Re: reverse engineering of acoustic sources (Pierre Divenyi )


Subject: Re: reverse engineering of acoustic sources
From:    Pierre Divenyi  <pdivenyi(at)EBIRE.ORG>
Date:    Sat, 31 Jan 2004 10:43:50 -0800

Pardon my bringing in a negative view, but I have serious doubts that a unique solution to any specific wave can be found. Although I have never delved into the mathematics of it, I only know of the problem in phonetics, where the acoustic-to-articulatory inversion has been extensively investigated, only to come up with the answer that solutions require very restrictive initial and boundary values and functions. I can't imagine that the acoustic-to-musical instrument problem should be any easier to solve. But correct me if I am wrong. Pierre Divenyi At 01:13 PM 1/31/2004 -0500, Georg Essl wrote: >Hi Jim, > > I think it's probably fair to say that the pure mathematicians who work >on this don't necessarily have typical real-world acoustical situations in >mind. The formalisms tend to isolate one problem and tend to try to make a >dent there. So 2-D structures (membranes) and 3-D (rooms) cases are >usually treated separately. > >As for excitations, these are usually not featured prominently, though >they are definitely there implicitly at least. I'd say in the papers that >I've read very often harmonic drivers (force-sustained) are assumed, but >not necessarily. It helps to bring the wave equation into reduced >Helmholtz form, which is convenient. It's a spatial problem only rather >than a temporal and spatial problem that way. In other formalisms, the >dynamic response in general usually with respect to the geometry of the >situation is considered in which case asymptotic arguments pop up (often >by lack of a better method). Asymptotic in this setting means that an >approximate form is assumed whose error shrinks with some parameter >becoming large, e.g. typically for high frequencies. Of course if the >situations could be treated directly, one would. > >But despite all the simplications and reductions, the story isn't simple >(and not fully understood), which is I guess the point I wanted to make >with respect to the paragraph of the SciAm article. > >- Georg > >On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, beauchamp james w wrote: > > > Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:38:22 -0600 (CST) > > From: beauchamp james w <jwbeauch(at)ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> > > To: gessl(at)CS.Princeton.EDU > > Cc: auditory(at)lists.mcgill.ca > > Subject: Re: reverse engineering of acoustic sources > > > > Dear Georg, > > > > Thank you for your wonderful response to my question. > > > > I wonder if any of the mathematical solutions to this problem take > > into account directivity and room responses and whether they work > > for forced sustained vibrations (e.g., clarinet) as opposed to > > free vibrations (e.g., a drum). > > > > Jim Beauchamp > >


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