaciers using the various
sounds they make in the ocean as they flow, melt, and break apart. However, before
Erin C. Pettit discussing the acoustics, we present some preliminaries about the glaciers them-
Address: selves to introduce terminology and describe the processes that generate noise.
Geology and Geophysics Tidewater glaciers are valley glaciers flowing from their accumulation zones in the
College of Earth, Ocean, and snowfields to the ocean over a journey that can take hundreds to thousands of years.
Atmospheric Sciences Tidewater glaciers may flow short distances from local high mountain peaks (such as
Oregon State University
Weniger 533 Figure 1. Cumulative ice mass loss (and sea level equivalent [SLE]) from Greenland derived as
Corvallis, Oregon 97331 annual averages from 18 recent studies. Gt, gigatonnes. Reproduced from IPCC (2013, Figure
USA 4.15). See main text and Appendix 4.A of IPCC (2013) for details.
Email:
[email protected]
12 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2019 | volume 15, issue 4 ©2019 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.12
There are no methods for the direct observation of submarine
melt rates for tidewater glaciers. The terminus of a tidewater
glacier or a floating sheet of ice is a dangerous place to work.
This is because calving produces falling ice followed by a mini
tsunami, both of which are hazardous, and so it is considered
unsafe to get within a few hundred meters of the terminus of
any glacier. Some glaciers are known to produce bigger calv-
ing events than others, and all glaciers should be approached
with care. Moreover, the glacier surface is typically fractured
by crevasses, making work on the ice surface dangerous or
impossible as well. For these reasons, remote sensing tech-
niques are primarily used to study terminus behavior.
Many satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques pro-

duce reliable and accurate estimates of average bulk ice mass
Figure 2. Photograph of a tidewater glacier. Snowfall in the accumulation loss, but measuring the melt rate relative to the calving rate
zone feeds the glacier that ends with its terminus in the fjord. Photograph of a glacier terminus remains a challenging problem. Cur-
by Dale Stokes. rent techniques include estimates of underwater melt rates
based on calculations of heat flux to the glacier or numerical
models of circulation within the fjord. Calculations of heat
in Alaska) or from more distant ice fields and ice sheets (such flux require observations of water temperature, salinity,
as in Greenland or on the Antarctic peninsula). Figure 2 is a and velocity in front of the glacier on short timescales. In
photograph of the tidewater glacier Samarinvågen taken from the absence of these data, which are challenging to obtain,
a boat in Hornsund Fjord, southwestern Svalbard (an archi- assumptions must be made about the distributions of gla-
pelago in the Arctic Ocean situated about midway between cially modified seawater and the temperature, salinity, and
Norway and the North Pole). Snowfall in the mountainous flow of the seawater around the glacier terminus, includ-
accumulation zone feeds the glacier, which flows downhill and ing poorly understood turbulent processes. Thermohaline
ends in the fjord. The ice cliff in the ocean is known as the structure is dynamic around a glacier terminus. As a result,
glacier terminus. tidally pumped seawater interacts with meltwater from
the terminus and icebergs and buoyancy-driven, outflow
The position and velocity of the glacier terminus are the net plumes to create space- and time-varying freshwater lenses
result of ice outflow, which drives the terminus onward, with in the bay in which strength and structure vary over time
melting and calving that erode it. Net mass loss of a glacier and geographic location.
occurs when ablation (melting or calving) at the terminus
exceeds the accumulation of new snow at high elevations. For example, in Svalbard, there is typically a strong season-
Any increase in the twin processes of melting and calving ality to the strength of the thermohaline circulation and
unbalanced by increases in snow accumulation will drive also to glacier melting because the ocean temperatures can
the retreat of the glacier terminus from the ocean toward show large variations. In Alaska, such processes also occur
land. The relative importance of melting and calving to glacial in winter because there is not as much seasonality to ocean
retreat is currently debated and is likely changeable, depend- temperatures. In Antarctica, the warmth of the ocean water
ing on ocean temperature; local winds and other atmospheric varies in different ways that are not necessarily seasonally
processes; and glacier flow dynamics. Models for glacial linked and can also show a dependence on weather patterns
stability are sensitive to the roles of melting and calving in and sea ice conditions. The bottom line is that models of melt
glacial ablation. Thus, quantifying models and understanding rate based on measurements and models of thermohaline
their responses to warming atmospheric and oceanic condi- structure will likely have to accommodate a variable range
tions are active areas of research. of conditions depending on geographic region.

Making long-term measurements of both calving and melting without introducing artificial signals into the ocean. Although
on the highly resolved timescales necessary for developing it may not be immediately obvious that hydrophones can sur-
predictive models of retreat is an outstanding and difficult vive for extended periods in a glacial bay, which is subject to
problem. Accomplishing this for multiple tidewater glaciers the passage of icebergs that may extend from the sea surface
is even more difficult. In response to these monitoring chal- to the seafloor and is often covered with sea ice during the
lenges, in 2008, Wolfgang Berger and colleagues organized winter months, several groups have now demonstrated that
a workshop in Bremen, Germany, to propose the use of year-long recordings of ambient noise are possible.
hydroacoustics to study tidewater glaciers, culminating in
the publication of a correspondence note (see Schulz et al., The subject of polar underwater acoustics, both active and
2008). They suggested that “Hydroacoustics could be used passive, is a large and important field with a history dating
for passive listening — for example, to calving, iceberg col- well back into the last century. The breadth and scope of it
lision, tidal flow, sediment transport and wind action — as lie well beyond our reach in this article. However, here we
well as active echo-sounding (for example Doppler detection offer some highlights from the new and developing field of
of water and ice motions)” (Schulz et al., 2008). At the same tidewater glacier acoustics along with some interesting results
time, some of the first measurements to record calving events from a closely related topic, iceberg acoustics.
were being made at Hansbreen Glacier in Svalbard (Tegowski
et al., 2011) and the Meares Glacier, Prince William Sound, The Underwater Soundscape Near a
AK (Pettit, 2012). Glacier Terminus
The bays of tidewater glaciers are one of the noisiest places in
Using Ambient Sound to Study Glaciers the ocean (Pettit et al., 2015). Calving icebergs, wave-iceberg
The idea of using ambient sound to study the ocean and the interactions, freshwater outflows and melting glacier ice all
things in it, sometimes called “passive acoustics,” has been contribute to the underwater soundscape (see bit.ly/347NuVF).
around for awhile and has proven effective at providing infor- The variability of sound sources, in both frequency and time,
mation across a diverse range of phenomena including the are prominent features of the soundscape.
study of breaking surface waves, monitoring reef ecology,
studying marine animals (Mann, 2012), monitoring volca- Figure 3 gives an overview of noise sources in the bay of a tide-
noes (Matoza and Fee, 2018), and probing the ocean interior water glacier terminus and boundary and waveguide effects
structure, to name a few. Active acoustics has a much longer influencing sound propagation (note that the spectrogram in
history. Indeed, it is arguably the most important tool ever Figure 3, inset, is from the video referenced above). The noise
developed to probe the ocean interior and seafloor. How-
ever, the ideas that emerged from Schultz at el. (2008) and Figure 3. Noise sources and propagation effects shaping the soundscape
the initial measurements made an important contribution in around the terminus of a tidewater glacier. Inset: spectrogram of sound
pointing out that these powerful tools could be applied to a versus frequency (in kHz on a log scale) and time (total duration of 1
pressing and difficult measurement problem in polar regions: minute) showing a calving event and noise radiated by melting glacier
the monitoring of tidewater glaciers with hydroacoustics. ice in the bay of Hansbreen Glacier.
Hydroacoustics, more commonly referred to as underwater

acoustics in North America, offers some practical advan-
tages for monitoring tidewater glaciers over more traditional
methods. Active acoustic sensing can provide data about the
structure of a glacier terminus that would be virtually impos-
sible to acquire otherwise (e.g., Sutherland and Straneo, 2012).
This would include water motions in the glacier bay, which
can be complicated by meltwater outflows and direct melting
of the terminus interacting with tidally pumped circulation.
The concept of passive listening is also attractive because it
provides an opportunity to monitor ice-ocean interactions on
long timescales with robust and cost-effective technology and

of iceberg calving is mostly evident in the sub-500-Hz band
and persists for several seconds, whereas the noise of melting
glacier ice dominates the noise from around 1 kHz to several
tens of kilohertz or higher and is generated without interrup-
tion. Other intermittent noise sources include breaking waves
on the fjord shoreline, marine mammal vocalizations, rain,
wave-iceberg interactions, and the sounds of iceberg disin-
tegration. Noise from freshwater outflows from the glacier
terminus is thought to generate sound at frequencies below
100 Hz, but not much is known about this source of sound
at the present time. Anthropogenic noise from cruise ships,
small transport vehicles, and acoustic sensors such as echo
sounders and acoustic Doppler profilers can also be present.
The mechanical and acoustical properties of glacier ice

play an important role in determining the character of the
underwater soundscape in the bay of a glacier terminus. Ice Figure 4. A section of glacier ice showing the inclusion of many small
mechanical properties, combined with ocean temperature air bubbles.
and other factors such as rain, control how frequently calv-
ing events occur, the range of iceberg sizes produced, and
the integrity of the ice block as it impacts the sea surface. All soidal or even more distorted depending on shear in the
these parameters influence the underwater sound of calving. ice flow. Notwithstanding the details of bubble production,
transport, and heterogeneous distribution, their presence
Remarkably, most glacier ice contains numerous, small in glacier ice is ubiquitous.
bubbles of compressed air (see Figure 4), giving it unique
acoustical properties. Trapped at the base of the firm layer The journey of a bubble trapped in glacier ice may take hun-
in the accumulation zone of the glacier, the bubbles become dreds to thousands of years, but when the terminus bay is
compacted and pressurized over time by the overburden finally reached, the bubbles are released into the ocean. The
pressure of accumulating ice above. Gas pressure in glacier release of bubbles under high pressure by melting ice can be
bubbles in western Greenland can exceed 2 MPa or 20 atmo- explosive, creating a loud and impulsive burst of sound. The
spheres (e.g., a car tire is typically pressurized to around 2 cacophony from millions of bubbles ejected into the ocean
atmospheres; Scholander and Nutt, 1960). Ice-containing every second can be heard up to several kilometers from a
bubbles with such high pressures behave in interesting ways. glacier terminus (see the band of frequencies labeled “ice
When collected from a terminus bay directly after a calv- melting” in Figure 3, inset). The bubbles also influence the
ing event, extreme examples of ice containing high-pressure transmission of sound through the glacier ice (e.g., Meyer
bubbles may fracture explosively during boat transport or et al., 2019).
fracture into large sections while being cut for processing.
The sounds made by the pressurized air bubbles as they Remote Sensing Using Ambient Sound
escape are coined “Bergy seltzer” (e.g., see bit.ly/2ZgOqbm), Can underwater sound in the bays of tidewater glaciers be
and cubes of glacier ice have been used to both chill and used to study glacier-ocean interactions, particularly melt-
enliven beverages with their pops and cracks. ing, calving, and outflow? Specifically, can ice mass lost from
calving and melting and outflow rate be quantified from
The subject of air bubbles trapped in glacier ice is com- measurements of their underwater sound signatures?
plicated by many factors including, for example, bubble
size and density that depend on the snowfall rate in the A hydrophone is placed on in the water column some distance
glacier accumulation zone; bubbles that can be altered (or from the glacier terminus and used to record underwater
removed entirely) if the glacier ice melts and refreezes; and sound, perhaps over a year-long period. The noise signal
the bubble shape that varies from almost spherical to ellip- contains information about the intensity and statistics of

underwater noise sources, which include the splashing The Sounds of Iceberg Calving
sounds of calving events, bubbles bursting out of the glacier Anyone who has observed an iceberg calving event can attest
terminus as it melts, and low-frequency sounds generated to its drama; booms and cracks accompany an ice fracture
by ice fracture, movement, and submarine freshwater out- event followed by a splashing ocean entrance and the forma-
flow. But the signal also contains other sources such as the tion of a mini tsunami. The impact of many tons of ice on the
sounds of melting and disintegrating icebergs along with sea surface also creates underwater noise. The two first stud-
other potential sources such as ships, marine mammals, ies of the underwater sound signature of calving events were
breaking waves, and rain. Moreover, the sound is influenced conducted independently in Svalbard (see bit.ly/347NuVF;
by propagation effects in the ocean waveguide and reflection Tegowski et al., 2011) and Alaska (Pettit, 2012). The under-
from the terminus. The ocean waveguide contains the usual water sound of calving from above the waterline (subaerial
complications that arise when considering the propagation calving) is most pronounced at frequencies below 1,000 Hz
of sound through the ocean, which include scattering and (see Figure 3, inset). Calving noise typically persists for sev-
coherent reflection from the sea surface and seafloor and eral seconds and is energetic and clearly discernable above
scattering and refraction from the thermohaline structure other, more persistent sources. There are distinct phases of
in the ocean interior (see the article by Dall’Osto in this issue a calving event that generate sound: (1) infrasound rumble
of Acoustics Today). at the onset followed by (2) ice fracturing and cracking, (3)
block-water impact, (4) iceberg oscillations, and (5) surface
Recent progress has been made toward using the sounds of wave action.
both calving and ice melting to quantify ice mass loss and
melt rates from a glacier terminus. Here we discuss each of Of these various processes, water entry is the most energetic
these topics in greater detail. and spectacular. Figure 5 illustrates three phases of sound
Figure 5. The sounds produced by a block of ice falling into a pool of water. A-D: distinct, sound-producing phases of block impact: ice-water
impact (A), cavity formation (B), and cavity pinch-off (C and D). E: these phases are annotated in a time-series plot of acoustic pressure. E:
red letters, letter designation in A-D. The most energetic phase of sound production occurs with cavity pinch-off, photographed both above
the water surface (C) and below the water surface (D).

Figure 6. A sequence of images showing a bubble exploding out of melting glacier ice. Image scale is roughly 1 cm on a side. The interframe
time interval between the first 3 frames is 500 μs.
production by the impact of a small ice block dropped into 93% of the variability seen in the dataset. These results from
a pool. The first contact between the block and water surface a single glacier demonstrated that hydroacoustic monitoring
generates a short-duration, high-frequency impulse followed of iceberg calving fluxes might be possible in the future.
by the creation of an air cavity. The moment of cavity pinch-off
from the water surface cavity pinch-off is marked by the onset The Sounds of Melting Glacier Ice
of breathing mode oscillations of the newly created air bubble. Melting glacier ice sounds a bit like bacon frying (or snap-
ping shrimp, if you have ever heard them in the ocean; see,
Calving events do not always originate above the water. Buoy- e.g., bit.ly/2RtTKEj). This is because the explosive release of
ancy forces combined with ice fracture can lead to blocks of gas from a pressurized bubble makes a loud and impulsive
ice detaching from the submerged glacier terminus, an event popping noise. Urick (1971) appears to have published the
known as submarine calving. The frequency of occurrence of first measurements of noise from melting glacier ice, and
submarine calving and its contribution to the overall loss of attributed the sound produced to “...the explosion of tiny air
ice from tidewater glaciers are poorly understood. Icebergs bubbles entrapped in the ice under pressure and released as
from submarine calving events have no airborne detachment melting occurs.”
noise. Instead, they emerge unexpectedly on the surface a few
hundred meters from the glacier terminus, presenting a sig- A typical sequence of events for the explosive release of a
nificant hazard for any boats too close to the ice cliff. However, bubble from a block of glacier ice melting in the laboratory
submarine calving events generate underwater noise and are is shown in Figure 6 as a series of high-speed photographic
easily detected with hydrophones. As with subaerial calving, images. The scene is backlit, and the bubbles appear as dark,
there are distinct stages of underwater noise production: a roughly circular regions within the ice. A bubble approxi-
series of cracks announcing the separation of the ice block mately 4 mm in diameter can be seen emerging from the
from the underwater part of the terminus followed by emer- ice from left to right in the bottom half of the 4 right-hand
gence noise as the iceberg breeches the surface. images. The timescale of the main part of the release event
is less than a frame in duration (see the blurred, emerging
Can the underwater noise of calving be used to quantify calv- bubble in the second image from the left), which is 500 μs
ing ice flux? Perhaps, if impact noise can be directly related (see, e.g., youtu.be/0Bilzdsi42E; youtu.be/6EHaD_169eU).
to the volume and mass of falling ice blocks. Glowacki et al.
(2015) analyzed 10 subaerial calving events from Hans Gla- Bubble release events like the one shown in Figure 6 and
cier, Svalbard, that had been observed with a digital camera the videos can create peak pressures of over 100 Pa and an
and a hydrophone to test the idea. The kinetic energies of exponentially decaying sinusoidal waveform associated with
impacting icebergs were estimated from time-lapse images the natural oscillations of an acoustically excited bubble. The
of the glacier terminus and then correlated with the resulting superposition of many such events from a melting glacier ter-
acoustic emissions recorded at frequencies below 200 Hz. A minus creates a random pressure signal with a broad peak in
model assuming a simple power law relationship between the frequency range of 1-3 kHz that can be heard underwater
impact energy and underwater noise production explained several kilometers from the ice cliff.

To relate this signal to the ice melt rate requires informa- (2002) have reported hydroacoustic signals from large ice-
tion about the density of the bubbles in the ice along with bergs in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, detected by seismic stations
the knowledge of the distribution of gas pressures within in Polynesia, demonstrating that signals from large Antarctic
the bubbles. A final, critical piece of information required is icebergs are detectable at basin-scale ranges.
the fraction of trapped bubbles that are released explosively.
This number presumably depends on the ice microcrystalline Challenges and Opportunities
properties, including its tensile strength and fracture tough- Exploiting the natural sounds of tidewater glaciers to study
ness, which can vary with temperature and ice history at the their dynamics and ice-ocean interactions provides both dif-
terminus. The pressure differential across the bubble cap ice ficult challenges and exciting opportunities. Notwithstanding
film, which is the difference in pressure between the gas in the logistical difficulties of collecting a long-term data series
the bubble and the external pressure, is also important. The of underwater sound in glacial bays, the greatest challenge
external pressure is equal to the hydrostatic pressure of the lies in converting the sounds to quantitative signals, such
ocean at the depth of the glacier ice if it is below the sea sur- as the average melt rate of a glacier terminus or the mass of
face and exposed to the ocean. ice lost through calving. The signal, whether from melting,
calving, or some other process, is inevitably influenced by
The fraction of explosive bubble release events decreases propagation through the ocean waveguide, which must be
at the differential bubble cap pressure decreases, and con- understood and accounted for. If this is possible, the equiva-
sequently hydrostatic pressure plays an important role in lent source level then must be inverted for the geophysical
controlling the generation of sound by the glacier terminus. process creating it. Natural variability in the sound genera-
Hydrostatic pressure increases with increasing water depth, tion mechanisms, caused by, for example, variation in the
which tends to suppress the occurrence of explosive bubble shape of an ice block and its angle of entry into the ocean or
release events and consequently decreases the noisiness of the microscale tensile strength of melting glacier ice, must
ice melting at greater depths. Measurements of the vertical be understood. Recent research has made some progress on
directionality of the noise radiated by four glaciers in Horn- these issues, but much work remains to be done. If success-
sund fjord in southwestern Svalbard show that radiation is ful, the vision of Schultz et al. (2008) for the hydroacoustic
limited to a layer of ice that extends roughly 20 m below the monitoring of tidewater glaciers may prove to be a powerful
sea surface. This effect is very important for the estimation of tool for understanding the fate of these critical systems.
melt rates because the overall level of sound produced is sig-
nificantly reduced from what the level would be if the entire Acknowledgments
melting terminus were generating noise. We acknowledge the contributions of our colleagues Mandar
Chitre, Mateusz Moskalik, and Jarosław Tegowski to this article.
Distant Connections
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Pettit, E. C., Lee, K. M., Brann, J. P., Nystuen, J. A., Wilson, P. S., and O'Neel,
of Science and Higher Education. He
S. (2015). Unusually loud ambient noise in tidewater glacier fjords: A
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and the stability of marine-terminating
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International Conference and Exhibition on “Underwater Acoustic Mea- Antarctica, and Alaska. She is an associate professor at
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Urick, R. J. (1971). The noise of melting icebergs. The Journal of the Acoustical Inspiring Girls Expeditions, a fellow of Wings WorldQuest,
Society of America 50, 337-341. and an emerging explorer with National Geographic. She
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(Providence, RI) and a PhD in geophysics from the University
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1071-0.
Dale Stokes is a research oceanogra-
BioSketches pher in the Marine Physical Laboratory,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
Grant Deane is a Research Oceanographer University of California, San Diego (La
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Jolla). He cofounded the Innovative
University of California, San Diego (La Marine Technology Lab, Scripps Insti-
Jolla). He received his DPhil in mathemat- tution of Oceanography, with Grant
ics from the University of Oxford (Oxford, Deane more than two decades ago and has extensive expe-
UK) in 1989. He currently works on a rience in laboratory and oceanographic field studies from
range of earth science and acoustics prob- the deep sea to shallow waters and from the tropics to both
lems, integrating theory and experiment to polar regions.

Taking the Pulse of Our Ocean World
David R. Dall’Osto The lost San Juan submarine was triangulated by the precision CTBT hydroacoustic
Address: network, which has great potential for ocean science.
Applied Physics Laboratory
University of Washington Twenty years ago, the United Nations decided to collectively build what is, in essence,
1013 NE 40th Street a stethoscope to continuously monitor the oceans in the world for the early detec-
Seattle, Washington 98105 tion of the most serious danger to world peace and survival, nuclear explosions (see
USA ctbto.org). The impetus for creating this US$5 billion global network was to enforce
compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This network
Email:
is designed to locate all types of nuclear tests (in the air, on land, underground,
[email protected]
and underwater) to within an area less than 1,000 km2. The CTBT Organization
(CTBTO) coordinates, maintains, and analyzes the data from these International
Monitoring System (IMS) hydroacoustic stations along with the data from land-
based infrasonic, seismic, and radionuclide detectors.
Six remote locations around the globe were chosen for detecting underwater
detonations. Each location was instrumented with a set of sensitive hydrophones
suspended deep within the ocean, at depths that would crush a submarine hull. The
design of these moorings was optimized to measure sound propagating over great
distances (see Figure 1 for the anatomy of an IMS hydroacoustic station). The record
of ocean sound compiled as a consequence of the mission of the IMS network is a
resource of vast potential for researchers in many fields, both for forward-looking
and for historical scientific analysis.
Figure 1. “Anatomy” of an International Monitoring System (IMS) hydroacoustic station.

Hydrophones are moored close to the axis of the SOFAR channel formed by the sound speed
profile (left). Each station is composed of two triplets, one located on either side of the island
housing the shore facility that telecommunicates the data (except station HA01 that has only 1
triplet; right). See text for details. Adapted from a figure courtesy of CTBTO.org.
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.20
A recent example of the IMS hydroacoustic network provid-
ing a service beyond its original mission purpose of detecting
nuclear detonations was its role in finding the lost Argentine
submarine ARA San Juan. Triangulation of the intense sound
generated by the San Juan, presumably from the rapid col-
lapse of its hull when it exceeded its crush depth, was the
crucial piece of evidence that led to its discovery, 920 meters
below the ocean’s surface. Although the sinking of the ARA
San Juan was a tragedy, the methods used to find it provide
an example and source of future opportunity. Hydroacoustic
triangulation of the San Juan was possible due to the pre-
cision of the IMS recordings and a reliable estimate of the
ocean climate, an example being the World Ocean Atlas (see
www.nodc.noaa.gov). Figure 2. Left top: in 60 days, 5 Hugin autonomous underwater
vehicles surveyed 21,000 km2 of the seafloor with their side-scan
Quoting the study by the National Research Council (2011, sonars. Left bottom: 230-kHz backscatter image in which the ARA
p. 108) on climate change-related technical issues impact- San Juan was clearly identified, resting on a small ridge in a ravine
ing naval operations, “The U.S. Navy and other world navies 920 m deep. Right: an enlargement of the San Juan debris field. Image
have invested large sums to acquire field measurements of courtesy of Ocean Infinity.
temperature and salinity, as well as bathymetry, to produce
climatological “atlases”... [and while] it would be comforting
to assume that climate-induced ocean changes will be slow, quake of 2004. Analysis of that event and its potential for early
and that the impact on current data atlases will be minimal... warning tsunami detection were, in part, a motivating factor
not enough is known about climate change to be assured of to put IMS recordings of ocean sound into the public domain.
these assumptions. Although it was possible to triangulate
the San Juan to within a few kilometers with these atlases, The Search for the ARA San Juan
the inaccuracy ultimately boils down to an ill-constrained “On the night of 14 November 2017, facing rough seas, the
state estimate of the ocean climate. In fact, a correction to commanding officer reported a water entry (apparently
the errors for a known source location provides a constraint through the snorkel) that had caused a short circuit in the
for estimating the climate of the ocean, a process known as forward battery compartment. A fire followed, but it was con-
acoustic thermometry (or tomography). As shown here, the trolled by the crew. The San Juan then was ordered to change
impulse signal from the San Juan is imprinted with a sig- course and return directly to her home port, Mar del Plata,
nature of the oceanography it propagated through. Further Argentina” (Villán, 2019, p. 1393). The last transmission
review and analysis of the IMS record of ocean sound may be received from the San Juan was at 1019 Coordinated Univer-
an important sentinel of the extent and rate of climate change sal Time (UTC) on November 15, 2017. Two and a half hours
and global warming. later, the submarine exceeded its maximum depth rating as it
sank to the bottom of the ocean and was crushed by extreme
Acoustic tomography is one example as to why ocean sound has water pressure. An intense sonic impulse was generated by
been defined as an essential ocean variable (see goosocean.org). the compression phase of the hull collapse, lasting roughly 35
Ocean sound serves as an indicator pertinent to physical, chemi- milliseconds based on acoustic and forensic analyses of the
cal, and biological oceanographic processes. The remote static USS Scorpion submarine, which, too, after suffering a battery
measurements of the IMS stations provide a natural laboratory fire, lost buoyancy and sank beyond its crush depth in 1968
and historical data bank to study low-frequency ocean noise (Bruce Rule, personal communication, 2018).
(Bradley and Nichols, 2015) and infer temperature (Sabra et al.,
2016). The most intense sounds in the hydroacoustic recordings The sound generated by the catastrophic event of the sinking
are generated by catastrophic events (underwater earthquakes, of the San Juan was detected by 2 IMS hydroacoustic stations,
landslides, and volcanic eruptions), including ones that were one over 6,000 km away in the mid-Atlantic Ocean and the
devastating to humans such as the Sumatra-Andaman earth- other 8,000 km away in the Southern Indian Ocean. CTBTO

Utilizing CTBT Hydroacoustic Stations
scientists analyzed the acoustic anomaly and reported the requires at least three detections). With this in mind, let us
event to the search and rescue (SAR) operation, which com- examine the method used to triangulate a sound impulse of
menced with great international support. Two weeks later, unknown origin.
the SAR operation had turned into a recovery mission. This
mission ended exactly one year and a day after the sinking, Triangulation of Unknown Acoustic Events
when the San Juan was identified in a side-scan sonar image To introduce acoustic triangulation, we use a familiar example,
(see Figure 2). The acoustic signals pinpointed the location ofranging an approaching thunderstorm by counting seconds
the ARA San Juan to within 1,000th of the total propagation between a flash of lightning and the sound of a thunder-
distance, an impressive result that demonstrates the capabilityclap. For this exercise, assume the simplest of environments,
of the CTBT network to enforce the nuclear test ban treaty. free space, a uniform environment with no boundaries and
propagation speed equal to the speed of sound (c; 340 m/s in
So how exactly was the location of the San Juan determined air). The acoustic wave front of an impulse (its shock wave)
from the hydroacoustic recordings? In part, the triplet design expands as a spherical surface centered at the origin of the
of the IMS stations (see Figure 1) measures the direction of source, with the radius (R) equal to the speed of sound times
arrival (DOA) of incoming sound energy. This information the time-of-flight (T). For thunderstorm ranging, the T is
helps to associate signals that, due to the geographic depen- the time between the flash and the sound. Asserting that the
dence of dispersion, appear very different to the same event. sound origin and listeners all lay within the same plane, the
A general area from the two station detections is established projection of the spherical surface of the wave front on a two-
by the intersection of the geodesics along the DOA, but dimensional map is an expanding circle, also with radius R
real precision in location comes from triangulation (which (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Left: 3-D wave front, projected onto the 2-D plane of the source and listener. Right: triangulation via 3 listeners at a candidate
event time 0.5 seconds earlier than the actual time (top) or with a candidate event time equal to the actual time (bottom).

In triangulation, we invoke a powerful tool, the principal of metric dispersion of the San Juan signal, presumed to be an
reciprocity that states that sound propagation from a source impulse with duration on the order of <1 second, caused an
to a listener is identical to the backpropagation from the lis- increase in the signal duration to well over 30 seconds.
tener to the source. As such, the time it takes for an impulse
of sound (a wave front) to reach a listener is equal to the time To examine the dispersion and general signal timing (kine-
that it would take sound from the listener to propagate back matics), we can form acoustic rays, which are lines drawn
to the origin. From this, we can form an isochron, which is a normal to an expanding wave front. Rays represent the tra-
surface centered at the listener that connects points at which jectory of sound traveling at the local speed of sound and
something occurs at the same time. Points on the isochron integrating the reciprocal of sound speed along the ray gives
surface are all possible source origins. Thus, a single “listener” the T to the ray terminus. Rays are defined by a launch angle
cannot determine exactly where the sound origin is located, (Ѳ), the starting angle of the ray trajectory. Asserting that a
being unable to distinguish where it lay exactly on its iso- wave front spherically expands in the immediate vicinity of
chron. If a second listener saw and heard that event, likely the source, meaningful rays can be launched upward, down-
with a different T based on its relative position to the source, ward, or horizontal. The largest ±Ѳ that avoids a surface (and/
its isochron and the intersection with the first identify the or bottom) reflection is the limiting ray.
sound origin. Except when the listeners and source are in-line,
the circular isochrons intersect at two points. A third listener Figure 4 shows a group of rays, or ray fan, spanning the lim-
reduces ambiguity. iting ray for two environments that are representative of the
ocean structure encountered by the propagating San Juan
Triangulation is the process of finding the precise location at signal. Figure 4, left top, shows a polar environment idealized
the intersection of multiple isochrons. Now, if the listeners as a 17 m/s increase in sound speed per kilometer of depth;
did not see the flash of lightning, then they do not know the T Figure 4, left bottom, is representative of a midlatitude ocean,
beforehand. A guess, or candidate event time, must be made which, in addition to the increase in sound speed with depth,
from which to subtract the arrival time (when the thunder has a warm layer in the upper ocean and thus has a higher
was heard), establishing a respective T to each listener. Figure speed near the surface and a minimum close to 1,000 meters
3 shows two examples of triangulation with three listeners deep. The rays in these two environments follow different
based on two candidate event times. One candidate time is
one-half of a second before the actual event time (Figure 3,
top right); the three isochrons all intersect at different points
surrounding the origin of sound. It is the third isochron that
creates a solvable system of equations decoupled in range
and time, such that all three isochron intersect only at one
candidate event time. With the proper propagation speed,
this equals the actual time (Figure 3, bottom right) and all
three isochrons intersect at the sound origin. So, as a rule,
three arrivals are needed to triangulate an unknown event.
Nuances of Hydroacoustic Triangulation

Sound speed in the ocean is not uniform in all directions, and
although the free-space example was useful in thunderstorm
ranging, it is far too simplistic to model ocean propagation.
Sound speed is faster in warmer water and in deeper water
due to hydrostatic pressure. Long-range acoustic propaga-
tion in the ocean is possible due to trapping by upward and
downward refraction (or reflection) processes. Consecutive Figure 4. Left: depth-dependent sound speed profile for a polar profile
surface reflections and refraction fold and distort a spheri- (top) and a midlatitude profile (bottom). Right: acoustic ray fans
cally expanding wave front, elongating the duration of an for the two environments spanning the limiting angle: red lines, rays
impulse through a process called geometric dispersion. Geo- launched upward; black lines, rays launched downward.

paths, and from this, we can expect that dispersion depends tude of the oscillations. When a guitar string is plucked,
on the oceanography. One consequence of refraction are it is very clear that the motion resembles a half sine wave,
shadow zones, areas where rays do not pass and sound from pinned at one end by the nut (Figure 5, top) and the bridge
the source is not heard. at the other end (Figure 5, bottom). This is mode-1, the
most basic motion that satisfies the boundary condition that
In comparing the two environments, note how the midlati- the string does not move at the bridge or nut. Mode-2 may
tude sound speed profile adds a component of downward not be obvious; it resembles a full sine wave with a node or
refraction, further isolating the signal from sea-surface reflec- zero point of motion at the midpoint of the string (the 12th
tions. The IMS station hydrophones are moored at an optimal fret). To excite mode-2 and not mode-1, one can (with some
depth, both to minimize the effect of shadow zones and to practice) excite “the harmonic” by placing a finger lightly
maximize the reception of all paths. In the midlatitudes, the on the string at the half-way point and pluck the string on
optimal depth occurs at the axis of the well-known sound either side with the other hand. The light finger touch sup-
duct (see Figure 1), the SOFAR channel, named after the presses motion at the midpoint, letting only those modes
1940s SOund Fixing And Ranging triangulation system that with a node there vibrate (mode-2).
was developed to rescue downed pilots. The SOFAR system
triangulated impulsive signals from bombs or “implosion Mode shapes of a sound duct are also sinusoid-like. The mode
discs” deployed by downed pilots. The discs were set with a shape describes the amplitude of a standing wave in depth,
fuse to detonate at a prescribed depth, geographically chosen which propagates down the duct (away from the source) at
to be at the SOFAR axis, to maximize the chance of detec- its propagation speed. Revisiting the ray mode analogy, a pair
tions by at least three search and rescue monitoring stations of rays are associated with each mode. The plus or minus
(Bureau of Naval Personnel, 1953, p. 282). ray launch angles establish the mode angle, mathematically
representing the trajectory of two interfering up-and-down-
In the deep ocean, rays with steep angles sample higher sound going plane waves (wave fronts with no curvature) that form
speeds, and although having longer paths, this deep diving the mode. The trajectory of the analogous rays sweep through
portion of the wave front actually travels faster than the part the vertical (depth) extent of the mode shape. Also, the aver-
initially traveling horizontally. Thus, as a signal propagates age propagation speed of the ray over one “ray cycle” (or the
further and further away from its source, its wave front elon- distance before the ray trajectory repeats) is equal to the
gates, with the steep rays arriving first, followed eventually by mode propagation speed.
the horizontal rays. An important observation (see Figure 4)
is that rays at ±Ѳ follow the same path, albeit with a spatial For the modes in a deep-ocean duct, mode angles are
offset near the source corresponding to the initial surface between the horizontal and the limiting rays. In shallower
reflection (or refraction) of the positive angles. This pair of oceans, the physics of bottom reflection must be considered,
up-and-down rays arrive at the same time, and depending and the mode angle is limited to within the critical angle, the
on frequency (f), the folded wave front here may reinforce shallow angle where total reflection occurs, and no energy is
through constructive interference. These pairs of up-and-
down going rays define the propagating modes, and through
a ray-mode analogy, these specific frequency-dependent ray
launch angles correspond to a mode angle. As modes may
not be familiar, let us take a minute to discuss what an oce-
anic mode is, and afterward, the advantage of decomposing a
signal, like that from the San Juan, into a discrete set of modal
arrivals should be clear.
Oceanic Mode Propagation Figure 5. Mode-1 (black) and mode-2 (white) of guitar string. The
To introduce modes, let us consider vibration of a guitar shaded areas represent the area swept out by the string vibration of
string (see Figure 5). Modes are standing waves, waves not mode-1 or mode-2 (displacement is exaggerated). Note the node,
propagating in the direction in which they are defined. (e.g., or stationary point of mode-2, at the 12th fret. See animation at
along the guitar string), but are a description of the ampli- acousticstoday.org/dallosto-multimedia.

Figure 6. Propagation of a half-second-duration impulse in a 250-meter deep ocean representative of the continental shelf at 10 Hz (left top)
and 50 Hz (left bottom) and in a deep polar ocean (see Figure 3) at 10 Hz (right). Arrows, propagation direction; numbers, modal arrivals.
transmitted through the boundary. The mode angle increases ronment at 10 Hz, where 8 modes exist now and mode-8
with mode number, as do the number of nodes. As such, each arrives well before mode-1. Inspecting the polar propaga-
mode has a distinct propagation speed, and after propagating tion in Figure 6 in more detail, there is also a gap between
long distances, the dispersed signal separates into distinct the mode-1 arrival and what appears to be a mode-3, as if
modal arrivals. mode-2 is missing. In this illustrative example, the source
is at a node of mode-2 and thus mode-2 was never excited.
Figure 6 shows the propagation of a half-second-long Because mode-1 does not have a node, its arrival should
impulse out at 1,000 km in 2 environments, representative of always be identifiable in a signal; it is special.
the continental shelf and a deep polar ocean (as in Figure 4).
At 10 Hz, only 1 mode (mode-1) exists or “fits” on the shal- The travel time of a particular mode is the integrated recip-
low continental shelf. Note that number of modes that can fit rocal of its propagation speed along its path and is both
depends on the frequency, water depth and temperature, and frequency and geographically dependent. The time-frequency
composition of the seafloor sediments (Frisk, 1994, p. 151). characteristics of the San Juan impulse show a clear geo-
At 50 Hz, 5 propagating modes exist on the continental shelf. graphic dependence to dispersion. Comparing the signals
Additional modes enter at the critical or limiting ray angle, in Figure 7, the one that propagated through polar waters
shifting the mode-1 angle closer to the horizontal. hardly resembles the signal that propagated through the
SOFAR channel (see Figure 8 for a reference map of the prop-
In the shallow-ocean propagation in Figure 6, left, the mode-1 agation paths). In these spectrograms of the signal, mode-1
arrives first, followed sequentially by the higher order modes. corresponds to the peak energy arrival (Figure 7, red). The
This order is explained by steeper mode angles lengthening mode-1 arrival time in the mid-Atlantic recording (Figure
the analogous ray path through multiple reflections. In the 7, left) is essentially frequency independent, as evidenced at
deep polar ocean, the sequence of mode arrivals is reversed the vertical line at 14:59:18. The mode-1 arrival time at the
from the shelf propagation. This reversal is due to steeper polar station is frequency dependent, seen as a linear slope
analogous rays traveling at the faster sound speed of the deep from 15:19:35 at 3 Hz to 15:20:00 at 10 Hz. This slope is due
ocean. Figure 6, right, shows propagation in the polar envi- to the mode-1 angle shifting closer to the horizontal (having

Figure 7. Time-frequency spectrograms of the 2017 San Juan impulse measured at the mid-Atlantic station HA10, having propagated within
the SOFAR channel (left), and at the southern Indian Ocean station HA04, having propagated through a polar environment (right).
a slower propagation speed in the polar profile) as the fre- ball rolling up an inclined plane at an angle. The sound turns
quency increases. and then travels back down, out toward deeper water.
A comparison of the two signals makes clear the task at hand, Bottom topography in the vicinity of the San Juan was
which is accurately “picking” signal features and associating conducive to bathymetric refraction, and a plethora of
them to the correct propagation speed. Although multiple 3-D arrivals were received at the mid-Atlantic IMS station
isochrons can be formed from the modal arrivals, triangula- (HA10). One of these arrivals had considerable amplitude
tion really benefits from forming isochrons along different and corresponded to energy refracted by the continental
propagation paths (triangulation does not work when three slope. The propagating wave front of mode-1 gets folded by
listeners are at the same location). In triangulation of the the refraction process (its apex occurs at a depth of ~200
San Juan with the two hydroacoustic stations, additional iso- m), and from this, an additional isochron is formed based
chrons are formed from three-dimensional (3-D) arrivals that on that path (Dall’Osto, 2019).
had propagated off the geodesic or shortest path.
Considering these two mode-1 arrivals and the arrival
Triangulating the ARA San Juan along the southern path, we have the three necessary for
At low frequencies, relevant to the CTBT network, variability triangulation. After computing propagation paths and tabu-
in modal propagation speed depends primarily on the ocean lating the propagation speed along each path, isochrons are
bottom topography (bathymetry). As sound propagates near formed perpendicular to the propagation paths. The iso-
sea mounts, islands, or the continental shelf, interaction with chron intersection occurs within a few kilometers of the
the bottom steepens the angle of a mode. This steepening actual location (see Figure 8). What remains that causes
causes sound waves to turn or refract away from (but depend- the error or mismatch between the actual and triangulated
ing on oceanography sometime toward) bathymetric features locations are inaccuracies in picking out the timing of the
(Munk and Zachariasen, 1991). As sound energy travels up mode arrival and an ill-constrained estimate of the climate
the slope and approaches the apex (the depth where a mode state of the ocean. Through inclusion of additional arrivals,
no longer fits), it is translating along the slope analogous to a these errors can be resolved.

Tomography Potential on the Comprehensive This deficiency in sampling the ocean climate can be ful-
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Network filled with acoustic ocean tomography. Ocean tomography
Although it is clear that the accuracy with which we know is based on receiving a signal from a source with precisely
the climate state of the ocean is needed for triangulation, known origin and inferring temperature. As with the San
knowing the ocean climate is of great importance to human Juan signal, arrival times depend explicitly on the depth and
civilization. As the oceans of the Earth are the primary heat range dependence of the ocean temperature. Modal arrivals
sink on the planet, thermal expansion of the seawater from comprising the dispersed signal propagate through different
increasing temperature is a major factor driving rising sea depth regimens (e.g., refer to the polar profile propagation
levels. The methods currently being utilized to determine in Figure 6, right) and each provides an additional depth-
ocean temperature are based on direct sampling from dependent constraint to estimate the ocean climatic state.
oceanographic profilers or indirect measurements from Acoustic thermometry (tomography) was proven viable
space-based sensors. Oceanographic profilers represent through experiments starting as early as the 1970s (Spindel
point measurements of temperature (and other essential and Worcester, 2016) and began to be implemented from
ocean variables) with respect to depth and include moored or 1997 to 2006 during the Acoustic Thermometry for Ocean
ship-based measurements systems and autonomous systems Climate program (Worcester et al., 2005). Now, with the six
such as sea gliders or drifting Argo floats (see argo.ucsd.edu). CTBT hydroacoustic stations online, there is a “cost-free”
These space-based sensors, like those on the Geostationary (expense absorbed by its primary mission) set of receivers
Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), provide two and data repositories with which to implement these studies.
important parameters for ocean temperature and climate
estimation and sea surface- and depth-averaged ocean tem- Summary
perature (as inferred by thermal expansion). In theory, with The CTBT hydroacoustic stations proved invaluable to the
a dense enough network, this might be sufficient. However, discovery of the San Juan submarine. Figure 9 shows the
maintaining global coverage with these types of systems map of the data used to plan the search (red star is “the ‘as
requires ongoing deployment operations, and some areas, found’ position, only 8 nm [15 km] from the US and CTBTO
specifically near the poles, are extremely difficult to sample centroids”; Ocean Infinity, personal communication, 2019).
due to currents and sea-ice coverage. This amazing feat, pinpointing the location of a source to
Figure 8. Left: three mode-1 arrivals to triangulate the ARA San Juan (star), plotted over a map of its phase speed at 10 Hz. Right: intersection
of the corresponding “isochrons” plotted over the bathymetry.

can be used for other important purposes. Tsunami detection

and enhanced early warning and geolocation of lost subma-
rines, ships, and planes as well as assessments of cetacean
populations and other marine life all can be derived from
analyzing IMS data. The possibilities for the productive use of
the historical and real-time IMS data are limitless.
References
Bradley, D. L., and Nichols, S. M. (2015). Worldwide low-frequency ambient noise.

Acoustics Today 11(1), 20-26. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2015.11.1.20.
Bureau of Naval Personnel. (1953) Naval Sonar. NAVPERS 10884, US
Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Dall’Osto, D. R. (2019). Source triangulation utilizing three-dimensional
arrivals: Application to the search for the ARA San Juan submarine.
Figure 9. Search map showing data from Iridium telecommunication The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 146(3), 2104-2112.
satellite fixes (blue circles) and various modeled locations based on Frisk, G. V. (1994). Ocean and Seabed Acoustics. Prentice Hall, Edgewood
Cliffs, NJ.
the recorded impulse. A combination of seismic and hydroacoustic
Munk, W. H., and Zachariasen, F. (1991). Refraction of sound by islands
detections were used and predicted the ARA San Juan location (red and seamounts. Journal of Atmospheric Oceanic Technology 8, 554-574.
star) to within 8 nautical miles. Image provided by Ocean Infinity. National Research Council. (2011). National Security Implications of Climate
Change for U.S. Naval Forces. Chapter 5: Climate-Change-Related Techni-
cal Issues Impacting U.S. Naval Operations. The National Academies Press,
Washington, DC.
within 1/1,000 of the propagation distance, was possible Sabra, K. G., Cornuelle, B., and Kuperman, W. A. (2016). Sensing deep-
because the IMS network requires such precision to accom- ocean temperatures. Physics Today 69(2), 32-38.
plish its mission, i.e., detecting and triangulating a nuclear Spindel, R. C., and Worcester, P. F. (2016). Walter H. Munk: Sev-
enty-five years of exploring the seas. Acoustics Today 12(1), 36-42.
explosion within an area no larger than 1,000 km2 (Protocol https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2016.12.1.36.
to the CTBT, Part IIA). Triangulation of an unknown source Villán, J. L. (2019). The tragic loss of ARA San Juan. Proceedings of the U.S.
requires at least three arrivals (the third arrival used in the Naval Institute 45, 1393.
Worcester, P. F., Munk, W. H., and Spindel, R. C. (2005). Acoustic remote sensing of
triangulation was reported by the CTBTO in 2017; see Figure
ocean gyres. Acoustics Today 1(1), 11-17. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2961121.
9) was on a land-based seismic station. A pure hydroacous-
tic triangulation of the San Juan is possible if 3-D paths are BioSketch
considered. With the location of the San Juan now known, it
is a dataset to baseline alternative methods of locating such
signals of unknown origin. David R. Dall’Osto received his PhD in
mechanical engineering from the Uni-
Ultimately, error in triangulation depends on how well the versity of Washington (Seattle) in 2013.
actual ocean climate is characterized. Although yet to be Currently, he is a senior research scien-
implemented in any systematic way, the real-time data collec- tist and engineer at the Applied Physics
tion of the IMS network makes it possible to deploy a source Laboratory, University of Washington.
and rapidly assess climatic anomalies such as those fueling the His research focus includes modeling
powerful thermal engine of a destructive hurricane. In fact, an and measurement of acoustic vector intensity in the ocean
example of this rapid assessment came two weeks after the San and atmosphere on both short-range and global scales. His
Juan went missing; an impulsive source (depth charge) was work with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
deployed to confirm the propagation characteristics. Beyond (CTBT) data originates from a detective role, and he has
the critical mission of the IMS network (detections of nuclear found great satisfaction in applying forensic acoustics to
explosions), the data it has collected and continues to collect resolve ocean mysteries.

Music and the Brain
Psyche Loui Activity and connectivity throughout the human brain enable the complex
Address: experience of music.
Department of Music and Center for
Brain and Cognitive Health In recent years, the cognitive neuroscience of music has captured increasing inter-
Northeastern University est from scientists, scholars, and the public alike. Part of this interest comes from
360 Huntington Avenue methodological advancements to examine the living human brain. Another source
Boston, Massachusetts 02115 of interest comes from an increased awareness of the value of interdisciplinary
USA research. Researchers come from diverse backgrounds, ranging from neurobiology
to music education. This brings about a diversity of ideas. Finally, interest comes
Email:
from the possibility that findings may translate toward better tools for music therapy,
[email protected]
something that is being applied to an increasing variety of neurological and psy-
chiatric disorders. Even for the healthy brain, there is a push toward using music to
Alexander Belden improve mood and cognition both in adulthood and in development.
Address:
Department of Biology and Center This article reviews recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of music, with
for Brain and Cognitive Health special attention to the cognitive neuroscience of pitch, rhythm, harmony, and
Northeastern University melody. We begin with a brief introduction of the tools in use to examine musical
360 Huntington Avenue functions in the brain with both spatial and temporal accuracy and precision. This
Boston, Massachusetts 02115 is followed by a brief overview of brain functions that enable perception of musi-
USA cal pitch, timbre, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Finally, we examine the role of
expectation and reward as a guiding principle for why humans appreciate music.
Email:
[email protected] Tools and Principles
To detect brain activity, the best currently available methods trade off in spatial reso-
lution, temporal resolution, and invasiveness (Figure 1A). Because music perception
and cognition studies primarily require awake and behaving human subjects, the
majority of cognitive neuroscience studies in music have used noninvasive methods.
These include electroencephalography (EEG), structural and functional magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and neuropsychologi-
cal testing on special populations as well as noninvasive brain stimulation methods
to perturb normal brain activity reversibly. Here we review methodologies and
findings as they directly relate to music. For a more comprehensive overview or for
a more general introduction into human neuroanatomy, the reader is directed to
more general texts in cognitive neuroscience (e.g., Purves et al., 2008).
Since its discovery in the 1920s, EEG continues to be a relatively low-cost, efficient
technique for recording brain activity with high temporal resolution. The technique
involves fixing an array of electrodes on the surface of the scalp. The electrodes
register changes in local field potentials that come from neural populations that
respond to stimulus events. Event-related potential (ERP) is an application of the
technique that allows researchers to link specific patterns of brain electrical poten-
tials to stimulus events by repeatedly presenting stimuli of interest while recording
with EEG and then averaging the EEG data across the repeated stimulus presenta-
tions (Figure 1B).
©2019 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved. volume 15, issue 4 | Winter 2019 | Acoustics Today | 29
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.29
Music and the Brain
Figure 1. A: approximate spatial and temporal resolution of neural recording methods. EEG, electroencephalography; MEG,
magnetoencephalography: fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging; PET, positron emission tomography. B: EEG methods provide
good temporal but limited spatial resolution. Top: early right anterior negativity. From Loui et al. (2005). Bottom: bird’s-eye view of the EEG
recording setup. C: fMRI methods provide good spatial but lower temporal resolution. Top: brain activity in auditory cortices, as observed
during music listening. From Loui et al. (2012). Bottom: MRI setup.
EEG can also register activity from way stations in the audi- activity are able to map these sources with increased spatio-
tory brainstem. This auditory brainstem response (ABR) is temporal resolution.
particularly accurate at discriminating between different
sounds. Because it is a stimulus-driven response, the ABR Although EEG and MEG offer good temporal resolution,
resembles the stimulus itself, and this stimulus-brain resem- structural and functional MRI offer superior spatial reso-
blance is taken as a neural marker of the fidelity with which lution. Functional MRI captures the oxygenation level of
the auditory brainstem codes for sounds. Importantly, the blood as required by neural activity (Figure 1C). Structural
fidelity of ABR in encoding sounds is higher in musically MRI includes anatomical and diffusion images, among
trained participants (Kraus and Chandrasekaran, 2010). The others. Anatomical images are effective at comparing the
musicians’ advantage in neural encoding, as indexed with relative volume, cortical thickness, and surface area of cor-
the ABR, has been observed for a variety of sounds includ- tical and subcortical structures in gray matter cell bodies
ing speech as well as music and in older adults as well as (neurons) as well as identifying any lesions such as those
in children. due to stroke or traumatic brain injury. Diffusion images
are useful for visualizing the white matter pathways, which
Although EEG can resolve fine-grained temporal details in consist of bundles of axons that connect the neuronal cell
brain activity, it is relatively limited in its ability to locate the bodies in the brain.
source of the neural response in the brain, or spatial resolu-
tion. Some boost in spatial resolution comes from recording Pitch
with MEG, which records the magnetic fluctuations that Pitch is a basic building block of music. It is the perceptual
accompany electrical changes in the activity of neural popu- attribute of sound that most closely maps on the fundamental
lations. MEG provides the same temporal resolution as EEG, frequency ( f0). This psychological attribute of pitch ranges
but because it is not constrained by the arrangement of scalp from low to high, and two sounds can have the same pitch
sensors, it shows a relative increase in spatial resolution, par- despite having energy at different frequencies, as long as the
ticularly in its ability to measure activity from the inward f0 is the same. Musical training seems to hone a finer grained
folds, known as sulci, on the surface of the brain. Thus, music ability to discriminate between small differences in pitch
researchers who are interested in auditory sources of brain because classical musicians have frequency discrimination

thresholds that are six times smaller than those of nonmusi- MRI and cortical thickness measures, Hyde et al. (2007)
cians (Micheyl et al., 2006). observed differences in the frontal lobe as well as in the
superior temporal lobe of amusics, specifically in the superior
Although different harmonics with the same f0 can have dif- temporal gyrus (STG) and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) as
ferent timbres, they nevertheless share the same sensation shown in Figure 2.
of pitch. In the most extreme case, a pitch can still be heard
even when there is no energy at the f0 altogether as long as The simultaneous disruption of temporal lobe and frontal
energy is present at multiple harmonics. This phenomenon, lobe regions, specifically the STG and IFG, may suggest
known as virtual pitch, has been both a challenge and a test further difficulties in memory, learning, or auditory-motor
case for neural models of pitch coding. Specifically, a neural integration of pitch information. A parsimonious explana-
mechanism that codes for pitch must yield an output similar tion for these simultaneously observed deficits was that
to the f0 even when no energy is present at the f0 as long as white matter connectivity between the STG and IFG could
the harmonics of the f0 are present. be disrupted in congenital amusics, leading to abnormal
neuronal development or migration at the end points of
Recording from the auditory cortex of marmosets (Callithrix this connection. This was observed in a diffusion-imaging
jacchus), Bendor and Wang (2005) found that a small popu- study in which the arcuate fasciculus, which connects the
lation of neurons in the anterolateral border of the primary temporal and frontal regions of the brain, was smaller in
auditory cortex responded selectively to both the f0 and har- volume in people with congenital amusia (Loui et al., 2009).
monic complexes of overtones above the f0, thus providing a
neural correlate of pitch constancy. Follow-up studies showed Other studies have employed MEG in combination with
that this pitch constancy is likely accomplished using a com- structural MRI to provide further support for a right fronto-
bination of spectral and temporal cues. By building on these temporal deficit in connectivity (Albouy et al., 2013), whereas
cues and then recombining pitches hierarchically to form ERP work suggests that congenital amusia may be fundamen-
melodies and harmonies, the neural coding of pitch provides tally an issue with the lack of awareness of pitch information
the basis for the higher order coding of musical structure in (Peretz et al., 2009). Taken together, results from congeni-
the brain. tal amusia provide support for a crucial role of the pathway
between the frontal and temporal lobes, probably mostly in
Amusia the right hemisphere, that enables the tight coupling between
One way to understand how pitch processing works in the pitch perception and production.
brain is to look into individuals who have impairments in
pitch-processing ability. Congenital amusia, also known as
tone deafness, is a lifelong musical disorder that prevents
individuals from developing skills in pitch perception and
production despite no apparent deficits in speech, hearing,
or cognitive ability (Ayotte et al., 2002). It is most commonly
identified by using a neuropsychological test known as the
Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA; Peretz
et al., 2003). People with congenital amusia, who could not
consciously report the directions of pitched intervals, could
nevertheless produce (by singing) pairs of tones with above-
chance accuracy in pitch interval direction (Loui et al., 2008).
This dissociation between perception and production ability
suggests that that there may be multiple paths toward audi-
tory processing. Figure 2. Model brain with brain regions that correspond to the regions
discussed in the text. Colors indicate the approximate landmarks: red,
Studies from multiple neuroimaging methods have shown superior temporal gyrus (STG); yellow, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG);
differences in auditory as well as auditory-motor brain pro- green, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC); orange, nucleus
cesses that are linked to congenital amusia. Using structural accumbens; blue, arcuate fasciculus.

Music and the Brain
Although congenital amusia refers to the lifelong deficit of STG (Loui et al., 2012). Thus, it appears that both specific
musical abilities, acquired amusia refers to the loss of musi- brain structure and general network-level brain functioning
cal ability resulting from brain damage. Lesion analyses show are special in AP possessors.
that disconnections in multiple pathways are common among
those with acquired amusia. Those with lesions covering mul- Although AP is presumed to be rare, occurring in less than
tiple white matter pathways are least likely to recover from 1% of the general population (Ward, 1999), most listen-
acquired amusia after a stroke, whereas those who recover ers possess some absolute memory for pitch as shown by
from acquired amusia are more likely to have damage in one being able to produce familiar songs at the right starting
pathway while sparing others (Sihvonen et al., 2017). These pitch after repeated listening (Levitin, 1994). However, the
findings provide insight into possible targets for neuroreha- enhanced categorization ability seems relatively rare, and
bilitation after a stroke or other brain injury. Because stroke specific to a unique population. This has led some research-
is a leading cause of long-term disability in older adults, ers to ask whether the AP possessors’ tendency to categorize
rehabilitating musical functions in those suffering from the pitch might be thought of as a savant-like ability as seen
aftermath of a stroke will be key to improving the quality of in some individuals with autism (Mottron et al., 2013). In
life in these affected individuals (Norton et al., 2008). that regard, musicians with and without AP were tested on
the subclinical traits of autism using the autism spectrum
Absolute Pitch quotient (Dohn et al., 2012). Results showed that although
Whereas amusia is a deficit in pitch perception and produc- AP possessors scored higher than non-AP counterparts in
tion ability, absolute pitch (AP) seems ostensibly to reflect the autism quotient, they were still well lower than those
the opposite. People with AP have the ability to identify the that would meet the criteria for autism spectrum disorders.
pitch class of musical notes without an external reference Crucially, AP possessors showed some higher scores in
(Ward, 1999). In addition to being more common in musi- imagination but no differences from controls in social and
cally trained individuals, especially those who started musical communicative subscales. Taken together, AP could be con-
training before the age of seven, AP runs in families and is sidered an enhanced perceptual categorization ability, likely
more common among those of East Asian descent. It is espe- subserved by a network of regions centering around the
cially common in those of East Asian heritage who speak tone structurally altered superior temporal lobe. Whether this
languages fluently, suggesting that the ability is associated brain network and its supported functions can be trained
with early language experience (Deutsch et al., 2009). Even in the laboratory or in the practice room remains an active
among people with AP, there is a range of pitch identifica- area of both psychological and pedagogical research.
tion ability. Although some AP possessors are able to name
any note in any timbre, other individuals have AP only for Timbre
the instruments they play (Miyazaki, 1989). Because of these Although the sensation of pitch is correlated with the f0 of
intriguing interactions between genetic and environmental periodic sounds, the sensation of timbre is an emergent prop-
factors, AP is an ideal model for understanding the influences erty of spectral and temporal characteristics of sounds. The
of genes and the environment. temporal envelope of a sound, especially the time between its
onset and its peak amplitude (“attack time”), is a strong deter-
The neural substrates that enable automatic pitch categoriza- minant of the perceptual attribute of “bite.” Although attack
tion likely come from the planum temporale, a region within time is a feature of the temporal envelope, spectral centroid
the aforementioned STG that is exceptionally larger in the is a feature of the spectral envelope and is computed as the
left hemisphere of AP musicians, presenting as a more left- weighted average of the frequency of all harmonics present,
ward asymmetrical brain in MRIs (Schlaug et al., 1995). In giving rise to its “brightness.” Classic studies have found that
addition to being larger in volume, the left STG is also better spectral centroid and attack time are two orthogonal dimen-
connected in AP musicians relative to their non-AP counter- sions that account for much of the variance in judgments
parts, and pitch categorization accuracy is correlated with the in sound quality (Wessel, 1979). The third and most salient
white matter volume of connections identified from the STG dimension that is both spectral and temporal in nature is
(Loui et al., 2011). Functional MRI results point to a distrib- spectral flux, which is the change in spectral centroid over
uted network of enhanced activity throughout the brain in time (McAdams, 2013). Because these dimensions of sound
AP musicians, albeit with results centering around the left are clearly defined and orthogonal to each other, both per-

ceptually and in terms of their underlying acoustic attributes, of the brain (Grahn and Brett, 2007), that could be respon-
they are useful both for musical expression and for creating sible for the ability to predict a pulse even in situations where
well-controlled experimental stimuli in order to understand there is no spectral energy produced on the beat itself (Tal
how the brain processes timbre. et al., 2017). The motor system contributions to beat percep-
tion are particularly apparent in classical musicians and in
An ERP study compared the three dimensions of timbre patients with Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s patients, who
(attack time, spectral centroid, and spectral flux) directly have multiple motor deficits, are impaired at discriminating
using mismatch negativity (MMN), a negative ERP that beat-based rhythms but not rhythms that lack an underly-
occurs around 200 ms after any small deviations from the ing beat (Grahn and Brett, 2009). This suggests an important
sound context. The MMNs elicited by the different dimen- role of the motor system in the detection and generation of
sions were indeed separate in their underlying neural sources, internal beats.
suggesting separate dimensions of processing in auditory
memory and providing convergent results with the psy- The coupling between the auditory and motor systems when
chophysical data (Caclin et al., 2006). An functional MRI confronted with beat-based stimuli might explain why we
experiment showed that modulations in spectral shape elic- feel “groove,” which is defined as the pleasurable urge to move
ited right-lateralized brain activity in the superior temporal to music. Music that is rated as high in groove elicits larger
sulcus (STS), an area immediately below the STG (Warren motor-evoked potentials (electrical fluctuations measured
et al., 2005). This right-lateralized STS activity supports the from motor neurons in the hand and arm) in musicians than
idea that the right hemisphere is relatively tuned to spectral low-groove music or noise (Stupacher et al., 2013). One fea-
changes, whereas the left hemisphere is more tuned to fine- ture that determines the sensation of groove is syncopation,
grained temporal structure (Flinker et al., 2019). which can be defined as a slight violation of an expected and
beat-based rhythm. However, this is not to say that higher
Because timbre is an important cue toward the perception syncopation necessarily means a higher sense of groove. In
of auditory objects, the study of “dystimbria,” or the impair- fact, an inverse U-shaped relationship between groove and
ment of spectral and temporal analysis without loudness or syncopation has been observed, with medium-syncopated
pitch-processing difficulty (Griffiths et al., 2007), can provide music tending to elicit a stronger desire to move than either
a window into how the brain perceives objects from the world high- or low-syncopated music (Witek et al., 2014).
of sound. On the other hand, people with exceptionally fine-
grained training in listening to timbres, such as piano tuners, In addition to being pleasurable, it is well known that rhythm
have enhanced gray matter in the superior temporal struc- can synchronize large populations of people, motivating
tures as well as in the hippocampal complex, which is crucial them to movement. Recent research is addressing whether
for learning and memory (Teki et al., 2012). These gray matter synchronous, rhythmic movement can affect social behav-
differences are correlated with the duration of one’s career in ior. In a sample of 14-month-old infants, parents holding
piano tuning and not with actual age, suggesting that there the infant faced an experimenter and moved either syn-
are adaptations in brain structure that come with advanced chronously (onbeat) or asynchronously (offbeat) from one
musical experience, even within the specific task of listening another. Infants proceeded to be more helpful toward the
for timbre in order to tune a musical instrument. experimenter after the synchronous condition compared with
the asynchronous condition (Cirelli et al., 2014). This remark-
Rhythm able finding demonstrates the social value of synchronizing
Beat to a beat, even during infancy.
Beat is the basic building block of musical rhythm that
allows for the synchronization of musical events. Beat not Meter
only synchronizes musical events to one another but also Meter refers to the hierarchical organization of beats into
synchronizes our brains to the rhythm of musical stimuli. recurring groups. Meter usually consists of groupings of two,
When presented with a beat, EEG recordings show rhythmic three, or four beats, although in some cases rarer meters that
activity at the beat frequency (Nozarandan et al., 2011). This contain five, seven, or even larger or variable sets of beats
neural sense of beat is produced through the coupled oscilla- may occur. Regardless of the number of beats, there is a ten-
tion of auditory and motor pathways, including motor areas dency to have an accent on the first beat of a given measure

Music and the Brain
(often with secondary accents later on for meters containing Given that the torus describes our mental representation of
four or more beats). This tendency in humans to accentuate Western tonal music, it was possible to compose continuous
metrical beats is so strong that EEG recordings have shown modulating melodies and harmonies that smoothly navigate
an enhancement of the beat frequency associated with the the surface of the torus. Janata et al. (2002) traced brain activ-
“first” beat of an imagined meter, even with an unaccented ity in a functional MRI study as participants listened to these
isochronous beat stimulus (Nozaradan et al., 2011). continuously modulating melodies. Results showed that a
region of the frontal lobe, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Harmony and Melody (vmPFC), was consistently responsive to modulating melo-
Although melodies are pitches presented sequentially over time, dies; crucially, contiguous voxels in the vmPFC were active
harmony refers to the simultaneous presentation of pitches as the melody changed keys to contiguous parts of the torus,
over time. Music theorists and scientists alike have attempted suggesting that the brain was tracking tonal movement in
to define a space that represents how we conceptualize tonal these regions.
harmony. Insight came from human subjective ratings from
the probe-tone experiment, in which a melodic context is pre- Although the continuous perception of harmony is impor-
sented and followed by a tone and the subjects’ task is to rate tant, the violation of harmonic expectation has also lent
how well the final tone fit the preceding melody. These probe- insight into how the brain processes harmony. When pre-
tone profiles matched the relative importance of pitches within sented with unexpected chords within a chord progression,
a tonal context as dictated by the principles of music theory. ERP studies have shown an early right anterior negativity
Applying dimensionality-reduction algorithms on these probe- (ERAN) in participants, which is a negative waveform peak-
tone data yield the empirically derived tonal space. Based on ing at approximately 200 ms after the onset of the unexpected
mathematical modeling of the empirical data, Krumhansl and chord in the right frontal portion of the brain (Koelsch et al.,
Kessler (1982) found that the best geometric solution of tonal 2000). The ERAN indexes our expectation that music follows
space is in the shape of a torus (Figure 3). The toroidal repre- a known syntactic structure. Interestingly, even new music
sentation is effective at capturing the close relative distances that we learn rapidly within the course of an hour can elicit
between neighboring keys within the circle of fifths from music the ERAN, suggesting that the neural generators of the ERAN
theory. It also captures the further distance between parallel can flexibly and rapidly learn to integrate new sounds and
minors than between relative minors, as observed in empirical sound patterns given their statistical context in the environ-
ratings data from the probe-tone paradigm. ment (Loui et al., 2009).
The brain structures that generate the ERAN are in the left
inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which is sensitive to linguis-
tic syntax (Levitin and Menon, 2003). Patients with IFG
lesions show behavioral deficits in processing musical struc-
ture that are coupled with a diminished or altered ERAN
(Sammler et al., 2011). These results suggest that areas of
the brain that used to be thought of as language-specific
regions, such as the left IFG, are in fact processing syn-
tactic structure in music as well. This lends credence to
Figure 3. The torus is a good approximation of our mental the idea that music and language processing interact in the
representation of western music. Left: two-dimensional tonal space. brain specifically for the processing of syntactic structure,
Uppercase letters, major keys; lowercase letters, minor keys. A chord as articulated by Patel’s (2010) Shared Syntactic Integration
progression in A major, shown in this example, elicits activity near the Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH).
A major region while suppressing activity near its dissimilar keys such
as E- flat major and D-sharp minor. Right: three-dimensional tonal Prediction and Reward
space in the shape of a torus. This can be derived by wrapping the two- The musical features reviewed above are acoustic devices that
dimensional tonal space in the left-to-right direction (black arrows) ultimately provide the groundwork for us to make predic-
and then wrapping the resulting tube again in a circular direction tions about events in the immediate future. We expect sounds
(orange arrow). to occur on or at even subdivisions of the beat and accents to

occur at specific beats within a given meter; we also expect Conclusions
certain pitch intervals and harmonies to follow others. The The value of the studies reviewed above comes not only from
systematic fulfillment and violations of expectations have satisfying the intellectual curiosity of how music works and
long been posited to contribute to emotional content and why we have music but also in the hopes that a deeper under-
perceived meaning in music (Meyer, 1956). For example, standing of the tools and principles of music will enable the
although beat and meter establish rhythmic expectations, design of better musical interventions for a variety of appli-
syncopation is a violation of expectations that can lead to an cations, from recovery from neurological and/or psychiatric
even richer music listening experience. This balance between disorders to enhancing the optimal function of the healthy
predictability and prediction violations is critical to the enjoy- developing brain.
ment of music. Through prolonged exposure, humans acquire
knowledge of and predictions for musical features that are References
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BioSketches
https://doi.org/10.2307/40285445.
Mottron, L., Bouvet, L., Bonnel, A., Samson, F., Burack, J. A., Dawson,
M., and Heaton, P. (2013). Veridical mapping in the development of
exceptional autistic abilities. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Psyche Loui is an assistant professor of
37(2), 209-228. creativity and creative practice in the
Norton, A., Zipse, L., Marchina, S., and Schlaug, G. (2009). Melodic into-
nation therapy: Shared insights on how it is done and why it might help.
Department of Music, Northeastern
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1169, 431-436. University (Boston, MA). She gradu-
Nozaradan, S., Peretz, I., Missal, M., and Mouraux, A. (2011). Tagging the ated from the University of California,
neuronal entrainment to beat and meter. Journal of Neuroscience 31(28), Berkeley with her PhD in psychology and
10234-10240.
Patel, A. D. (2010). Music, Language, and the Brain. Oxford University attended Duke University (Durham, NC)
Press, New York. as an undergraduate with degrees in psychology and music.
Peretz, I., Brattico, E., Jarvenpaa, M., and Tervaniemi, M. (2009). The amusic Dr. Loui has published extensively on music and the brain.
brain: In tune, out of key, and unaware. Brain 132(5), 1277-1286.
Peretz, I., Champod, A. S., and Hyde, K. (2003). Varieties of musical dis-
Her work has been reported by the Associated Press, The New
orders. The Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia. Annals of the New York Times, The Boston Globe, the BBC, CNN, NBC news,
York Academy of Sciences 999, 58-75. CBS radio, The Scientist magazine, and other news outlets.

Alexander Belden is a PhD student in
the Northeastern University Biology
Department (Boston, MA) and a research
assistant in the MIND Lab, Northeastern
University. He holds a Bachelor of Science
degree in biopsychology with a minor in
music from Tufts University (Medford,
MA) and a Master of Arts degree in biology from Wesleyan
University (Middletown, CT). Belden’s research focuses on
musical creativity, with a particular interest in resting-state
functional connectivity.
Acoustics Today
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Arthur Popper See these papers at:
([email protected]) acousticstoday.org/3DUnderwater

The Dawn of Ultrasonics and the
Palace of Science
Kenneth S. Suslick Ultrasonics research in the United States began in a secretive private laboratory
Address: built in the mansion of the investment banker Alfred Lee Loomis.
School of Chemical Sciences
University of Illinois at Inaudible sound is an oxymoron, so perhaps it is no surprise that the idea of sound
Urbana-Champaign with frequencies above human hearing was not well-defined until the early 1800s.
600 South Mathews Avenue Such sound was initially called either “supersonics” or “ultrasonics,” with the latter
Urbana, Illinois 61801 eventually winning out. Ultrasonics came into the modern era after the collision of
USA the Titanic with an iceberg in 1912 and the coming advent of submarine warfare.
The beginning of the twentieth century launched a new and urgent need for under-
Email:
water sensor technology for the detection of underwater objects. In this historical
[email protected]
overview, we look back at the founders of modern ultrasonics through vignettes of
a most interesting set of scientists.
Finding the Subs: Paul Langevin and Robert William Boyle

A few weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Lewis Fry Richardson (inventor of frac-
tals) applied for a patent on ultrasonic echo-ranging underwater, but the technology
to produce high-intensity ultrasound at the time was simply insufficient. Just three
years later, however, a young Russian electrical engineer working in France, Con-
stantin Chilowsky, proposed a plan for submarine detection based on Richardson’s
echo-ranging concept. The French government asked Paul Langevin (Figure 1, left),
then in Paris, for an evaluation of the idea. Langevin was a well-known physicist
with expertise in magnetic phenomena and piezoelectricity. Chilowsky and Lan-
gevin initiated a project in Langevin’s laboratories, made some progress, and applied
for a patent in 1915, but their working relationship was rocky and Chilowsky soon
left the project.
The test program was then transferred to the Toulon naval base in southern France.
Langevin was responsible for a key invention in the pursuit of high-intensity ultra-
sonics. Although his initial single-crystal quartz piezoelectric transducers were
encouraging, the voltages required to drive them were too high for practical use.
In addition, finding quartz specimens of the size required in quantity was also
impractical. Langevin then devised a steel-quartz-steel sandwich transducer, where
the resonance was determined by the overall thickness of the whole assembly, not
the quartz crystal. In the first tests, single pieces of very large quartz crystals were
cemented between the steel plates with a diameter of 20 cm.
There was a synergism to be had among the research expertise of the Allies. The
British were pioneers in underwater listening devices (i.e., hydrophones), whereas
the French excelled in generating high-intensity ultrasound. In 1916, a joint French-
British effort was initiated under the direction of the British Board of Invention and
Research (BBIR) and Lord Ernest Rutherford, who had received the Nobel Prize
in physics eight years earlier. Research on submarine detection was given a high
priority and progressed rapidly, largely due to Langevin and to the development
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.38
By way of background, Langevin completed college at the
École Normale Supérieure, went to Cambridge to study with
J. J. Thomson, and returned to the Sorbonne, obtaining his
PhD in 1902 under the supervision of Pierre Curie, codiscov-
erer of piezoelectricity, future Nobel Laureate, and husband
of Marie Curie. In 1904, Langevin was appointed to the Col-
lège de France (Paris), where among his doctoral students
were future Nobelists Irene Joliot-Curie (daughter of Pierre
and Marie) and Louis de Broglie. After World War I, Lan-
gevin, along with some French entrepreneurs, succeeded in
commercializing marine ultrasonics and produced a depth-
sounding instrument that was installed on many ships during
Figure 1. Left: photo of Paul Langevin (1872–1946), taken from a the 1920s. In 1940, capping his many successes, Langevin
group photo after a luncheon in honor of Albert Einstein convened by received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (the oldest
Langevin at his home in Paris, 1920. Photo courtesy of the Welcome surviving scientific award in the world). Langevin was politi-
Collection under the Creative Commons license with attribution.
Right: Robert William Boyle (1883–1955). Photo courtesy of the
Wikimedia Creative Commons license with attribution.
of practical transducers by Robert William Boyle (a former

Rutherford student; Figure 1, right). The British-French joint
effort was brilliantly successful in just two years, and early
versions of the technology were being installed on Royal
Navy warships (HMS Antrim and then HMS Osprey) just
after World War I came to an end.
Boyle played the primary role for the British effort on the
active sound detection project, producing a prototype for
testing at sea by mid-1917. Boyle used composites of quartz
mosaics (as shown in Figure 2), alleviating the need for large
quartz crystals, and produced the first practical underwater
active-sound detection in the world. To maintain secrecy,
no mention of ultrasound or quartz was made; the made-
up word ASDIC (from Anti-Submarine Division) was used,
which eventually became known as “sonar” (for “sound navi-
gation and ranging” in analogy with “radar”).
Beyond his direct work on sonar, Boyle was the first to

observe acoustic cavitation from the ultrasonic irradiation
of liquids, a point rather important to the chemical and
physical effects of ultrasound and likewise to the underwa- Figure 2. a and b: Cross-sectional views of two forms of quartz
ter propagation of high-intensity ultrasound. Boyle (1928) transducers designed by Boyle, recorded in British Board of Invention
is also notable for having written the first major review on and Research (BBIR) document 38164/17. c: Both transducers have a
ultrasonics, which, unfortunately, was published in a journal mosaic of quartz elements as shown, thereby obviating the need to use
that went bankrupt soon after. Thus, Boyle’s review had rather large single crystals. These transducers (50 cm2 at 75 kHz) in October
limited impact. 1917 transmitted signals nearly a mile in open ocean.

The Dawn of Ultrasonics
cally active as a notable anti-fascist, which resulted in house

arrest by the Vichy government for most of World War II.
By comparison, Boyle had come across the pond in 1909,

following his PhD mentor Rutherford. Boyle was born in
Newfoundland and educated in Montreal at McGill Univer-
sity, receiving the first PhD in physics from McGill University
studying radioactivity. Boyle returned to Canada in 1912
to start the physics program at the University of Alberta
(Edmonton, AB, Canada) where he shifted to the new field
of ultrasonics. With the advent of World War I, Boyle volun-
teered and joined the BBIR back in England. In 1919, Boyle
returned to Alberta where he became dean of applied sci-
ence and was elected two years later to the Royal Society of
Canada. Boyle was a major contributor to the development
of Canadian science as director of physics for 20 years at the
National Research Council.
The Prankster of Baltimore:

Robert Williams Wood
Among those to whom Langevin displayed his work at Toulon
was Robert W. Wood, professor of physics at Johns Hopkins
University (Baltimore, MD; Figure 3). Wood had been asked
to assist the US armed services shortly after the entry of the
United States into World War I. He participated in antisub-
marine projects and was present at a June 1917 meeting in
Washington with the French-British delegation where Langevin’s
work was reported.
Wood had previously contributed importantly to the early

concepts of acoustics and shock waves. Visualization of
acoustic phenomena was limited in 1900, so to better illus-
trate the wave properties of sound, Wood photographed
(using spatial differences in refractive index) the actual
wave fronts of sound waves and demonstrated vividly all the Figure 3. Robert W. Wood (1868–1955) posing in front of a spinning
phenomena of reflected and refracted waves. These photo- mercury telescope mirror that he built in the barn of his Long Island
graphs received wide attention, brought Wood international summer home. Photo taken in ~1915. Photo courtesy of the American
acclaim, and resulted in an invitation to lecture before the Institute of Physics (AIP) Emilio Segre Visual Archive.
Royal Society.
Commissioned as major in the army, Wood gained permis- waves shot across the tank causing the formation of millions
sion to devote particular attention to Langevin’s work. As of minute air bubbles and killing small fish which occasion-
he later wrote (Wood, 1939, p. 35), “It was my good for- ally swam into the beam. If the hand was held in the water
tune during the war to be associated for a brief time with near the plate an almost insupportable pain was felt, which
Prof. Langevin during his remarkable developments. At the gave one the impression that the bones were being heated.”
arsenal at Toulon I witnessed many of the experiments with This observation of Langevin’s work lay dormant in Wood’s
the high power generators...the narrow beam of supersonic mind for a decade but reemerged during his interactions later

with Alfred Loomis, discussed below in The Last Amateur small piece of sodium metal. The resulting ball of flame must
Scientist and the Palace of Science: Alfred Lee Loomis. have truly spooked those passing nearby!
A member of a prominent New England clan, Wood was While at Johns Hopkins University, Wood and his family
the son of a physician well-known for his work in Hawai’i. would spend the summers on an old farm on Long Island,
From childhood on, Wood had an intense interest in all NY, where he apparently introduced the Hawaiian surfboard
sorts of scientific phenomena, which he must have found to the Long Island beaches (Dieke, 1956). Out of his own
a relief from the rule-bound schooling he mostly had to pocket, Wood set up an improvised laboratory in an old barn,
endure. He was flunked out twice from the Roxbury Latin the crown jewel of which was a 40-foot grating spectrograph,
School (Boston, MA) before being admitted to Harvard probably the largest then in existence and certainly capable
University (Cambridge, MA) where he earned a bach- of better results than anyone had ever seen before. The light
elor’s degree in chemistry in 1891 despite poor marks in guides were constructed from sewer pipe. During the long
languages and mathematics. After a brief stint in graduate months between summers when the instrument was not used,
school at Johns Hopkins University, where he became most the optical path would become cluttered with spider webs.
interested in the physics of optics, Wood moved, in 1892, “Wood’s method of cleaning the tube has become a classic. He
to the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL). Wood eventu- put the family cat in one end and closed the end so that the
ally completed his doctoral dissertation, but the academic cat, in order to escape, had to run through the whole length of
rules had changed and he was never officially awarded his the tube, ridding it very effectively of all spider webs” (Dieke,
PhD. He then worked for Heinrich Rubens in Berlin on 1956, p. 330).
infrared optics. Wood returned to the United States as an
instructor at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) where An interesting spin-off from Wood’s summer home on Long
his career blossomed quickly. In 1901, Wood was appointed Island came from friendship with a neighbor, the famous Flo-
full professor of experimental physics at Johns Hopkins renz Ziegfeld, producer of the most spectacular stage shows
University after a physics professor had died unexpectedly on Broadway that swarmed with chorus girls in resplen-
young (Dieke, 1956). dent costumes. Wood was well aware that many substances
fluoresce brightly under ultraviolet light, and the possibility
Wood was an inveterate prankster. As a student, his landlady of interesting stage effects was not lost on him, especially
was, in his opinion, rather too interested in his comings and because he had invented the ultraviolet (UV) filter still used
goings. So on a rainy day with muddy streets, he took his today for producing “black light.” Many of Wood’s ideas on
shoes off and created “a trail of footprints in his room start- lighting tricks with UV found their way to Ziegfeld’s stage
ing at the window, up the wall, across the ceiling and down (Dieke, 1956).
the other wall. The reactions of the landlady are not recorded”
(Dieke, 1956, p. 333). He apparently had no mercy on land- Wood was a man of many skills and hobbies. He was a prolific
ladies because in Paris, his proprietor kept a pet tortoise in author, especially for his time, publishing some 300 scientific
the garden. Wood bought a series of tortoises of various sizes papers and the classic textbook on physical optics (Wood,
and exchanged them every few days in order of increasing 1911). He also wrote fiction, coauthoring two science fiction
size, making it appear that the tortoise was growing at an novels with Arthur C. Train (a well-known writer of court-
amazing rate. When the landlady told Wood about this, room thrillers): The Man Who Rocked the Earth in 1915 and
he suggested that she should go to the press. At this point, its sequel The Moon Maker in 1916; the former was rather
Wood reexchanged the tortoises in decreasing size, reversing notable for describing an atomic detonation 30 years before
the process! the first atomic bomb. Wood also authored and illustrated
children’s books including How to Tell the Birds from the
Even as professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, Flowers (1907).
there are stories of his entertaining the crowds at football
games during halftime by a display of boomerang throwing. This irrepressible practical joker was to become the world’s
Wood developed a bit of a reputation in Baltimore where he dominant research scientist in optics and spectroscopy and
was known to cough loudly, sputter, and spit into puddles on a pioneer of infrared (IR) and UV photography. Wood was a
the streets of Baltimore while surreptitiously dropping in a fellow of most of the world’s major academies and winner of

many international awards. Indeed, in his honor, the Optical Wood acted as Loomis’s private physics tutor and Loomis
Society of America offers the R. W. Wood Prize for outstand- became Wood’s financial patron.
ing discovery or invention.
Loomis was looking for a science project to fund, and Wood
The Last Amateur Scientist and the Palace of told him about Langevin’s experiments with ultrasonics and
Science: Alfred Lee Loomis the killing of fish. Because Langevin was really focused only
During his time in the Army during World War I, Wood on submarine detection and other marine applications, this
made the acquaintance of Alfred Lee Loomis (Figure 4) at the new field offered a wide range for research in physics, chem-
Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where Loomis had invented the istry, and biology. Loomis was enthusiastic and together
“Loomis chronograph” for measuring the velocity of artillery they made a trip to the research laboratory of General Elec-
shells. Loomis was a New York finance banker whose lifelong tric and purchased two huge “pilotron” amplifying vacuum
hobby had been physics and chemistry. Loomis led a fascinat- tubes that were similar to the high-frequency oscillators
ing and complex life, well beyond our scope here. For those then used in radio broadcasting, stepping up the voltage
interested, I recommend highly the excellent biography of from the usual 2 kV to 50 kV. The resulting generator was
Loomis by Conant (2002). used to drive thick quartz transducers with an ultrasonic
output of 2 kW over the range of 100 to 700 kHz, specs
Both Wood and Loomis came from respected New England that would be a state-of-the-art rig even today! This appa-
families, both had successful physicians as fathers, and both ratus was first built in Loomis’s garage in Tuxedo Park (40
were passionately interested in science. They met again in miles north of New York City and from which the black-tie
1924 on respective family summer visits to eastern Long formal dress gained its name). The space was too small, so
Island. Although Wood was almost 20 years senior, his lack of Loomis bought a huge stone mansion nearby perched on
pretension and his laboratory in the barn were considerably the summit of one of the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains.
more attractive to Loomis than the alternative of time spent
with his aunts. This began a symbiosis that lasted many years: Loomis, with suggestions from Wood, transformed this
“Tower House” (Figure 5) into a private laboratory deluxe,
with rooms for guests or collaborators, a complete machine
shop with a mechanic, and a dozen large and small research
labs. The 40-foot spectrograph in Wood’s Long Island barn
was transferred and refurbished where it saw heavy use by
Loomis and other scientists under Loomis’s aegis. As Wood
put it, in these more hospitable surroundings, it “required
no pussycat as housemaid” (Conant, 2002, p. 49).
Loomis, who wished to meet the celebrated European physi-

cists and visit their laboratories, asked Wood to go abroad
with him to make introductions. The pair made two trips
together, in the summers of 1926 and 1928. Thereafter, Tower
House became a center for visiting scientists of the highest
order from Europe or the United States, with symposia and
visits from Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Franck, Heisenberg, and
many others.
In 1927, Wood and Loomis published the first paper from

Figure 4. Alfred Lee Loomis (1887–1975) in the laboratories at Tower the Loomis Laboratory, a truly pioneering piece of work enti-
House (Tuxedo Park, NY). Einstein dubbed it the “palace of science.” tled “The Physical and Biological Effects of High-frequency
The apparatus is the high-voltage oscillator used to drive a quartz Sound-waves of Great Intensity” in Wood’s favorite journal,
piezoelectric transducer to produce intense ultrasound. Photo courtesy Philosophical Magazine (more formally titled The London,
of the Smithsonian Institution Archives, image #SIA2008-5428. Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal

instead returned to optics and spectroscopy, sometimes with
Loomis as coauthor. Loomis, however, continued to be inter-
ested and published several other papers over the next few
years on the bioeffects of ultrasound, ranging from bacteria
to fruit flies. Wood did eventually publish the first mono-
graph on ultrasonics, recounting his earlier work and other
developments (Wood, 1939).
The discovery of light emission during ultrasonic irradiation

of liquids, oddly enough, was not made by Loomis, Wood,
or Richards, despite Wood’s unsurpassed expertise in optics.
Indeed, the first observation of sonoluminescence had to wait
Figure 5. The palace of science, Tower House (Alfred Loomis’s another 10 years (Frenzel and Schultes, 1934). Personally, I
laboratory in Tuxedo Park, NY) was used from 1926 until 1940, am not displeased that Wood missed that opportunity; he was
when Loomis set up the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Tower House is the world master of spectroscopy, and there would have been
at present pretty much unchanged on the outside and functions as an nothing left to discover for those of us working 50 years later
apartment complex. Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library, (Suslick and Flint, 1987; Suslick et al., 2018)!
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Loomis had made a substantial fortune (together with his
brother-in-law Landon K. Thorne) financing the largest
of Science). In this paper, using the apparatus built in the public utilities and electrifying rural America. Realizing
Tower House (Figure 6), they reported that the stock market was in a speculative bubble, over a few
• acoustic radiation pressures sufficient to support a months in early 1929, Loomis and Thorne sold their secu-
weight of 150 g; rities and converted everything into cash and long-term
• the burning of skin or wood when pressed against an treasury bonds. After the Great Crash (October 1929) and
ultrasonically vibrating rod; reinvestment during the Depression, Loomis became one of
• the ultrasonic etching and drilling of glass plates pressed the 10 richest men in America.
against a vibrating rod;
• the internal heating of liquids and solids;
• the formations of emulsions and fogs;
• the flocculation of solid particles suspended in a liquid;
• numerous biological effects, including rupturing red
blood cells, killing microbes, and harmful to lethal effects
on small fish, frogs, and mice; and
• preliminary observations on the effects of ultrasound
on crystallization.
These results, the first reported on the physical and biological

effects of ultrasound, still represent a modern-day litany of
ultrasonic research (Hinman and Suslick, 2017)! They deferred
reports on the chemical effects to work soon published by
Loomis and William T. Richards, discussed below in The
Chemical Consequences of Ultrasound: William T. Richards.
In 1929, Loomis and Woods went on to receive a patent on the Figure 6. Apparatus for early experiments with intense ultrasound.
use of ultrasound “for forming emulsions and the like.” The large coil is a transformer to increase the voltage from the 2-kW
oscillator up to 50 kV at 100 to 700 kHz, and the leads from it are
After completing their pioneering work together on ultra- connected to a 1-cm-thick quartz plate immersed in oil beneath the
sonics, Wood did not continue research on ultrasonics but flask containing the frog (Wood and Loomis, 1927).

Luis Alvarez (Nobel Laureate, close friend of Loomis, and

writer of Loomis’s obituary) called Loomis the “last great
amateur of science” (Alvarez, 1983), not in the modern
sense of a “dabbler” but rather in the original French mean-
ing “one who loves.” Loomis was never a mere dilettante
but indeed became master of any endeavor he pursued. As
a scientist, Loomis held 10 patents ranging from racing car
toys to centrifuge microscopes to high-speed chronographs
to long-range navigation (LORAN); he was coauthor of 32
scientific papers (including 5 in Science and 2 in Nature) and
sponsor of another 48 from collaborators in his laboratory.
Loomis was, indeed, a quiet giant in the technologi-

cal advances in the first half of the twentieth century. In
addition to his adventures in high-intensity ultrasonics at
Tuxedo Park, he was a pioneer in ultrafast chronography, an
early developer of the electroencephalograph (EEG), and
inventor of LORAN (the predecessor to GPS). Moreover,
he funded the first cyclotron at University of California,
Berkeley, and founded the MIT Radiation Laboratory, (Rad
Lab; where airborne radar and radar-controlled antiaircraft
artillery were developed). Loomis made contacts between
physicists and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who just
happened to be Loomis’s favorite cousin. The Manhattan
Project was remarkable for the lack of administrative road-
blocks, a fact that Alvarez attributed “to the mutual trust
and respect that Secretary of War Stimson and Loomis had.
Loomis was in effect Stimson’s minister without portfolio to
the scientific leadership of the Manhattan District — his old
friends Lawrence, Compton, Fermi, and Robert Oppenheimer” Figure 7. William T. Richards (1900–1940), coauthor with Loomis
(Alvarez, 1983, p. 33). of the first paper on sonochemistry in 1927. Photo courtesy of the
Conant (2002) family.
Despite his avoidance of publicity, Loomis did receive hon-
orary degrees from Yale University (New Haven, CT); the
University of California, Berkeley; and Wesleyan University The Chemical Consequences of Ultrasound:
(Middletown, CT); and in 1940, at the tender age of 53, he William T. Richards
was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1948, In the same year as the Wood-Loomis paper, Loomis pub-
for his efforts in the development of radar, Loomis received lished a second paper specifically on the chemical effects of
both the US Presidential Medal of Merit (the highest civil- ultrasound, this time with William T. Richards (Figure 7;
ian award) and from Britain the King’s Medal for Service Richards and Loomis, 1927). They had discovered that high-
in the Cause of Freedom. Lee DuBridge (director of the intensity ultrasound increased the rates of three classes of
Rad Lab and then president of Caltech, Pasadena, CA) later chemical reactions (initiation of detonation of an explosive,
commented, “Radar won the war; the atom bomb ended a hydrolysis reaction, and a clock reaction) and also reported
it.” Loomis was integral to the success of both. Alfred Lee other physical effects, including degassing of liquids.
Loomis was the most important scientist of the twentieth
century who almost no one has ever heard of. And from all At that time, Richards was a young assistant professor of chem-
accounts, Loomis wanted it that way. istry at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ). Richards was the

son of the first American Nobelist in Chemistry (Theodore W.
Richards, Harvard University), had earned his PhD at Harvard
University (under his father’s tutelage), and was the brother-in-
law of James B. Conant, later president of Harvard University.
Richards kept his position at Loomis Laboratory until his death
but had to resign from Princeton University due to depression
and illness, traits than unfortunately ran strong in the Richards
family (Conant, 2002).
Over the next 12 years, Richards went on to publish 19 addi-

tional papers on various aspects at the interface between
physical chemistry and physical acoustics, most dealing with
gas-phase measurements. In an overview based on an address
to the Acoustical Society of America (ASA; Richards, 1938,
p. 305), Richards noted, “I have been told by every math-
ematical physicist I know that the analysis of cavitation is a
task beyond the ability of present day mathematics.” A rather
forceful statement to be made in front of the ASA, given that Figure 8. Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986) was the first to report
Lord Rayleigh had already analyzed the problem of bubble ultrasonic cleavage of polymers. Photo taken in 1917. Photo courtesy
collapse, albeit in the context of propeller-generated cavi- of the Wikimedia Creative Commons license with attribution.
tation, in 1917 (Rayleigh, 1917). Rayleigh made accurate
predictions of enormous pressures during cavitation but did
not extrapolate them to the extreme temperatures created in and Conant were apparently able to purchase and destroy
the collapsing gas phase, which turns out to be the origin of most copies, and today copies of the book are scarce, with
most sonochemistry (Noltingk and Neppiras, 1950; Suslick the least expensive being $1,000.00 (plus shipping!). There is
et al., 2018). Indeed, in his very last scientific paper a year a much fuller description of Richard’s book and a suppressed
later (a massive review of “supersonic phenomena”), Richards short story (“The Uranium Bomb,” an accurate description,
stated that one of the possible results of cavitation “is the disguised as a science fiction story, of the secret Fermi-Szilard
large pressure which Rayleigh has shown to accompany the plan that initiated the Manhattan Project) in Conant’s superb
collapse of bubbles. It might be argued that pressure surges Tuxedo Park (2002).
from this cause are sufficiently great to cause the adiabatic
temperature changes required. This explanation is improb- Another Dionysian: Albert Szent-Györgyi
able for several reasons...” (Richards, 1939, p. 53). Richards Only a few years after the pioneering work of Loomis with
favored an electrical discharge mechanism, a hypothesis that Wood and with Richards, a very brief note was published in
did not stand the test of time (Suslick et al., 2018). 1933 in Nature by Albert Szent-Györgyi (pronounced “Saint
Georgie”; Figure 8), describing the first depolymerization of
The announcement of the death of Richards appeared on Feb- polymers (Szent-Györgyi, 1933). This work remains strik-
ruary 1, 1940, in the Daily Princetonian: “William T. Richards, ingly relevant even today with rather active current research
former University scientist, was discovered dead yesterday on the mechanochemistry of polymers, most often initiated
with his wrists slashed in the bathtub of his New York City by ultrasonic irradiation of polymer solutions (Suslick, 2014).
apartment, an apparent suicide. Police refused to disclose the Szent-Györgyi went on to win the 1937 Nobel Prize for his
contents of a note found beside the tub” (Anonymous, 1940). discovery of vitamin C and work on biological oxidation.
Amusingly, Szent-Györgyi ends his Nature article, “For lack
The story does not quite end there, however, because a of funds, our investigation has been broken off.”
murder mystery, Brain Waves and Death, was published post-
humously under the pseudonym “Willard Rich” a few weeks Aside from this very early contribution to the chemical
later. The book was a very thinly veiled roman à clef of the effects of ultrasound, I have brought up Szent-Györgyi for
Loomis Laboratory, and Loomis felt much betrayed. Loomis his philosophical insights into the origins of any new field of

study. Szent-Györgyi, who tellingly observed that “a discovery Noltingk, B. E., and Neppiras, E. A. (1950). Cavitation produced by
must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge,” ultrasound. Proceedings of the Physical Society, Section B 63, 674-685.
https://doi.org/10.1088/0370-1301/63/9/305.
divided scientists into two categories: the Apollonians and
Rayleigh, Lord (1917). On the pressure developed in a liquid during
the Dionysians (Szent-Györgyi, 1972, p. 966). These classifi- the collapse of a spherical cavity. Philosophical Magazine 34, 94-98.
cations reflect extremes of two different approaches found in https://doi.org/10.1080/14786440808635681.
most human endeavors, e.g., science, literature, art, and music. Richards, W. T. (1938). Recent progress in supersonics. Journal of Applied
“In science the Apollonian tends to develop established lines to Physics 9, 298-306. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1710420.
Richards, W. T. (1939). Supersonic phenomena. Reviews of Modern Physics
perfection, while the Dionysian rather relies on intuition and is 11, 36-64. https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.11.36.
more likely to open new, unexpected alleys for research... Apply- Richards, W. T., and Loomis, A. L. (1927). The chemical effects of high
ing for a grant begins with writing a project. The Apollonian frequency sound waves I. A preliminary survey. Journal of the American
clearly sees the future lines of his research and has no difficulty... Chemical Society 49, 3086-3100. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja01411a015.
Suslick, K. S. (2014). Mechanochemistry and sonochemistry: Concluding
Not so the Dionysian, who knows only the direction in which
remarks. Faraday Discussions 170, 411-422.
he wants to go out into the unknown; he has no idea what he https://doi.org/10.1039/C4FD00148F.
is going to find there... The future of mankind depends on the Suslick, K. S., and Flint, E. B. (1987). Sonoluminescence from non-aqueous
progress of science, and the progress of science depends on the liquids. Nature 330, 553-555. https://doi.org/10.1038/330553a0.
support it can find. Support mostly takes the form of grants, Suslick, K. S., Eddingsaas, N. C., Flannigan, D. J., Hopkins, S. D., and Xu, H.
(2018). The chemical history of a bubble. Accounts of Chemical Research
and the present methods of distributing grants unduly favor
51, 2169-2178. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.8b00088.
the Apollonian” (Szent-Györgyi, 1972, p. 966). Szent-Györgyi, A. (1933). Chemical and biological effects of ultra-sonic
radiation. Nature 131, 278-278. https://doi.org/10.1038/131278a0.
The dawn of ultrasonics was well before regular government Szent-Györgyi, A. (1972). Dionysians and Apollonians. Science 176, 966.
funding from the National Science Foundation, the National https://doi.org/10.1126/science.176.4038.966.
Wood, R. W. (1911). Physical Optics. Macmillan, New York.
Institutes of Health, and the French National Center for Wood, R. W. (1939). Supersonics: The Science of Inaudible Sounds. Brown
Scientific Research. What I find especially interesting are University, Providence, RI.
the methods tapped by these Dionysian scientists: wartime Wood, R. W., and Loomis, A. L. (1927). The physical and biological effects
crisis funding and “the facilities of a great private laboratory of high-frequency sound-waves of great intensity. The London, Edinburgh,
and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 4, 417-436.
backed by a great private fortune” (Alvarez, 1983), rather
https://doi.org/10.1080/14786440908564348.
different from modern funding modes. Loomis’s wide-
ranging and extraordinarily creative contributions, first in BioSketch
ultrasonics, are Dionysian in its finest form as was his ability
to gather around him brilliant minds of similar proclivities.
Kenneth S. Suslick is the Schmidt
References Research Professor of Chemistry at the
Alvarez, L. W. (1983). Alfred Lee Loomis-Last Great Amateur of Science.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-
Physics Today 36, 25-34. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2915442. paign. He received his BS from Caltech in
Anonymous. (1940). William T. Richards. Daily Princetonian Special 1974 and PhD from Stanford University in
Bulletin, February 1, 1940, p. 1. Available at https://bit.ly/2KzpbrQ. 1978, coming to the University of Illinois
Boyle, R. W. (1928). Ultrasonics. Science Progress in the Twentieth Century
23, 75-105. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/43429952. at Urbana-Champaign immediately there-
Conant, J. (2002). Tuxedo Park. Simon & Schuster, New York. after. He has received the Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary
Dieke, G. H. (1956). Robert Williams Wood, 1868–1955. Biographical Silver Medal (Acoustical Society of America), Centenary Prize
Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 2, 326-345.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1956.0022.
and Stokes Medal (Royal Society of Chemistry), Materials
Frenzel, J., and Schultes, H. (1934). Luminescence in water as a result Research Society Medal, Chemical Pioneer Award (American
of cavitation induced by supersonic waves. Zeitschrift für Physikalische Institute of Chemists), and the Nobel Laureate Signature and
Chemie 27, 421-424. https://doi.org/10.1515/zpch-1934-0137. Hildebrand Awards from the American Chemical Society. He
Hinman, J. J., and Suslick, K. S. (2017). Nanostructured materials synthesis
using ultrasound. Current Topics in Chemistry 375, 59-94. received the Eastman Professorship at Oxford (UK) for 2018–
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41061-016-0100-9. 2019. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Bearing Fruit: Plant Bioacoustics
is Blossoming
Aaron M. Thode There is growing interest in how plants transmit, reflect, generate, and perhaps even
Address: respond to sound.
Marine Physical Laboratory
Scripps Institution of Oceanography Plants comprise about 80% of the Earth’s biomass and capture over 100 billion tons
University of California, San Diego of carbon per year in additional biomass. They form the foundation of the animal
9500 Gilman Drive kingdom’s food supply; transform our atmosphere; loom over our art, agriculture,
La Jolla, California 92093 and architecture; and inspire work in many scientific disciplines, from genomics to
USA biochemistry to ecology. Yet the role of sound in plant studies has received relatively
little study from bioacousticians, remaining a topic more likely found in the realms
Email:
of urban legend (playing Mozart to your plants) than in peer-reviewed literature.
[email protected]
Indeed, although the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) has an Animal Bioacoustics
Technical Committee, nothing is formally organized with respect to plants. However,
over the past decade, interest in the relationship between sound and plants has begun
to, well, sprout. Over the past two decades, nearly 200 publications on the subject
have appeared.
In May 2018, the ASA hosted an exploratory special session on plant bioacoustics
that attempted to survey the many ways the field of acoustics intersects with fields
of plants. This article germinated from that session, which explored four different
topics relating acoustics to plants.
This article begins with reviewing how plants distort and transmit sounds generated by
insect pests and then examines some surprising examples of how plants have evolved
to reflect and enhance animal sounds, potentially opening new facets in animal-plant
interaction studies. The focus then shifts to how plants can generate sounds through
photosynthesis and transpiration stress, reviving long-standing interests in using non-
invasive passive acoustics to diagnose and measure plant physiology.
Finally, the discussion branches into more speculative territory, as a relatively recent
spate of publications suggest that plants can sense and respond to acoustic and mechani-
cal stimuli, despite the fact that these organisms lack an identifiable nervous system.
Stem Seismology: How Pest Sounds Disperse in Vegetation

Bioacoustic studies of insect pests have provided the longest paper trail for bioacous-
tic plant studies, with papers on the topic of detecting insect pests first appearing
in 1909, with a description of the sounds of termites chewing wood (Main, 1909).
A few papers per decade then dribbled through the literature during the twentieth
century, but over the past 30 years, there has been a substantial jump in literature
(132 articles/patents up to 2011) on detecting the presence of agricultural pests
on both living and harvested plant material, which is a topic of intense agricul-
tural, economic, and environmental interest. Like many acoustic subdisciplines,
this advancement in interest can be directly related to the falling costs of hardware
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.47
Plant Bioacoustics
to detect and measure sound and the increasing sophistica- in a manner that a seismologist or ocean acoustician would
tion of computational signal-processing abilities. Studies using find familiar.
bioacoustic tools to detect plant-based pests will continue to
expand, given that over 218 species across 12 different insect Lujo et al. (2016) have presented in detail one example of such
orders have been identified as using sounds or vibration for research in plant lice. Males vibrate their wings to generate
communication, with the true number of species certainly 0.2-kHz tonal signals with harmonics up to 3 kHz, which are
being much higher (Hill, 2008). transmitted down their legs into tree branches. The relative
strength of these harmonics changes with distance along a
Investigators across the United States study a wide variety branch, but females tend to respond as long as a few harmon-
of pests. Richard Mankin at the US Department of Agricul- ics are still present. Waveguide dispersion effects are apparent,
ture (USDA) has conducted research on how to spot invasive with different frequency components traveling at different
pests like the devastating Asian citrus “jumping plant lice” speeds along the branch, and multiple researchers have spec-
(Diaphorina citri) and Asian longhorn beetle (Anoplophora ulated that insects might exploit these frequency-dependent
glabripennis) in living trees, whose larvae break fibers while absorption and dispersion effects to estimate the direction and
feeding or moving through woody tunnels (Mankin et al., 2011, distance to a potential mate.
2018). Alexander Sutin at the Stevens Institute of Technology
(Hoboken, NJ) has focused on insect detection in agricultural Even more intriguing is the limited evidence that suggests that
shipments and wood packing materials (Sutin et al., 2017). insect sounds can be transmitted between different plants, even
Richard Hofstetter at Arizona State University (Tempe) has those that aren’t physically touching. Shira Gordon and her col-
conducted detailed investigations into the sounds of multiple leagues at the USDA (2019) have investigated how mating calls
species of piñon bark beetles, which naturally live in native from the glassy-winged sharpshooter (Homalodisca vitripen-
piñon trees throughout the American West (Hofstetter et nis) are transmitted through grapevines by using a transducer
al., 2014). However, a drying climate has stressed these trees, to mechanically vibrate a single plant stem and then using a
leading to outbreaks of bark beetle infestations that have laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) to characterize the resulting
been estimated to kill nearly a third of piñon trees in the transmission along the plant. Like other researchers, Gordon et
United States. al. found evidence of frequency-dependent dispersion, in that
the higher harmonics of the call had higher group sound veloci-
Despite the wide variety of species examined, there are con- ties than the lower harmonics, consistent with Bernoulli-Euler
sistent patterns and challenges faced by all these researchers. beam flexure theory. What was more surprising was that they
Many insect larvae in woody substrates produce broadband, found evidence that these artificially generated calls could be
even ultrasonic, pulse trains of short, 1- to 10-ms impulses. transferred between nonconnected plants by sound radiation
The pulses often occur in short bursts, with interpulse inter- from the broad grape leaves that act like crude diaphragms in
vals of 200 ms or less. Adults of other species generate tonal speakers. The LDV could still detect 100-Hz vibrations on plants
signals with substantial harmonics. The signals are normally separated by up to 10 cm from another plant agitated by the
detectable to only several centimeter ranges when propagat- transducer, albeit attenuated by 60 dB, with higher frequency
ing through the air, but whenever the vibrations of a single components detectable at shorter distances.
animal travel through plant substrates, they have been detected
by accelerometers up to 4 meters distant before fading into the The practical importance of plant propagation effects on insect
background noise spectrum. Ultrasonic sounds (>20 kHz) are signals is that it complicates efforts to automatically detect and
particularly effective for long-range detection because back- distinguish insect sounds from other acoustic sources, a prob-
ground noise levels are generally low. lem familiar to many animal bioacousticians. Furthermore,
researchers are investigating whether acoustic playbacks of
The increasing scrutiny of these sounds has made plant insect sounds or variations thereof could be used to prevent or
researchers appreciate how crucial the structure of plants is even expel existing pests from trees using various sounds (e.g.,
in transmitting and modifying sound. The anisotropic and Hofstetter et al., 2014), and knowledge of the transmission path
heterogeneous nature of plants causes filtering, waveguide dis- through plants is an obvious requirement for reproducing con-
persion, and even the resonant enhancement of insect signals vincing fidelity.

Who’s Signaling Who? Animal-Plant
Acoustic Interactions
Given that plants play such an important role in transmitting
animal signals, biologists have begun investigating whether
plants have evolved mechanisms to enhance or repress animal
acoustic signals. Although current evidence is fragmentary,
what exists is intriguing. During a presentation at the ASA
plant bioacoustics special session, Michael G. Schöner at the
University of Greifswald (Greifswald, Germany) revealed
that various bat species pollinate around 250 genera of tropi-
cal plants. His close examination of several of these species
has found that the petals and flowers of these plants generate
strong reflections of bat ultrasonic signals over a broad range
of aspect angles. Removal of these structures reduced the abil-
ity of bats to locate and pollinate the plants (Schöner et al.,
2016). As one particular example (Figure 1), a pitcher plant
(Nepenthes hemsleyana) that serves as the mutualistic (mutually
beneficial) host for a small bat species (whose feces fertilize the
plant) has a concave structure in the back wall that serves as a
reflector. A closely related pitcher plant species that does not
host bats lacks this structure and is dramatically less acousti-
cally reflective. Although these detailed measurements have
been directly conducted only in a few plants, Schöner et al.
noted that the fertilization by bat feces is not uncommon in
other plant species, including trees. They also observed that
many bat-interacting plants display flagellichory, the character-
istic of exposing fruits by hanging them on a long peduncle, a
structure would seem to enhance a bat’s ability to acoustically Figure 1. Passive acoustic signaling in two nonrelated plant species.
detect fruit. The neotropical vine Marcgravia evenia attracts bats, which pollinate
its flowers. Exemplary spectral directional patterns of a dish-shaped
Although his research has been confined to bats, Schöner et al. leaf (a) and a foliage leaf (b) are shown. Dish-shaped leaf echoes were
(2016) have speculated whether plants have evolved structures of high intensity, were multidirectional, and had an invariant echo
to enhance signals from other animal orders such as insects. signature compared with those of foliage leaves. The paleotropical
Several ant species colonize plants and have alarm signals that carnivorous plant Nepenthes hemsleyana attracts bats that fertilize
are transmitted via knocking their bodies on the plant’s stem, the plant with their feces. Exemplary spectral directional patterns of
alerting the entire colony. No one knows whether plants could the back wall of N. hemsleyana pitchers (c) show that this structure
have evolved efficient means of enhancing these signals. is a similar multidirectional echo reflector as the dish-shaped leaves of
M. evenia. Such structures are missing in other pitcher plant species
However, entomologists have studied the phenomenon of such as N. rafflesiana (d), the closest relative of N. hemsleyana, that
“buzz-pollination” for decades, wherein pollinating insects does not attract and host bats. Reprinted from Schöner et al., 2016,
(mostly bees) use vibrations to release and extract pollen from with permission from Elsevier.
flowers. Buzz-pollinated flowers occur in species from 65 dif-
ferent plant families and are believed to have independently
evolved multiple times. Although considerable research has may have coevolved to permit species-specific stimulation of
examined the behavior and signals produced by pollinating pollen release.
insects, a recent review paper on buzz-pollination (De Luca
and Vallejo-Marín, 2013) noted relatively little work has Perhaps further surprising acoustic interactions between plants
been performed on how the mechanical structures of flowers and animals lie in wait.

Plant Bioacoustics
Probing Plant Physiology The possibility of using noninvasive, nondestructive acoustic

Plants can transmit and reflect animal sounds, but they also methods to measure the drought stress of plants in the field
produce sounds as well as a result of various physiological has fascinated scientists for decades. This is because standard
processes. Bending and drying wood produces microfractures methods for measuring hydraulic conductivity involve needles
and other displacements that can generate acoustic energy, a and other invasive poky things, which tend to inject air bubbles,
process dubbed acoustic emission (AE). As far back as 1933, creating all sorts of artifacts in the resulting measurements.
Kishinouye (1990) conducted what may have been the first AE
experiment by recording the sounds made by a piece of wood However, multiple challenges face acoustic measurements.
under bending stress. Active research continues into using AE Plants produce bubbles in a multitude of ways beyond dehy-
techniques to check the quality of lumber being dried on an dration, including fiber cavitation, mechanical strain and
industrial scale as well as being a host of other inorganic struc- fracturing, rewatering, freezing, and thawing. Progress on
tures and materials. this front has interesting parallels to signal classification in
animal bioacoustics; increasing signal-processing capabili-
However, the most consistent acoustic study of plant physi- ties has allowed more detailed features of cavitation signals
ology began in 1966 (Milburn and Johnson, 1966), when to be extracted and correlated with different source mecha-
researchers observed that dehydrating plants produce ultra- nisms. For example, recent work has found that dehydration
sonic cavitation sounds. We all know that plants need water cavitation generally produces signals with peak frequencies
to survive, but what we generally do not realize is that less between 100 and 200 kHz, whereas other bubble-formation
than 1% of the water consumed by a plant is used to grow processes tend to produce signals with lower peak frequen-
via photosynthesis. cies (De Roo et al., 2016). Hindering further progress is a lack
of knowledge about the detailed micromechanics of how cavi-
Instead, more than 99% of the of water absorbed by plant roots tation bubbles form. And just as the case with insect sound
rises through the stem or trunk along a thin cylindrical layer transmission, the ultrasonic cavitation signals experience
called the xylem, on its way to being transported toward stomata absorption and dispersion as they work their way through
embedded in the leaves where it eventually transpires into the the complex structure of a plant, complicating signal feature
atmosphere. This internal water flow transports nutrients to extraction and classification.
the leaves and cools and maintains the shape and structure
of the plant on both a macro- and microscopic level. As the Even more troublesome is that all acoustic metrics to date are
water evaporates from the leaves, the high viscosity (and thus nonlinearly related to dehydration level (formally defined as
surface tension) of the water causes it to be wicked up from the percentage loss of hydraulic conductivity), in part because
roots, and thus the various conduits conducting water through acoustic cavitation is related to changes in air embolism
the xylem are under hydraulic pressure. When water becomes (dehydration) rather than the absolute level of drought stress
scarce in the ground, the conduit tension increases, just like the itself. Raw counting of cavitation signal rates turns out to be
tension you feel in your mouth when trying to suck a particu- an inconsistent indicator of drought stress, so more recent
larly thick milkshake through a small-diameter straw. When work has added measurements of cumulative energy (or
the milkshake is nearly gone, air bubbles enter the straw and sound exposure), which has led to some improvements (De
create loud sounds that siblings have used to annoy each other Roo et al., 2016). The prospect of measuring drought stress
for generations. in the field with acoustics remains tantalizing.
Similarly, if the hydraulic tension in the xylem of the plant A completely independent line of research into plant pho-
gets too large, gas will begin entering the conduits, forming tosynthesis has emerged in underwater acoustics, where
cavitation bubbles that, if they grow too numerous and large, multiple researchers have investigated how underwater
will impair sap flow and eventually wilt and kill the plant. As photosynthesis in seagrass and, more recently, marine
these bubbles form and cavitate, they radiate acoustic energy, algae can be detected using sonar. The work by Freeman
as any frustrated underwater propeller engineer will tell you. et al. (2018) on algae has even found that photosynthesis
These ultrasonic signals can be picked up by transducers placed can be measured with passive acoustics by detecting the
in the bark and can thus reveal whether an in situ plant is “ringing” of the oxygen bubbles as they separate from the
drought stressed. plant and drift toward the surface. Tank measurements of

over both short- and long-term scales despite their lack of
clear sensory mechanisms for detecting it. Trees do change
growth patterns in response to low-frequency mechani-
cal vibration. For example, scientific studies of the effect of
wind on tree growth go back to 1803, and the impressive
(and vaguely Dr. Seussian) term “thigmomorphogenesis” was
coined in 1973 to “describe the response of plants to wind
and other mechanical perturbations, including mechanical
bending or flexing or by touching or brushing by passing
animals” (Telewski, 2006, p. 1468). If plants could change
Figure 2. Relationship between algae photosynthesis and passive growth patterns in response to low-frequency perturbations,
acoustic bubble detection. A: relationship between time of day, why not sound?
bubble detection rate, and bubble frequency. B: relationship between
measured sound exposure level (SEL) of bubble pulses and dissolved The earliest peer-reviewed research on the topic from the 1950s
oxygen level in tank. Reproduced from Freeman et al., 2018. and 1960s seemed focused on how music playbacks influenced
plant yields (Klein and Edsall, 1965). There seemed to be little
attempt to standardize procedures for music selection, and
the alga Gracilaria salicornia showed that photosynthesis one can find literature results for Karnatic music (a form of
causes bubble oscillations between 3 and 35 kHz, with the Indian classical music), Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” wed-
cumulative sound energy (sound exposure level) tracking ding music, Gregorian chant, and the Beatles (specifically, “I
the rising and falling of dissolved oxygen levels across day- Want to Hold your Hand”). There was also little-to-no attempt
time and nighttime light levels (Figure 2). to standardize species selection, playback duty cycle, source
level, or other playback variables, and even definitions of plant
Interestingly, Freeman et al. (2018) found that field measure- response were inconsistent. Given the lack of controls and
ments of daytime ambient noise in this same frequency band standardization, one would probably not be shocked to real-
appear to correlate with the percentage of algal cover on coral ize that the reported responses were all over the map (e.g., “we
reefs, independent of other reef-based bioacoustic processes. could not observe any stem nutation in plants exposed to the
Algal dominance is a key indicator of coral reef ecosystems Beatles”; Klein and Edsall, 1965) and generally irreproducible.
stress because warmer waters, polluting nutrients from terres- Work on the topic dropped into the realms of urban folklore
trial runoff, and the removal of herbivorous fishes for human and middle-school science fair projects. Highly questionable
consumption all promote algal growth. These observations claims by a 1973 bestselling book, The Secret Lives of Plants, cast
suggest that it may be possible to quantify the degree of reef a miasma over the entire topic for decades.
degradation through passive acoustic monitoring.
A series of papers by Weinberger and various coauthors (e.g.,
Beatles and Beetles: Do Plants Respond to Weinberger and Burton, 1981) seem to be among the first to
Sound or Other Vibration? eschew music in favor of single-frequency tones and other
Despite casual appearances, evidence abounds that vascu- simple reproducible signals to study plant response. The con-
lar plants respond to changes in environmental conditions. tinuing advent of low-cost electronically customizable and
Flowers open during the day and close at night, roots grow in reproducible sound playbacks seems to have led to a spurt of
the direction of moisture, and leaves generate natural repel- credible research on the topic, with more rigorous controls,
lents when an insect chews on them. Plants even respond to beginning in the twenty-first century (Jung et al., 2018).
the actions of other plants via communication by direct touch,
light, and chemical compounds. For example, plants near- Several papers have attracted particular attention. Appel
drought-stressed plants will respond by closing the stomata and Cocroft (2014) published observations that the play-
in their leaves so as not to lose more water. back of caterpillar feeding sounds (think “munching”)
in the absence of caterpillars led rosette plants to release
It is not surprising, therefore, that many have wondered higher levels of chemical defenses (glucosinolates and
whether plants respond to sound or mechanical vibration anthocyanins) once actual caterpillars started to feed on

Plant Bioacoustics
Figure 3. a: Playback of caterpillar feeding vibrations increased the induced response of A. thaliana to herbivore damage compared with no-
vibration controls: *P < 0.05; error bars 95% confidence; N = 44/bar (43 for rosette center); N.S., not significant. b: Gray scale map showing
the increase in chemical response in the playback leaves (pbl) and same-age systemic leaves (sl), expressed as the percent change from the levels
in control plants. c: Relationship between the amplitude of chewing vibration playbacks and the chemical defensive response (N = 22). GS,
glucosinolates. Reproduced from Appel and Cocroft, 2014.
the leaves. In other words, sound had a “priming” effect on responded differentially to accessible water, flowing (but
the chemical defenses of the plant. The caterpillar sounds inaccessible) water, and recorded sounds of flowing water.
were initially recorded with a laser Doppler vibrometer and To demonstrate this, the authors gave growing plant roots
then reproduced using piezoelectric actuators supported an opportunity to grow into one of two plastic trays, one
under a leaf, mimicking the duty cycle and source level of of which served as a control, and the other was exposed
the original signals with as much fidelity as possible. Two either to a PVC tube containing inaccessible moving water
plants received playback while an additional two had an (while keeping the soil temperature constant) or to a speaker
actuator attached but no playback. Playbacks of wind and broadcasting back the circulating water sound (Figure 4).
leafhopper insect calls (which occupy a similar spectral They found strong evidence that the presence of water circu-
range as the caterpillars) were also conducted. Each test lating in a PVC pipe attracted root growth even though the
plant had two leaves removed and were tested for chemical water was not accessible and the temperatures remained the
defense expression; one leaf had the piezoelectric actuator same (scenarios TS1 and TS2). Oddly enough, they found
attached, and the other (systemic) leaf was selected from the presence of the embedded speaker and MP3 playback
the part of the rosette most distant from the activated leaf. device seemed to repeal root growth regardless of whether
Figure 3 illustrates that the authors found that chemical and what type of sound was played (scenarios TS3-TS6).
defense concentrations rose 32% in the directly activated They then modified the experiment so that both plastic
leaves and 24% in the more distant leaves and that increas- trays were outfitted with playback systems but with only
ing the amplitude of the playbacks corresponded with one broadcasting flowing water sound (scenarios TS7-TS9).
increasing concentrations of chemical response. Playbacks Only then did they note a preference in root growth toward
of the other two sounds yielded responses statistically indis- the water playback compared with a speaker generating no
tinguishable from the control. signal (TS9), but the roots didn’t seem to be able to distin-
guish between flowing water noise and white noise (TS8).
Monica Gagliano is another researcher who has consistently The authors speculate that magnets in the attached speaker
published work on potential plant responses to sound, with might have influenced the response of the roots as well.
a particular focus on root growth in response to sound play-
backs. Her work seems representative of modern playback Both of these experiments illustrate the difficulties involved
experiments. After some initial work showing that bean in measuring potential plant responses to sound. Isolating
sprout roots grow toward 200-Hz playback tones, Gagliano the effects of sound and vibration from other potential envi-
and her colleagues (2017) described how garden pea roots ronmental cues (temperature, chemical release, physical

Figure 4. a-c: Experimental setup configurations showing treatment contact, magnetism) is difficult, as is accurately replicat-
(red) and control (green) root cups. A and B: number of seedlings that ing the spectrum, amplitude, and temporal structure of the
directed their roots toward the treatment side (white bars) across all sound stimulus. There also remains the fundamental question
test scenarios (scenarios TS1 to TS9). Gray bars, seedlings that did not as to whether plants are potentially responding to short-range
choose the treatment side; red dashed lines, distinct scenarios. See text mechanical vibration, near-field acoustic particle motion, or
for more details. Reprinted from Gagliano et al., 2017, with permission. true acoustic sound, in the sense of a far-field airborne pres-
sure perturbation (ten Cate, 2013).
Despite these challenges, a growth spurt of new results over

the past two decades has stimulated a parallel theoretical
debate in the literature about potential underlying mecha-
nisms for sound reception and response: alterations in gene
transcription, soluble protein content, or other cellular level
effects such as changes in the plasma membrane protein
structure of microfilament rearrangements (Hilker et al.,
2016; Mishra et al., 2016). The state of the discussion at pres-
ent seems reminiscent of the arguments about continental
drift at the turn of the twentieth century; there was empirical
evidence that continents had shifted their positions in the
past, but no one could provide a theoretical explanation into
how granite-based continents could plow across basaltic sea
floors. It remains uncertain where the present debate will go,
but it seems certain that improved low-cost acoustic playback
equipment and better experimental technique have added
new fertilizer to some old questions.
Taking Root in the Acoustical Society of America

Plant bioacoustics covers many different fields of expertise
and many different topics, but a consistent feature about
most of this research is that the advent of modern signal
processing has opened up many opportunities for field
biologists to explore the topic. Another consistent feature
is that very little of it has been presented at ASA confer-
ences or published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society
of America. Instead, the work has generally been presented
in biological or agricultural journals. One wonders whether
the current organization of the technical committees of the
Society makes it difficult for plant bioacoustic research to
find a natural venue, and if so, whether the society may be
missing an opportunity to branch out into a new frontier
of bioacoustics.
References
Appel, H. M., and Cocroft, R. (2014). Plants respond to leaf vibrations

caused by insect herbivore chewing. Oecologia 175(4), 1257-1266.
De Luca, P. A., and Vallejo-Marín, M. (2013). What’s the ‘buzz’ about?
The ecology and evolutionary significance of buzz-pollination. Current
Opinion in Plant Biology 16(4), 429-435.

Plant Bioacoustics
De Roo, L., Vergeynst, L., De Baerdemaeker, N., and Steppe, K. (2016). Telewski, F. W. (2006). A unified hypothesis of mechanoperception in
Acoustic emissions to measure drought-induced cavitation in plants. plants. American Journal of Botany 93(10), 1466-1476.
Applied Sciences 6(3), 71. ten Cate, C. (2013). Acoustic communication in plants: Do the woods really
Freeman, S. E., Freeman, L. A., Giorli, G., and Haas, A. F. (2018). Photo- sing. Behavioral Ecology 24, 799-800.
synthesis by marine algae produces sound, contributing to the daytime Weinberger, P., and Burton, C. (1981). The effect of sonication on the growth
soundscape on coral reefs. PLoS ONE 13(10), e0201766. of some tree seeds. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 11(4), 840-844.
Gagliano, M., Grimonprez, M., Depczynski, M., and Renton, M.
(2017). Tuned in: Plant roots use sound to locate water. Oecologia BioSketch
184(1), 151-160.
Gordon, S. D., Tiller, B., Windmill, J. F. C., Krugner, R., and Narins, P.
(2019). Transmission of the vibrational signal of the glassy-winged sharp- Aaron M. Thode received his Bachelor
shooter, Homalodisca vitripennis, within and between grapevines. Journal
of Science degree in physics and Mas-
of Comparative Physiology A 205(5), 783-791.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-019-01366-w. ter’s degree in electrical engineering
Hilker, M., Schwachtje, J., Baie.r, M., Balazadeh, S., Bäurle, I., Geiselhardt, from Stanford University (Stanford, CA),
S., Hincha, D. K., Kunze, R., Mueller‐Roeber, B., Rillig, M. C., and Rolff, received his PhD in oceanography from
J. (2016). Priming and memory of stress responses in organisms lacking
a nervous system. Biological Reviews 91(4), 1118-1133.
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Hill, P. S. (2008). Vibrational Communication in Animals. Harvard University (SIO), University of California, San Diego
Press, Cambridge, MA. (La Jolla), and is currently a research scientist at the SIO. His
Hofstetter, R. W., Dunn, D. D., McGuire, R., and Potter, K. A. (2014). Using research incorporates underwater acoustics, acoustical ocean-
acoustic technology to reduce bark beetle reproduction. Pest Management
Science 70(1), 24-27. ography, and marine bioacoustics, for which he has been
Jung, J., Kim, S.-K., Kim, J. Y., Jeong, M.-J., and Ryu, C.-M. (2018). Beyond awarded the A. B. Wood Medal from the Acoustical Society
chemical triggers: Evidence for sound-evoked physiological reactions in of America and the Medwin Prize from the UK Institute of
plants. Frontiers in Plant Science 9, 25.
Acoustics. He has never listened to plants and is a terrible gar-
Kishinouye, F. (1990). An experiment on the progression of fracture. Journal
of Acoustic Emission 9(3), 177-180. (Reprint of a report presented at the dener but did cosponsor a special session on plant bioacoustics
Earthquake Research Institute Seminar on November 21, 1933.) in 2018 at the Acoustical Society of America meeting.
Klein, R. M., and Edsall, P. C. (1965). On the reported effects of sound on
the growth of plants. Bioscience 15(2), 125-126.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1293353.
Lujo, S., Hartman, E., Norton, K., Pregmon, E., Rohde, B. B., and Mankin,
R. W. (2016). Disrupting mating behavior of Diaphorina citri (Liviidae). The Journal of the Acoustical
Journal of Economic Entomology 109(6), 2373-2379. Society of America
Main, F. (1909). La destruction des fourmis blanches. Journale Agricultural
Tropicale 101, 350.
Mankin, R., Hagstrum, D., Smith, M., Roda, A., and Kairo, M. (2011). SPECIAL ISSUE ON
Perspective and promise: A century of insect acoustic detection and moni-
toring. American Entomologist 57(1), 30-44.
Mankin, R., Stanaland, D., Haseeb, M., Rohde, B., Menocal, O., and Car- Noise-Induced
rillo, D. (2018). Assessment of plant structural characteristics, health, and
ecology using bioacoustic tools. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 33, Hearing Loss
010003. https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0000902.
Milburn, J. A., and Johnson, R. (1966). The conduction of sap. Planta Be sure to look for other special issues of JASA
69(1), 43-52. that are published every year.
Mishra, R. C., Ghosh, R., and Bae, H. (2016). Plant acoustics: In the search
of a sound mechanism for sound signaling in plants. Journal of Experi-
mental Botany 67(15), 4483-4494.
Schöner, M. G., Simon, R., and Schöner, C. R. (2016). Acoustic commu-
nication in plant-animal interactions. Current Opinion in Plant Biology
32, 88-95.
Sutin, A., Flynn, T., Salloum, H., Sedunov, N., Sinelnikov, Y., and Hull-
See these papers at:
Sanders, H. (2017). Vibro-acoustic methods of insect detection in acousticstoday.org/noiseinduced
agricultural shipments and wood packing materials. Proceedings of the
2017 IEEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Secu-
rity (HST), Waltham, MA, April 25-26, 2017, pp. 425-430.

As We Enter the Second Century
of Electroacoustics...
Stephen C. Thompson A look back at a century of electroacoustic transducers and systems and an attempt
Address: to look forward.
Graduate Program in Acoustics
The Pennsylvania State University Introduction
Room 201, Applied Science Building The term electroacoustics is generally understood to include the design, develop-
University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 ment, and use of devices that convert acoustical signals to electrical signals, and
USA vice versa. To some, the term may be limited to the field of audio engineering, where
it describes the use of microphones, loudspeakers, and audio recording and pro-
Email:
duction techniques. This article, however, takes a broader view to include devices
[email protected]
working in media other than air such as sonar systems, underwater acoustic com-
munication, and medical ultrasound systems. It does not include biological systems,
such as the human ear, that convert sound into electrical nerve impulses or electri-
cal discharge systems such as lightening that produces thunder. It also limits the
discussion to transducer and acoustic system design and does not include the more
artistic endeavor of audio recording and production.
I believe that the modern subject of electroacoustics requires the existence of elec-
tronic amplifiers to preserve at least reasonable signal fidelity. With this requirement,
modern electroacoustics began with the introduction of vacuum tube electronics that
could provide high-impedance preamplifiers and reasonably linear low-impedance
driving amplifiers for the output devices. Vacuum tubes were invented in the first
decade of the twentieth century (Fleming, 1905; De Forest, 1907), although it took
another couple of decades until they achieved the aforementioned characteristics.
With this definition, the history of modern electroacoustics began about a century ago.
However, there was a significant prehistory of less capable devices that were ready for
the improvements possible when electronic amplifiers became available.
The telegraph of the mid-1800s may actually be considered a primitive electroacous-

tic device. The telegrapher’s key acts as a switch at the transmitting end to send
pulses of electrical current through the circuit. At the receiving end, the current
pulses pass through a coil. These current pulses magnetically actuate a mechanical
device whose motion generates clicking sounds. Although this system is primarily
electromechanical in operation, it is the clicking sound at the receiving end that
conveys information via Morse code to the receiving operator. Thus, the telegraph
may be considered an electroacoustic system, although that is a huge stretch of the
modern understanding of electroacoustics.
There was an early audio recording industry before the advent of electronics. That
industry and its methods and devices were covered previously in Acoustics Today
by Brock-Nannestad (2016). The early telephone system was also developed with-
out electronic amplifiers in the late nineteenth century. The telephone circuit was
an electrical direct current loop that included a carbon microphone and a moving
armature speaker in the earpiece.
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.55
Second Century of Electroacoustics
longer distances. The repeater included is a magnetomechan-

ical driver similar to the earphone drivers in the telephone
and another carbon microphone. This mechanical actuator
in the input current loop drives the carbon microphone in
the output current loop. The constant voltage source in each
current loop provides the power to enable the gain in signal
amplitude across the repeater.
Considerable progress was made beyond the carbon micro-

phone and the magnetic earphone. By 1925, most of the
currently known major transducer types operating in air
had been described. This includes the dynamic microphone
(Siemens, 1874), the condenser microphone (Wente, 1922),
the balanced armature speaker (Egerton, 1921), and moving
Figure 1. An open carbon microphone capsule showing the internal coil speakers (Rice and Kellogg, 1925). Transducers that
carbon granules (middle right) and the flexible pressure diaphragm could operate underwater were investigated during and
(left). The post at the center of the diaphragm transfers the acoustic after World War I (see the article by Sustick in this issue of
pressure to the carbon granules. From bit.ly/2Ul6lrK Acoustics Today). Among the first hydrophones was a carbon
button microphone packaged in a watertight housing with
a flexible waterproof window to allow acoustic pressure to
The carbon microphone is simply an enclosed capsule con- compress the carbon granules. In addition, the first piezo-
taining loosely packed carbon granules (e.g., Figure 1). This electric transducers for underwater use were developed
capsule is often called a “button,” and the carbon micro- using quartz crystals. The basic transducer structures were
phone is often called the carbon button microphone or just known, but better materials and improved design meth-
the button microphone in the literature. The carbon granules ods were not yet available. Figure 2 shows some of these
are somewhat electrically conductive, and their package has a early devices.
flexible membrane that allows acoustic pressure to cyclically
compress the thickness and compact the carbon particles so By the 1930s, vacuum tube electronic amplifiers were suf-
that the electrical resistance across the package varies with ficiently available so that textbooks on acoustics described
the pressure signal. the operation of microphones and speakers in ways that
assumed electronic amplification would be used. Books such
The early telephone system operated without the active ampli- as Applied Acoustics (Olsen and Massa, 1936) in the United
fication we understand today. The circuit did, however, have States and The New Acoustics (McLachlan, 1936) in Great
a constant voltage source that created a nominal circuit cur- Britain described the state of practice between the two World
rent. The resistance of the transmission line was constant, Wars. This article takes this time period as the starting point
so the varying resistance of the microphone caused a signal for the first century of electroacoustics.
current variation to be imposed on the otherwise constant
current from the voltage source. At the receiving end of the Developments from two different directions gave birth to
transmission line, the varying current passed through a coil the significant improvements in device and system perfor-
in a magnetic earphone. The audio signal from the micro- mance during the twentieth century. The first is consistently
phone end was reproduced in the earphone with reasonable improving methods of performance analysis and prediction
loudness and clarity. The sensitivity, bandwidth, internal of acoustic devices and systems. Methods of hand calcula-
noise level, and signal distortion would be considered poor tion in the first half of the twentieth century were replaced
by present listeners. But it was possible to transmit the lim- by computer analysis since midcentury. The second major
ited bandwidth voice signal for several miles through the theme is improved materials and manufacturing methods
telephone cable. By transferring the signal through repeater that allowed each generation of designers to see designs and
circuits to successive transmission cables with separate cur- performance in the last part of their careers that was unimag-
rent loops, it was possible to transmit the signal over much inable when they entered the technology area.

A B
C D
Figure 2. Examples of transducer devices that were available c. 1925. a: Drawing showing the internal construction of an early moving coil speaker.
Note the large “field coil” (left) that provides the static magnetic field required for actuation. From Rice, 1929. b: Photograph of a speaker built
as shown in a. c: Patent drawing showing the internal construction of a horn loudspeaker driver. From Pridham and Jensen, 1923. d: A horn
loudspeaker using the driver from Pridham and Jensen, 1923.
Progress from the 1920s Through the 1950s the telephone system. For loudspeakers, the availability of
The 1920s and 1930s hosted the beginnings of electroa- electronic power amplification enabled public address sys-
coustics as known it today, and the vacuum tube initiated tems in auditoria and audio presentation in movie theaters.
a growing electronics industry. This was both enabled and
enhanced by the start of the broadcast radio industry and by Significant developments in material science brought the
the growing audio and movie recording industries. The avail- availability of strong permanent magnets using ferrite ceram-
ability of high-input impedance preamplifiers enabled the use ics and Alnico metal alloys. (Alnico is a family of metal alloys
of both condenser microphones and dynamic microphones. of iron with aluminum [Al], nickel [Ni], and cobalt [Co].)
These microphones have significant advantages of lower inter- Without these good magnets, earlier magnetic transducers
nal noise and greater available bandwidth compared with the generally needed field coils powered by direct current to gen-
lower cost carbon microphones that continued to be used in erate sufficient magnetic fields. The new magnetic materials

enabled the design of balanced armature and moving coil available as seen in Figure 3. The Brüel & Kjær (B&K) series
speakers without the static power dissipation of field coils. of condenser measurement microphones had just been intro-
duced. Vacuum tube electronics had advanced considerably
This time period also saw the first use of ultrasound transmis- as broadcast television grew. Laboratory electronic equip-
sion for commercial applications (see the article in this issue ment included the Hewlett-Packard audio oscillator and
of Acoustics Today by Suslick on the history of ultrasonics). Tektronix oscilloscopes. Moving coil loudspeakers had the
Firestone was awarded a patent (1942) for the concept of “flaw general appearance of more modern devices. Long-playing
detection” in solids using ultrasound. This work would grow vinyl recordings (LPs) were no longer new, and stereophonic
into the field now known as nondestructive testing (NDT) recordings had recently been released.
that searches for flaws or imperfections in solid parts and
welds in a way that does not damage or affect the perfor- Underwater transduction also saw significant advances
mance of the parts so that they can continue to be used. The after the end of World War II. Activities during the war
first application of medical imaging using ultrasound was in had identified the need for far greater capability in naval
1956 in Glasgow, Scotland. Both of these topics remain active sonars. Piezoelectric material developments provided vast
areas of research and continued product development. improvements in sensitivity and power handling capability
for underwater transducers (Berlincourt et al., 1964). By the
This time period also greatly expanded the development of end of this period, the ceramic material lead zirconate tita-
the analysis methods considered standard today. Analog nate, usually called PZT, was taking over many applications
circuit models of transducer structures have multiple advan- in underwater transduction. PZT has higher performance
tages, at least for electrical engineers, in merging seamlessly than other the piezoelectric materials due to its relatively high
with the electrical transmission lines and filters that were part electromechanical coupling coefficient. As a ceramic, it can
of most electroacoustic systems and with the thought pro- also be manufactured in a wide range of sizes and shapes to
cess and design intuition of system designers. By midcentury, be used in a wide variety of transducer configurations. The
these methods were included in textbooks (e.g., Olson, 1947, development of naval high-power sonar arrays was then just
1958; Beranek, 1954; Hunt, 1954). These analysis methods, of in its infancy, but many of the early developments quickly
course, preceded the development of modern computers but migrated to the use of PZT.
enabled the design and development of recording and play-
back devices of consistently improving quality and fidelity. Perhaps the single event that had the greatest technological
impact in the second half of the twentieth century was the
This was also a time period that saw the early development invention of the transistor in 1947. The development of transis-
of undersea systems. World War I had seen the employ- tor electronics and the nascent use of computers for computer
ment of German U-boats with devastating consequences aided design set the stage for another wave of progress in
to shipping lanes. Some of the first hydrophones in that acoustic transduction. Of course, advances in materials and
time period employed carbon microphones in watertight materials processing also continued to be important.
housings that coupled the acoustic pressure through flex-
ible membranes. Like telephone microphones, these early Progress from the 1960s Through the 1980s
hydrophones did not have electronic amplification but Throughout the middle of the twentieth century, telephone
could be operated with the static current from a battery. companies continued to use carbon microphones in their
During World War II, simple devices evolved into complete handsets because they were small, rugged, inexpensive, and
active and passive sonar systems, with transducers based on good enough for the telephone system. Small condenser
magnetostriction in nickel. microphones might have provided better performance, but
the need for a large external bias voltage precluded their use.
By the end of the 1950s, the world of acoustic transduction
had entered a state that would be mostly recognizable, if That limitation was removed when Sessler and West iden-
viewed as somewhat quaint, by the students of today. Every- tified a suitable material and a manufacturing process for
thing was quite large by current sensibility, and essentially making an electret that could retain its charge indefinitely
nothing could be powered by batteries. However, recogniz- (see West, 1988, for a discussion of this discovery). The word
able predecessors of the devices used today were generally electret had been used for a long time to mean a material

A B C
Figure 3. Much of the laboratory equipment c. 1950 is recognizable by current researchers. a: The Hewlett-Packard 200CD audio oscillator
was introduced in 1952. From bit.ly/30Kk8u3. b: The capabilities of this Tektronix 535 dual-beam oscilloscope would be welcome in current
acoustics laboratories. From bit.ly/2Zzv1ld. c: The Brüel & Kjær (B&K) standard measurement microphones were introduced in 1958. Shown
here is a B&K 4134 0.5-inch microphone. The cylindrical package behind the microphone diaphragm cartridge contains a cathode follower
(vacuum tube) preamplifier.
that stores a permanent electric field in an analogous way In underwater transducer technology, the availability of
that a magnet stores a magnetic field. The potential ben- PZT ceramic materials enabled a wide range of underwater
efits of a good electret had been hypothesized, but no good transducer designs that provide the full suite of capabilities
electret materials had ever been identified or produced. In for surface ship and submarine sonars. Most of this develop-
fact, Gutmann (1948, p. 470) reports the use of very poor ment was not publicly documented, but enough has been
electrets in the microphones of captured Japanese radio reported to provide some understanding of the magnitude
equipment during World War II. However, the microphones of the developments. For example, a retrospective article by
in the captured equipment were nonfunctional because their Hueter (1972) describes some of the US Navy sonar devel-
electrets had discharged. opment. Among these was the use of large cylindrical or
spherical arrays including hundreds of piezoelectric trans-
The electret developed by Sessler and West is a thin film of ducer elements. By the end of this period, standard texts
polymer material that permanently stores a large electric (Wilson, 1985; Stansfield, 1991) included design guidance
charge (West, 1988, provides an overview of that develop- and simple analysis methods to understand these elements
ment). The electret film can be bonded inside the electrostatic and their performance in arrays of any size.
gap of a condenser microphone or used as the diaphragm of
that microphone. In either case, the charged electret creates Hueter (1972) mentions some significant problems that were
a strong electric field across the electrostatic gap and elimi- discovered and eventually solved in the development of the
nates the need for external electrical bias. By 1975, the electret large sonar arrays. “The real problem occurred in the early
microphone had begun to replace the carbon microphone 1960s with two active low-frequency arrays built for the
in the telephone and other consumer equipment and also ARTEMIS and the LORAD programs. Both arrays demon-
replaced magnetic and ceramic microphones in hearing aids strated local hot spots where the effective element impedance
and other miniature earpieces. Electret microphones were assumed negative radiation resistance values which were
the obvious choice for use in cellular telephones when that traced to mutual impedance terms that, until this time, had
market began to grow through the 1980s and 1990s. been ignored by most array designers” (Hueter, 1972, p. 1029).

The problems were acknowledged and methods to reduce the development costs could be supported by a wide range of
symptoms were developed (Carson, 1962). However, a full product technologies.
treatment of the analytical methods needed to understand
these problems became available in the open literature only An example is the SPICE (Simulation Program with
recently (Sherman and Butler, 2007). Integrated Circuit Emphasis) code for the analysis of
increasingly complex integrated circuits being used for
Advances in ultrasonic transduction using the new piezoelec- analog circuit models of multidomain systems including
tric materials enabled significant growth of field of NDT. Its transducers. SPICE was originally written at the University
use was common, for example, in inspecting the integrity of of California, Berkeley (e.g., Nagel, 1975). Another example
airframes, nuclear reactor cooling pipes, and the integrity of is finite element analysis (FEA) codes. Initially, these were
welds in the structure of pressure vessels. Continuing research written only for structural mechanical analysis. Now they
and commercial development in NDT had now broadened were being broadened to allow and encourage multidomain
beyond just finding cracks and flaws in a structural element. analysis (Decarpigny et al., 1985).
Under the name Structural Health Monitoring, it had grown
to include the continuous or periodic assessment of a struc- A significant material improvement was the development
ture to determine the need for service, repair and eventual of high-strength rare-earth magnets, culminating with
replacement of parts in the structure. neodymium-iron-boron magnets with significantly greater
magnetomotive force capability. This, in combination with
The use of ultrasound for medical diagnosis and treatment FEA magnetic field design methods, has enabled the design
had also continued to grow. Biomedical acoustics had become of significantly greater power-handling ability in moving-coil
a major industry (O’Brien, 2018). speaker designs. The improvements in speaker performance
that were evident at the turn of the century have continued to
Also, through the 1960s, the electronic computer began to the time of this publication. To those of us who purchased our
take on the complicated analyses that are needed in engi- first stereo systems in the 1960s or 1970s, the available output
neering design. This was a significant aid in the design of power level and sound clarity available in current commercial
the transducer elements, and it was essential to deal with the home entertainment systems seems remarkable.
complexity inherent in the large arrays. Generally, the rel-
evant computer codes did not have public distribution. One By the end of the century, small electret microphones had
exception was the SEADUCER (Steady State Evaluation and become nearly ubiquitous in telephones and nearly all con-
Analysis of Transducers) code developed by the San Diego sumer devices. The internal noise level of small electret
Navy Laboratory (Ding et al., 1973). This code could provide microphones precluded use in professional audio applica-
a frequency domain analysis of the electric, mechanical and tions, in hearing aids, and as measurement microphones
acoustic performance of a piezoelectric transducer. This and where accurate, long-term calibration is necessary. In those
contemporary competing analysis codes at other laborato- applications, electrically biased condenser microphones or
ries and industrial design activities were the first examples dynamic microphones continued to be used. In fact, it was
of computer-aided design specifically intended for acoustic not the noise or stability of the electret that created this situ-
transducers. Much of the work concerning sonar transducer ation. Rather, it was the low-cost materials and electronic
element and array analysis from the last decades of the twen- components and low-cost manufacturing methods that
tieth century has been preserved in a collection assembled by caused the noise and stability concerns. Electret measurement
Benthien and Hobbs (2005). microphones have been introduced in the present decade.
The Last Decades of the Twentieth Century Having invented the electret microphone that was now dom-
The dual themes of increasing capability of computational inant in the market, Sessler and West, among others, went on
resources and the development of improved materials and to invent the silicon microphone as a possible replacement
manufacturing methods continues. Preexisting custom technology (Holm and Sessler, 1983; Lindenberger et al.,
computer codes for transducer and acoustic system analysis 1985). This is a technology that uses the integrated-circuit
began to be replaced by more general-purpose codes whose manufacturing processes to build a condenser microphone

structure into the silicon wafer. It was conceived as a way to responded to new requirements by developing devices with
integrate the mechanical structure of the microphone and a wider range of performance parameters to better match the
the electronic components of the buffer amplifier onto the demands of manufacturers of smartphones and earphones.
same silicon chip. The silicon microphones built during this
time period had low-sensitivity and/or low-manufacturing Another important development is the commercial availabil-
yield that kept them from being competitive as production ity of single-crystal piezoelectric material with a very high
products. It would take about two decades from the initial electromechanical coupling coefficient. Although this mate-
concept publication for anyone to develop a viable com- rial development was initially funded by the Office of Naval
mercial product. Research for naval applications, its first broad commercial
application is in medical ultrasound transducers. The pri-
Entering the Twenty-First Century mary advantages in these devices are smaller size and wider
Much of the progress in the last two decades has been to transducer bandwidth.
consolidate the advances that were evident at the close of the
last century. On the computational front, FEA codes have Biomedical applications of ultrasound have continued to
continued to advance and to provide enhanced multidomain expand and improve as Acoustics Today has occasionally
analysis features and to provide significantly enhanced graph- reported. These improvements include the use of micro-
ical user interfaces that make it easier for the design experts bubbles to improve image contrast (Matula and Chen, 2013),
to use the codes. Several FEA codes now included the abil- therapeutic uses of acoustically driven microbubbles (Gray
ity to simultaneously model several physical domains (e.g., et al., 2019), higher resolution systems operating at higher
mechanical, magnetic, and electric domains) and to include ultrasonic frequencies (Kettering and Silverman, 2017), and
the relevant interdomain coupling equations. the use of ultrasound to aid in the transport of therapeutic
agents across the blood-brain barrier (Konofagou, 2017).
Analyses that might previously have been done with analog
circuits and SPICE are now done with greater flexibility using The silicon microphone was introduced as a commercial
new analysis languages. This activity started with the devel- product in 2004. Current terminology places the silicon
opment of the Modelica programming language specifically microphone in the category of microelectromechanical
intended for modeling complex physical systems in several system (MEMS) devices. Initial sales volumes of the MEMS
domains. The continued development of this language is microphones increased rapidly as mobile phone manufac-
managed by The Modelica Association, with information turers quickly switched their production away from electret
available at modelica.org. Commercial and freely available microphones. A primary initial advantage was the ability of
Modelica simulation environments are available (Modelica automated soldering methods in the production to connect
Association, 2019). A similar modeling environment called the microphones to the circuit board. Those methods are used
Simscape is available from MathWorks (2019). for all other components in the device, but they could not be
used with electret microphones that need to be soldered in
Continuing improvements have already been mentioned place by a manual operation because automated soldering
for moving-coil speakers in performance venues and home would damage or destroy the low-cost electret microphones.
theater applications. The performance available in many com-
pact, battery operated Bluetooth-connected speakers is an MEMS microphones are also generally smaller than other
example that may be familiar to current readers. microphone types, including the miniature electret micro-
phones that had previously been used in hearing aids and
The audio quality delivered by smartphones has also made earphones. Their small size makes them suitable for use
significant advances in the last decade. Much of the improve- arrays because they can be made into a compact spherical
ment likely comes from careful analysis of sound generation array of microphones that are useful in measuring the three-
by the microspeakers employed and from equally careful dimensional nature of the sound field.
analysis of the sound propagation through the small passages
and orifices in the device. Similar developments have also The term ambisonics has been used for this type of measure-
been made in the design of earphones and in-ear monitors ment since the mid-1970s (Fellgett, 1973). Initially, Fellgett
for stage musicians. Manufacturers of microspeakers have proposed using four microphones arranged in a tetragonal

are likely to arise from new materials, new manufacturing

processes, and advances in engineering analysis. That state-
ment has always been true. But where are those advances
to be found?
I cannot claim clairvoyance in this (or any other) area. How-

ever, it is true in the past that most of the material advances
that enabled major improvements in acoustical devices were
not primarily motivated by the market for acoustical devices.
Advances in permanent magnet materials in the 1930s pre-
sumably had much larger markets in the manufacture of
electric motors and electric-power generation equipment.
Neodymium magnets are used in electric vehicles and in
wind turbine generators. Improvements in other magnetic
materials may be possible, and cost reductions may continue
as sales volumes increase. These seem likely but will probably
not result in revolutionary system improvements.
Figure 4. The Eigenmike® spherical microphone array is the first to
One application area that may lead to changes is the improve-
provide higher order ambisonic beam patterns to record the spatial
ment in analyzing and reproducing the effects of directional
characteristics of a sound field. From mh acoustics, with permission.
sound. Work in ambisonics may aid our understanding of the
details of the complex wave fields that are judged to provide a
array. The sensor outputs were processed to form an omni- superior listening experience. The requirement to provide a
directional beam and the three dipole patterns along three realistic virtual reality experience may generate new require-
orthogonal axes. The intent was to record these four signals ments for sound recording and reproduction equipment.
and use them to reconstruct the sound field in a room using
speakers positioned for the room. Improvements during the first century started slowly as
vacuum tube electronics took hold. We may expect the rate
Methods for reconstructing the sound field are many, but of change in the next decades to be much more rapid because
the fundamental strategy for recording has been retained. advances in electronics, computational capabilities, and
Ambisonic recording now includes not just the dipole pat- advanced materials are all in progress.
terns but allows for the inclusion of quadrupole patterns
and higher order multipoles when they are available. In fact, References
higher order ambisonics has conceptually come to include
Benthien, G. W., and Hobbs, S. L. (2005). Modeling of Sonar Transducers and
all of the spherical harmonics (Tarzan et al., 2019). However, Arrays. Document ADM001666, Defense Technical Information Center.
there are practical difficulties in forming the higher order Available at https://gbenthien.net/assets/docs/modeling.pdf. Accessed
beam patterns. For the nth order multipole patterns, the August 21, 2019.
Beranek, L. L. (1954). Acoustics. McGraw-Hill, New York.
sensitivity varies as the nth power of frequency. Thus, for
Berlincourt, D A., Curran, D. R., and Jaffe, H. (1964). Piezoelectric and
low frequencies, the sensitivity is low and the signal-to-noise piezomagnetic materials and their function in transducers. In W. P. Mason,
ratio becomes problematic. After the initial patents (Elko et Physical Acoustics, Vol. 1 Pt. A, Chap. 3. Academic Press, New York.
al., 2009), commercial products now exist, with spherical Brock-Nannestad, G. (2016). Against all odds: Commercial sound record-
ing and reproduction in analog rimes. Acoustics Today 12(3), 12-20.
harmonic patterns up to fourth order (mh acoustics, 2019).
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2016.12.3.12.
Figure 4 shows one of these products. Carson, D. L. (1962). Diagnosis and cure of erratic velocity distributions
in sonar projector arrays. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
What Next? 34, 1191-1196. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1918297.
Decarpigny, J. N., Debus, J. C., Tocquet, B., and Boucher, D. (1985). In-air
It is easy to predict that evolutionary changes to the present
analysis of piezoelectric Tonpilz transducers in a wide frequency band using
devices and systems are likely to provide small improvements a mixed finite element-plane wave method. The Journal of the Acoustical
to those systems. It is also easy to say that larger changes Society of America 78, 1499-1507. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.392785.

De Forest, L. (1907). Device for Amplifying Feeble Electrical Currents. US Rice, C. W. (1929) Loud-speaker. US Patent No. 1,707,570, April 2, 1929.
Patent No. 841,387, January 15, 1907. Rice, C. W., and Kellogg, W. W. (1925) Notes on the development of a new
Ding, H. H., McCleary, L. E., and Ward, J. (1973). Computerized Sonar type of hornless loud speaker. Transactions of the American Institute of
Transducer Analysis and Design Based on Multiport Network Interconnec- Electrical Engineers 44, 461-480.
tion Techniques. Technical Report NUC-TP-228, Naval Undersea Center, https://doi.org/10.1109/T-AIEE.1925.5061127.
San Diego, CA. Sherman, C. H., and Butler, J. L. (2007). Transducers and Arrays for Under-
Egerton, H. C. (1921). Telephone Apparatus. US Patent No. 1,365,898, Janu- water Sound. Springer-Verlag, New York, p. 230.
ary 18, 1921. Siemens, E. W. (1874). Improvement in Magneto-Electric Apparatus. US
Elko, G. W., Kubli, R. A., and Meyer, J. M. (2009). Audio System Based Patent No. 149,797, April 14, 1874.
on at Least Second-Order Eigenbeams. US Patent No. 7,587,054, Septem- Stansfield, D. (1991). Underwater Electroacoustic Transducers. Peninsula,
ber 8, 2009. Los Altos Hills, CA
Fellgett, P. B. (1973). Ambisonic reproduction of sound. Electronics and Tarzan, A., Alunno, M., and Bientinesi, P. (2019). Assessment of sound spatial-
Power 19(20), 492-494. ization algorithms for sonic rendering with headphones. Journal of New Music
Firestone, F. A. (1942). Flaw Detecting Device and Measuring Instrument. Research 48(2), 107-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2019.1572766.
US Patent No. 2,280,226, April 21, 1942. Wente, E. C. (1922). The sensitivity and precision of the electrostatic trans-
Fleming, J. A. (1905). Instrument for Converting Alternating Electric mitter for measuring sound intensities. Physical Review 19, 498-503.
Currents into Continuous Currents. US Patent No. 803,684, Novem- West, J. E. (1988). Modern electret applications — The first 20 years.
ber 7, 1905. Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Electrets, Oxford,
Gray, M. D., Stride, E. P., and Coussios, C.-C. (2019). Snap, crackle, and UK, pp. 209-212 https://doi.org/10.1109/ISE.1988.38550.
pop: Theracoustic cavitation. Acoustics Today 15(1), 19-27. Wilson, O. B. (1985). An Introduction to the Theory and Design of Sonar
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.1.19. Transducers. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Gutmann, F. (1948). The electret. Reviews of Modern Physics 20(3) 457-472.
Holm, D., and Sessler, G. (1983). An integrated silicon-electret-condenser BioSketch
microphone. Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Acoustics,
Paris, pp. 29-32.
Hueter, T. F. (1972). Twenty years in underwater acoustics: Generation and
Stephen Thompson is a research professor
reception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 51, 1025-1040.
https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1912922. in the Graduate Program in Acoustics at
Hunt, F. V. (1954). Electroacoustics. Wiley, Cambridge, MA. Pennsylvania State University (University
Kettering, J. A., and Silverman, R. H. (2017). Clinical and preclinical Park). His PhD research was on nonlinear
applications of high-frequency ultrasound. Acoustics Today 13(1), 45-51.
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2017.13.1.45.
feedback oscillation in woodwind musi-
Konofagou, E. E. (2017). Trespassing the barrier of the brain with ultrasound. cal instruments. He has previously worked
Acoustics Today 13(4), 21-26. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2017.13.4.21. in industrial research and development,
Lindenberger, W. S., Poteat, T. L., and West, J. E. (1985). Integrated Elec- first for a sonar system manufacturer and later for a manufac-
troacoustic Transducer with Built-In Bias. US Patent No. 4,524,247,
June 18, 1985. turer of miniature OEM audio transducers. His current work
MathWorks (2019). Simscape. Model and Simulate Multidomain Physical includes the analysis, design, and use of acoustic transducers
Systems. Available at in a wide range of applications. He enjoys the challenges of
https://www.mathworks.com/products/simscape.html?s_tid=srchtitle.
advising acoustics students through their academic research
Accessed August 27, 2019.
Matula, T. J., and Chen, H. (2013). Microbubbles as ultrasound contrast and watching their careers develop after graduation.
agents. Acoustics Today 9(1), 14-20. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4802075.
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14(1) 35-41. https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2018.14.1.35. Students, get more involved with the ASA
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through our student council at:
trand, New York.
Olson, H. F. (1958). Dynamical Analogies, 2nd ed. Van Nostrand, New York. asastudents.org
Olson, H. F., and Massa, F. (1936). Applied Acoustics. Blakiston’s Son &
Co., Philadelphia, PA.
Pridham, E. S., and Jensen, P. L. (1923). Electrodynamic Receiver. US Patent
No. 1,448,279, March 13, 1923.

Sound Ask an Acoustician: Adrian KC Lee
Perspectives
Meet Adrian KC Lee
Adrian KC Lee In this issue, “Ask an Acoustician” features Adrian
Address: KC Lee. KC (as he is known) is a midcareer scien-
Department of Speech tist at the University of Washington (Seattle) and is
and Hearing Sciences and heavily involved in the Acoustical Society of America
Institute for Learning (ASA). He received his ScD from the Massachusetts
and Brain Sciences Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge) and com-
University of Washington pleted postdoctoral training at Boston University,
1715 NE Columbia Road Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General
Seattle, Washington 98195 Hospital (Boston). KC serves on the editorial board
USA of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
(JASA) as a coordinating editor (CE) and has chaired the Strategic Group for the
Email:
Dissemination of Information and Knowledge. He has also served on the Committee
[email protected]
on Education in Acoustics and the International Liaison Committee for the ASA. I
will let KC tell you his story.
Micheal L. Dent
Address: A Conversation with Adrian KC Lee, in His Words
Department of Psychology Tell us about your work.
University at Buffalo Imagine a crowded Chinese restaurant: you are trying to have a conversation with
State University of New York (SUNY) your spouse amid your two children practicing their percussion skills with chop-
B76 Park Hall sticks while you simultaneously watch the dim sum cart server’s face to discern
Buffalo, New York 14260 whether your favorite dish is being announced. My laboratory studies the cortical
USA mechanisms underlying our ability to selectively listen to one sound source in such
a crowded environment and how we leverage visual information to help us navigate
Email:
in these everyday settings (see Lee, 2017, in Acoustics Today). I am also interested
[email protected]
in understanding how one’s ability to interact in these complex sound scenes is
impacted by neurodiversity (e.g., listeners with autism spectrum disorders).
Describe your career path.

When I was 16, I went to a high-school engineering camp hosted by The University
of Wollongong (just outside Sydney, NSW, Australia) and saw how sound can be
represented both in time and in frequency; it was a Hollywood clip showing how
forensic acoustics is used to solve crimes (viz., a spectrogram). I was hooked. That
led me to study electrical engineering for my bachelor’s degree at the University of
New South Wales (Sydney, NSW, Australia), with a major concentration in signal
processing. In my junior year, a book by Graeme Clark entitled Sounds of Silence,
an autobiographical journey of cochlear implant research in Australia, inspired me
to do my undergraduate thesis at the Bionic (Ear) Institute under the tutelage of
Hugh McDermott. At that time, my signal-processing professor encouraged me to
apply to graduate school in the United States. By the process of elimination (viz.,
which applications did not require me to take a GRE), I applied to MIT and was
accepted to what was then the Harvard-MIT Speech and Hearing Biosciences and
Technology (SHBT) program but without guaranteed funding as a foreign student.
(I was lucky that my parents encouraged me to accept their admission offer and
could afford to let me take the financial risk.) Once I arrived there, I knocked on
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.64
every professor’s door to see whether I could volunteer in their as a JASA CE, I also spend about 15-30 minutes/day to take
laboratory and try to prove that eventually I would be worth care of editorial duties.
funding as their research assistant, with little luck. Fortunately,
before I left Sydney, Simon Carlile recommended that I look How do you feel when experiments/projects do not work
up Barbara Shinn-Cunningham when I got to Boston because out the way you expected them to?
she was a preceptor in the SHBT program. When I emailed First, disappointment. Then, after the grieving period is over,
Barb and mentioned Simon, she welcomed me with open you remind yourself that data are data and you find a way to
arms. That led me to study auditory attention and steered learn from it. Sometimes, you find unexpected explanations
my path away from my original plans to continue my work that would lead to new discoveries or avenues of research.
in cochlear implant research. After obtaining my doctorate But there are plenty of times when you realize what stupid
with Barb, I briefly stepped away from hearing science and mistakes you have made and then you learn from those. It
joined Massachusetts General Hospital, first in the Depart- is humbling to admit that this is the norm rather than the
ment of Psychiatry, then in Radiology, to learn neuroimaging exception, having to learn through one’s frequent mistakes.
techniques. During my time there, I was fortunate to receive a
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pathway to Independence Do you feel like you have solved the work-life balance
Award (K99/R00). To celebrate, I planned a trip to the West problem? Was it always this way?
Coast to visit some friends. During a stop in Seattle, Cara My wife has been really good at conditioning me to keep a
Stepp, who was then a postdoc at the University of Washing- good work-life balance. She knows that I hate losing bets, so
ton, decided to arrange meetings for me during my one-day she made a bet with me that I could not be home before 6
visit, even though I was just planning to visit the Space p.m. sharp in time for family dinner. Just to prove her wrong,
Needle! Seeing that I would end up spending my day at the I decided to leave work earlier and earlier so that I could
university instead, I decided to craft an email to Patricia Kuhl make that deadline. Eventually, it became my routine. On the
to see whether I could meet with her as well because I found other hand, leaving my smartphone alone at home so that I
out that a magnetoencephalography (MEG) center was being can be present with my family remains a work in progress.
built at her institute. Pat replied within five minutes and said Things were entirely different before I had kids; I would get
that unfortunately she’d be in Finland at a conference (with to work before 9 a.m., leave after 6 p.m., and respond almost
Barb) but forwarded a job advertisement and asked if I would immediately to work-related emails in between. At the time,
be interested in a tenure-track job. Well, today I remain in I thought I already had a work-life balance, at least compared
Seattle, describing my career path after joining the Depart- with my postdoc hours in Boston. Now, I make a conscious
ment of Speech and Hearing Sciences in 2011. I know this is effort to encourage our postdocs to strive for a real work-life
a long-winded personal story, but I always find it fascinating balance such that they can have flexible hours to attend to
that my career path has really been shaped by a series of lucky their personal and family needs.
chance encounters with a number of kind people, peppered
with different spur-of-the-moment decisions. What makes you a good acoustician?
I find this to be a strange question. I would say that I am an
What is a typical day for you? inquisitive person and I happen to appreciate sound itself.
It depends whether it is a “research” day or a “teaching and Does that make me a good acoustician? I think an easier
administrative” day. I have two corresponding offices and question to answer is what makes one a good mentor and by
with them being a 15-minute walk apart helps me partition extension a good mentor in the field of acoustics: this would
my time. If I go to my research office, I generally spend time make that person a good acoustician. In my mind, a good
meeting with my students and postdocs, and occasionally, mentor lifts their trainees up and fosters their career growth.
I have time to read and write. If I go to my teaching office,
I prepare for class, teach, host office hours, and also work How do you handle rejection?
on my administrative duties for the department. With two With a nip of rye! For a long time, we had a laboratory tradi-
young kids at home, I am in charge of drop-off duties so I tion to gather around and celebrate everyone’s success and
generally try not to schedule meetings before 9:30 a.m. I set rejection alliteratively, with success scotch or rejection rye
a goal to finish work by 5 p.m. so that I can spend time with depending on the occasion. Now with me wanting to get
my family after an hour-long commute. In the past few years home by 6 p.m. sharp (and many laboratory members having

Ask an Acoustician
their own families as well), these gatherings have become less am proud that the CE role will now become a permanent fix-
frequent and less organized. I find that nowadays I internalize ture in the JASA editorial process.
rejection more. But after I recover from that punch-in-the-
gut disappointment, I remind myself that this is work and What is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?
that paper/grant rejection is not a rejection of me as a person. I only consider things mistakes if you don’t learn from them,
I then go and hang out with my friends and family and although I wish I knew more about graph theory and tensors.
remind myself what makes me happy. Finally, I turn back to
the rejected work and determine how to learn professionally What advice do you have for budding acousticians?
and make improvements on it. But I do sometimes miss those Always be passionate about what you do. Then infect others
cathartic rye gatherings. with the same passion you have about acoustics.
What are you proudest of in your career? Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome? How did
I aspire to be an effective administrator who can help move our you deal with that if so?
collective higher education and research agenda forward, so I Oh boy! If you asked me two years ago, I would say no. Then
am proud whenever I manage to implement positive changes during my sabbatical year, imposter syndrome hit me like
on spotting how a process can be improved. For example, when a train. Now it has come full circle. On reflection, I think I
I was a graduate student and postdoctoral trainee, I was very never experienced imposter syndrome before because I was
involved in the Association for Research in Otolaryngology just too busy working toward my next goal without taking
(ARO). Noticing that there was no student chapter for trainees, time to really think. Then during my sabbatical, I had a lot
I helped initiate the student/postdoc chapter of ARO (spARO), of time and freedom to reflect. It turns out that when I have
emulating the well-run ASA student chapter. Some of my time to ponder questions such as “What do I really want to
proudest moments nowadays are when I talk to trainees and do now that I have tenure?” and “Who am I to think I can
realize that they wouldn’t even think of a time when spARO accomplish those lofty goals I have set for myself?” I started
was not part of ARO because they now take it for granted that to spot symptoms of imposter syndrome. As I mentioned
spARO is the place for networking and obtaining career devel- above, I do think a series of lucky coincidences got me to
opment information. where I am career-wise, and that fed into the imposter syn-
drome. After my sabbatical year, this feeling of being a fraud
A more recent example would be my involvement in starting has mostly subsided. Sure, I have less free time to listen to
the CE program for JASA. A couple of years ago, like many my self-doubting inner voice, being busy with my day-to-day
authors, I started complaining about how long it would take research/teaching/administrative duties. But more impor-
for a manuscript to go through the JASA review process. Jim tantly, I think I have become at peace with myself, realizing
Lynch, editor in chief of JASA, noticed my complaints (through the following: (1) luck often plays a role in career develop-
a Facebook post) and invited me to become an associate editor ment, but one can only take advantage of opportunities if
(AE) for the journal and join the ASA publication task force. I you are prepared, so don’t be too hard on yourself for feel-
then discussed different potential solutions with many people. ing lucky; (2) on the flip side, sometimes when things don’t
Ben Munson made a brilliant suggestion, and after pitching work out, you’re just unlucky, so don’t be too hard on yourself
it to the task force, we decided to create the CE role, with me about things that you do not have control of; (3) there’s a fine
being the first guinea pig. This meant that I would be reading line between self-doubt and levelheadness; it’s good to ques-
all the manuscripts submitted to the technical area of physio- tion yourself from time to time and employ sanity checks
logical and psychological (PP) acoustics and coordinate among but not to a point that self-checking mechanisms become
the AEs to decide who would be the best choice to handle each unnecessary mental roadblocks; and, most importantly, (4)
manuscript (instead of relying on the rather archaic the Phys- only do things that make you happy in the long term; life is
ics and Astronomy Classification Scheme [PACS] code). The too short to do otherwise. It turns out that how in tune you
addition of the CE role proved to be surprisingly effective, and are with what makes yourself happy is highly dependent on
with other changes implemented by the JASA editorial team, your cultural upbringing. Unfortunately, in many societies,
we managed to cut the review time by a whopping 40 days happiness is often erroneously assumed to be equivalent by
(see Lynch and Lee, 2017, in Acoustics Today). It was quickly other indicators (e.g., good grades, high salary, awards, grant
adopted by other JASA technical areas beyond the PP area. I money). If you’re free from the societal view of success but

instead pursue what makes you happy, it’s harder to feel like Selected Publications by Adrian KC Lee
an imposter! Lee, A. K. C. (2017). Imaging the listening brain. Acoustics Today 13(3),
36-43. Available at
https://acousticstoday.org/imaging-listening-brain-adrian-kc-lee.
What do you want to accomplish within the next 10 years or Lee, A. K. C., Larson E., Maddox R., and Shinn-Cunningham, B. (2014).
before retirement? Using neuroimaging to understand the cortical mechanisms of auditory
I want to make positive changes in research and higher educa- selective attention. Hearing Research 307, 111-120.
tion, with a particular emphasis on facilitating international Lee, A. K. C., Wallace, M. T., Coffin, A., Popper, A. N., and Fay, R. R. (Eds.).
(2019). Multisensory Processes: The Auditory Perspective. Springer Inter-
collaborations. I believe that the globalization of academia is
national Publishing, Cham, Switzerland.
an inevitable evolution, but how we optimally leverage our col- Lynch, J. F., and Lee, A. K. C. (2017). The need for speed. Acoustics Today
lective expertise has yet to be worked out at the institutional 13(2), 52-55. Available at
level. I want to shape that future. https://acousticstoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2-lynch.pdf.
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA!
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Society of America on Acoustics
@JournaloftheAcousticalSocietyofAmerica @ASAPOMA
@ASA_JASA @ASA_POMA

Sound Preparing for the International Year
Perspectives
of Sound 2020
L. Keeta Jones The International Commission for Acoustics (ICA) declared 2020 the Interna-
Address: tional Year of Sound (IYS 2020). The primary goal of the IYS 2020 is to stimulate
Acoustical Society of America the understanding and awareness of the important role that sound plays in all
1305 Walt Whitman Road aspects of society. Some of the ICA central activities include an official opening
Suite 300 ceremony, an international student competition, and production of a video on the
Melville, New York 11747-4300 importance of sound. To see the growing list of ICA activities and other member
USA activities, visit sound2020.org.
Email:
As the premier acoustical organization, the Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
[email protected]
is honored and excited to support the IYS 2020 global initiative. The ASA will
work to organize events in the United States, both at and outside Society meet-
ings. Thanks to the commitment of the ASA to acoustics education and outreach,
the Society is able to support the IYS 2020 goal with some preexisting programs.
We already know that everyone can look forward to celebrating IYS 2020 with
the following programs:
• International Noise Awareness Day activities in April. In the past, the ASA has
hosted soundwalks, citizen science data collection, and a livestreamed noise
discussion with experts.
• The USA Science and Engineering Festival in April. The ASA hosts a booth at
the largest free STEM Festival in the United States to introduce guests to the
science of sound with fun and engaging demos.
• The Wikipedia Editing Workshop in May. Attendees can learn how to edit
and improve Wikipedia articles to enhance education and increase access to
accurate information.
• Short acoustics-themed videos. With the help of the American Institute of
Physics (AIP), the ASA will produce and release several visually engaging
videos to be shared with anyone throughout the year.
• Hands-on acoustics demonstration sessions in May and November. The ASA
will share entertaining and educational acoustics activities that encourage
people to learn more about the field.
In addition to these well-established programs, the ad hoc IYS 2020 committee is

discussing even more activities. For example, I will be collaborating with the director
of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) and Sigma Pi Sigma (ΣΠΣ), Brad Conrad,
to develop acoustics-themed SPS Science Outreach Catalyst Kits for ASA and SPS
chapters. There is also discussion of an educator workshop with the American Asso-
ciation of Physics Teachers (AAPT), similar to ones done in the past.
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.68
Additional IYS 2020 program possibilities include T-shirt multiple IYS 2020 events every month, which are supported
fundraisers, a special Acoustics Today issue, tours of interest- by the ASA and our members. The year 2020 will be a great
ing acoustic spaces, network television coverage, social media year to introduce the public to our science and our Society.
campaigns, sound competitions, and everything in between. If you don’t want to miss any of the IYS 2020 excitement, be
IYS 2020 programs will take place at Society meetings and sure to follow the ASA on Twitter (twitter.com/acousticsorg)
at regional and student chapter locations. My hope is to see and Facebook (facebook.com/acousticsorg)!
NEWS from the Acoustical Society Foundation Fund
I appreciate the opportunity to inform the membership parameters and processes in the sea. The prize includes
and friends of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) a cash award of $2,000, a certificate, and the opportunity
about the Acoustical Society Foundation Fund. The Fund to present the Acoustical Oceanography Prize Lecture.
supports ASA scholarships, grants, fellowships, and other Jennifer Miksis-Olds of the University of New Hampshire
special programs from tax-deductible gifts. As I men- (Durham) is a recent prize winner and writes, “In prepar-
tioned in the summer 2019 issue of Acoustics Today, I ing for the prize lecture, I reflected on the past and the
am featuring winners of ASA awards and prizes and how pillars upon which my research has been built. I looked
they benefited from the support the Society provided. into the future to envision where the field of ocean sound
may be in a decade. The prize helped me to appreciate the
The Medwin Prize in Acoustical Oceanography was estab- diverse applications of sounds in the sea.”
lished in 2000 from a generous gift made to the Acoustical
Society Foundation by Herman and Eileen Medwin to James H. Miller
recognize a person for the effective use of sound in the Chair, Acoustical Society Foundation Board
discovery and understanding of physical and biological [email protected]
Mission of the Acoustical Society Foundation Board:

To support the mission of the ASA by developing financial resources for strategic initiatives and special purposes.
ASFF For more information, contact James H. Miller at [email protected]

Obituary | William J. Cavanaugh | 1929–2019
William J. Cavanaugh, pioneer- Bill’s extensive examination and testing of movie theaters
ing architectural acoustician, across the country led to improved sound isolation and noise
passed away of natural causes on reduction in performance spaces in general and have posi-
July 14, 2019, at the age of 90. Bill tively affected the exploding home entertainment industry.
changed the world as we hear it;
he was at the forefront of a broad Bill helped found and grow the National Council of
spectrum of research and con- Acoustical Consultants (NCAC) and the Institute of Noise
sulting in architectural acoustics Control Engineering (INCE) and served as president of
for over 60 years. His service and each. He was awarded the NCAC C. Paul Boner Medal for
contributions to the science and art of acoustics have been deep Distinguished Contributions to the Acoustical Consult-
and pervasive. ing Profession in 1983 and the inaugural NCAC/INCE
Laymon N. Miller Award for Excellence in Acoustical
Bill earned his architecture degree from the Massachusetts Consulting in 2015.
Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge) in 1951 and was
then ordered to active duty in the US Army Corps of Engineers Bill’s inspirational teaching at various college architectural
in 1953. After his service, Bill joined the acoustical consulting programs led many students to become future clients, and
firm of Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) in 1954 and began some even became acousticians. He originated the series of
teaching acoustics classes at the MIT School of Architecture ASA books that began with Halls for Music Performance and
and other institutions. He and Greg Tocci started the acous- contributed to many other publications.
tical consulting firm of Cavanaugh Tocci Associates, near
Boston, in 1977. Bill’s service to the ASA included as a member of the
Executive Council, chair of the Technical Committee on
Bill consulted on thousands of projects of all building types, Architectural Acoustics, and work on many other com-
requiring skillful interaction with architects, engineers, and mittees. Bill was awarded the ASA Distinguished Service
clients as well as the public. Insights and research based on his Citation in 1994, the ASA Wallace Clement Sabine Award
projects have been the source of most of his contributions to in December 2006, and the ASA Gold Medal in 2019.
the acoustical community at large.
Ginny, his loving wife of 57 years who passed in 2010, his
Areas of Bill’s contributions to acoustics and their practical five children, and his grandchildren and great-grandchil-
application that are worth special consideration include mask- dren were the loves of his life.
ing, outdoor venue sound propagation, cinema sound quality,
professional societies, and teaching and mentoring. The NCAC Newsletter published a Bill Cavanaugh tribute
issue, available at ncac.com/resources/bill-cavanaugh.
Bill was the lead author on the seminal paper (Cavanaugh et
al., 1962) that had the daring and the scientific evidence to sug- Selected Publications by William J. Cavanaugh
gest that adding appropriate background sound could improve Cavanaugh, W., Farrell, W., Hirtle, P., and Watters, B. (1962). Speech privacy
in buildings. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 34, 475-492.
acoustical privacy, leading to the entire industry of masking Cavanaugh, W., Talaske, R., and Wetherill, E. (Eds). (1982). Halls for Music
systems and making open plan offices viable. Speech privacy Performance: Two Decades of Experience, 1962–1982. American Institute of
remains a high priority, especially with recent federal mandates Physics for The Acoustical Society of America, New York.
for healthcare facilities. Cavanaugh, W., and Wilkes, J. (Eds.). (2010). Architectural Acoustics:
Principles and Practice, 2nd ed. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York.
Bill’s interest in the challenges of neighbors’ complaints of

Written by:
sound from outdoor amphitheaters led to and has continued to
K. Anthony Hoover
influence the entire field of concert sound-monitoring systems,
Email: [email protected]
associated methods for improved community relations, and the
McKay Conant Hoover, Inc., Westlake Village, CA
development of acoustic criteria for outdoor concert venues.

Book Announcements | ASA Press
ASA Press is a meritorious imprint of the Acoustical Society of America in collaboration with Springer
International Publishing. All new books that are published with the ASA Press imprint will be announced
in Acoustics Today. Individuals who have ideas for books should feel free to contact the ASA Publications Office,
[email protected], to discuss their ideas.
Waves with Power-Law The book starts by reformulating the classical models of
acoustics in terms of standard models from linear elastic-
Attenuation ity. Then, non-classical loss models that follow power laws
and which are expressed via convolution models and frac-
Author: Sverre Holm tional derivatives are covered in depth. In addition, parallels
Copyright: 2019 are drawn to electromagnetic waves in complex dielectric
Publisher: Springer International media. The book also contains historical vignettes and
Publishing important side notes about the validity of central questions.
Copyright Holder: Springer Nature While addressed primarily to physicists and engineers work-
Switzerland AG ing in the field of acoustics, this expert monograph will also
Hardcover: ISBN 978-3-030-14926-0 be of interest to mathematicians, mathematical physicists,
Edition Number: 1 and geophysicists.
Number of Pages: XXXVII, 312
Number of Illustrations and Tables: About the Author | Sverre Holm was born in Oslo, Norway,
60 b/w illustrations, 82 color illustrations in 1954. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
Topics: Acoustics engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology
(NTNU), Trondheim in 1978 and 1982, respectively.
• Couples fractional derivatives and power laws and gives
their multiple relaxation process interpretation He has academic experience from NTNU and Yarmouk
• Investigates causes of power law attenuation and dis- University in Jordan (1984–86). Since 1995 he has been a
persion such as interaction with hierarchical models of professor of signal processing and acoustic imaging at the
polymer chains and non-Newtonian viscosity University of Oslo. In 2002 he was elected a member of the
• Shows how fractional and multiple relaxation models are Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.
inherent in the grain shearing and extended Biot descrip-
tions of sediment acoustics His industry experience includes GE Vingmed Ultrasound
• Contains historical vignettes and side notes about the for- (1990–94), working on digital ultrasound imaging, and Soni-
mulation of some of the concepts discussed tor Technologies (2000–05), where he developed ultrasonic
indoor positioning. He is currently involved with several
This book integrates concepts from physical acoustics startups in the Oslo area working in the areas of acoustics
with those from linear viscoelasticity and fractional linear and ultrasonics.
viscoelasticity. Compressional waves and shear waves in
applications such as medical ultrasound, elastography, and Dr. Holm has authored or co-authored around 220 publications
sediment acoustics often follow power law attenuation and and holds 12 patents. He has spent sabbaticals at GE Global
dispersion laws that cannot be described with classical vis- Research, NY (1998), Institut Langevin, ESPCI, Paris (2008–
cous and relaxation models. This is accompanied by temporal 09), and King’s College London (2014). His research interests
power laws rather than the temporal exponential responses include medical ultrasound imaging, elastography, modeling
of classical models. of waves in complex media, and ultrasonic positioning.

Acoustics Since its publication, this text has been used as part of numer-
An Introduction to Its Physical Principles and Application ous acoustics-related courses across the world, and continues
to be used widely today. During its writing, the book was
Author: Allan D. Pierce fine-tuned according to insights gleaned from a broad range
Copyright: 2019 of classroom settings. Its careful design supports students in
Publisher: Springer International their pursuit of a firm foundation while allowing flexibility in
Publishing course structure. The book can easily be used in single-term or
Copyright Holder: Springer Nature full-year graduate courses and includes problems and answers.
Switzerland AG This rigorous and essential text is a must-have for any practic-
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-11213-4 ing or aspiring acoustician.
Edition Number: 3
Number of Pages: XLI, 768 About the Author | Allan D. Pierce was born in 1936 and spent
Number of Illustrations and Tables: his early years in Iowa, Kansas, and New Mexico. After receiving
218 b/w illustrations a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT, he was employed by RAND (1961–
Topics: Acoustics 1963) and Avco (1963–1966). His work during these years was
concerned primarily with the analysis of infrasonic waveforms
• Features a wealth of end-of-chapter problems and answers generated by thermonuclear explosions, and this broadened into
• Written by the former Editor-in-Chief of the Acoustical a life-long interest in all aspects of physical acoustics, applied
Society of America mechanics, vibrations, and wave physics. From 1966 to 2012 he
• Represents essential reading for all practicing and aspiring held a succession of professorial appointments — at MIT (1966–
acousticians 1973), Georgia Tech (1973–1988), Penn State (1988–1993), and
• Facilitates instructional flexibility regarding topics covered, Boston University (1993–2012). He retired from BU in 2012, and
length of course, and interests of students founded the Cape Cod Institute for Science and Engineering in
• Includes a new foreword and preface speaking to the book's 2017. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and of
continuing importance the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and is a recipi-
ent of the ASA Silver Medal in Physical Acoustics and the ASA
This corrected version of the landmark 1981 textbook Gold Medal, the ASME Per Bruel Gold Medal, the Rossing Prize
introduces the physical principles and theoretical basis for Acoustics Education, and the Gold Medal of the Acoustical
of acoustics with deep mathematical rigor, concentrating Foundation of India. Over the years he has had many editorial
on concepts and points of view that have proven useful positions, including being the founding co-Editor-in-Chief of
in applications such as noise control, underwater sound, the Journal of Computational Acoustics and the Editor-in-Chief
architectural acoustics, audio engineering, nondestructive of the Acoustical Society of America. He was the founding editor
testing, remote sensing, and medical ultrasonics. of Proceedings of Meetings in Acoustics.
ASA Books available through Amazon.com

The ASA Press offers a select group of Acoustical Society of For more information and updates about ASA books on
America titles at low member prices on Amazon.com with Amazon, please contact the ASA Publications Office at
shipping costs as low as $3.99 per book. Amazon Prime 508-534-8645.
members can receive two-day delivery and free shipping.
ASA Press – Publications Office • P.O. Box 809 • Mashpee, MA 02649 • 508-534-8645

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Volume 15 | Issue 4 Winter 2019

A Publication of the Acoustical Society of America

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Government Relations, and targeted a wide segment of the ASA membership. An

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Many satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques pro-

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Hydroacoustics, more commonly referred to as underwater

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The mechanical and acoustical properties of glacier ice

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Figure 1. “Anatomy” of an International Monitoring System (IMS) hydroacoustic station.

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Nuances of Hydroacoustic Triangulation

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can be used for other important purposes. Tsunami detection

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