# July 2, 2022: 8:00

## General

• Steve's last meeting for awhile (gone from 7/5-7/21)

## Biplov

• Decibel sensor?
• Arduino and microphone can be used to make a decibelmeter.
• What's new on the hardware front?
• 1. potentiometer to control volume => works well
• 2. potentiometer to control frequency => huge fluctuations, cannot a certain frequency.

## Andy

• Mathematica
• Steve's new, cool tester
• My results (uncorrected) (with the use of splines)

Notice that I've altered the tester a bit more, especially per sampling rate.

• Note that I scaled back the first volume on the second pass; 1 is a little harsh on some of those frequencies! It might be best to set it to twice (say) the result from the first pass.
• "sampleRate" -> 64007

Last time I said I'm stone deaf at 8000. But the sampling rate was 16000, and we're all stone deaf at 8000 with that sampling rate! My idea now is to use a prime sampling rate, but it's interesting to look at the differences if you play back my results at different rates. You can at least SEE dramatic differences, even if you can't necessarily hear them.

• Smoothers versus spline: how does hearing typically degrade over time?
• It might be easier if we stick with octave frequencies, or "half octaves" (e.g. multiplied by ${\displaystyle /sqrt{2}}$); this will make the test results a little easier to interpret. We can play the results using (e.g.) ${\displaystyle 250*2^{t}}$, rather than spline-fitting the frequency. We'd just need to fit the amplitudes. But, from an adaptive level, it gives us less freedom to play.

In fact, I guess we could just use Log[2,freq/250] as time? Doh!:)

• Some reflections:
• I forgot phase last time, in the mathematical description! Yikes! I think that I've got it fixed now: check out the the working document, "Hearing Correction" section.

For a quick and dirty on phase, consider this page from a course entitled "The Mathematics of Music": Sound Waves

What if we add a color -- use light! -- to augment the higher frequency? I found this interesting attempt: The Color of Sound
• On my todo list:

## Steve

• distortVolume should be saved, rather than "volume".
• Any chance to do some testing?

# June 27, 2022: 9:00

## General

• Steve will be gone from 7/5-7/21

## Biplov

• Purchases -- Yes, the orders came in.
• Any chance to do some testing?

## Andy

• wiki issues
• Can't save some file types; I put them elsewhere, and then make links in the wiki
• Collisions can sometimes be "fatal". Copy wiki code to an editor, if you're nervous, so that you can easily put it back later.
• There is a history for each page. I found, upon updating the "MediaWiki" software, that I'd allowed anonymous folks to create accounts; so I spent an hour or so yesterday reconfiguring, blocking folks (or bots), and destroying some of their pages. Those users could have tampered with our pages, and caused trouble. Yikes!
• the typical strategy of hearing aids
• Mathematica
• Generated updated results, including corrected hearing results: have a look at my results (with correction)
• I have also created a spline, to interpolate. This is crude, but turns data into a function.
• Some reflections:
• We need to standardize vocabulary:
1. "volume difference profile" -- "profile"
2. "frequency shift rule" -- "rule"
Let's have a look at the working document, "Hearing Correction" section, to see how I'm using terms (and to talk about some math). In particular,
1. how do we turn the threshold profile function into a weight function for the amplitude of a sound?
2. how do we think about some of these integrals? (e.g. time varying volume?) I'm sure that some of this is out there, just haven't found it (or looked hard enough) yet....
• In terms of adaptive testing, my results went (on a scale of 0 to 1) from about .24 to 1 (deaf!). So, to retest, and make finer distinction, we might choose a "distortVolume" function that starts at .24....
• Should we consider splitting frequencies -- keeping some energy in the original, but passing some to another frequency? Would this sound like an echo chamber, and drive people crazy?
• We should try to preserve "apparent" energy of sounds.
What if we add a color -- use light! -- to augment the higher frequency? I found this interesting attempt: The Sound of Color....
• Still on my todo list:

## Steve

• Thoughts of adaptive frequency exploration.
• Any chance to do some testing?

# June 24, 2022: 12:30

## General

• Steve will be gone from 7/5-7/21

## Biplov

• Purchases -- The potentiometer and speakers will be delivered today - Ms. Landwehr replied this morning.
• How will pyfirmata and WaveHC going to work together ???
• -> As much as I have understood, we cannot run both together because WaveHC is in C whereas pyfirmata needs to have a specific script uploaded to arduino
• -> we can use switch for modes to solve this problem: whiteboard
• Thinking about the "circular buffer" -> there are open source git repos for creating it, both in python and C/Arduino
• We can't write on the SD card in wave shield, so circular buffer can not be used
• Storing massively many wave files on an SD card -> this is still an option: doing the discrete adaptive frequency play
• pyAudioAnalysis
• It will let us recognize background noise and human voice by the use of CNN.
• How to obtain just the human voice??

## Andy

• First thing:
lots of things in life improve iteratively, by bootstrapping. Steve, this Mathematica tester has been in inspirational -- I have seen things a little more clearly. Thanks! I think that you all might try it, too, and see what your results look like. One advantage for us if you do it Steve is we have a fresh audiology report on you, and we can try to regress the two test results to figure out the decibel translation....
• wiki issues
• Can't save some file types; I put them elsewhere, and then make links in the wiki
• Collisions can sometimes be "fatal". Copy wiki code to an editor, if you're nervous, so that you can easily put it back later.
• There is a history for each page. I found, upon updating the "MediaWiki" software, that I'd allowed anonymous folks to create accounts; so I spent an hour or so yesterday reconfiguring, blocking folks (or bots), and destroying some of their pages. Those users could have tampered with our pages, and caused trouble. Yikes!
• Mathematica
• Some reflections:
• We need to standardize vocabulary:
1. "volume difference profile" -- "profile"
2. "frequency shift rule" -- "rule"
• In terms of adaptive testing, my results went (on a scale of 0 to 1) from about .24 to 1 (deaf!). So, to retest, and make finer distinction, we might choose a "distortVolume" function that starts at .24....
• Should we consider splitting frequencies -- keeping some energy in the original, but passing some to another frequency? Would this sound like an echo chamber, and drive people crazy?
• We should try to preserve "apparent" energy of sounds.
• Here's today's big radical idea:
If we make our rule function recursive, e.g. if I am deaf to frequency ${\displaystyle \nu }$, ${\displaystyle rule(\nu )=rule\left({\frac {\nu }{2}}\right)}$, then we are aliasing, essentially, and losing information. What if we add a color -- use light! -- to augment the higher frequency?
• R libraries for sound analysis: I’d said I’d look into R for testing -- haven't yet got to that.

## Steve

• Thoughts of adaptive frequency exploration.
• How do left/right ear disconnects impact the listener?

# June 21, 2022: 9 am

## Biplov

• Purchases -- did they come in? => Our Arduino boards have been delivered, but the potentiometers and speakers still have not.
• Waveshield Voice changer: not required for testing phase, but might be useful in Aid
• Waveshield:
• Biplov mentioned the idea of restricting frequencies/harmonics, essentially as a noise-reduction strategy.
• In terms of the tester, Biplov's current idea is to create a slew of small wav files that each contain a pitch and a volume, and then allow the user to adjust potentiometers to set frequency and then allow the volume knob to increase until the user can hear the pitch; record that, and continue.

## Steve

• Steve will be gone from 7/5-7/21
• Thoughts of adaptive frequency exploration.
• How do left/right ear disconnects impact the listener?

# June 17, 2022: 9:45 am

## Biplov

• Mathematica => played and understood with your provided code
• Volume control issues? => wave shield
• Purchases -- did they come in? => I haven't received any email back from Mrs. Landwehr. Emailed to get the status
• Background report? => Apologize, I'll have all of it on by tomorrow

• 3-5.5 v DC
• 2 MB or 16 MB flask memory
• stereo support (44.1KHz 16-bit stereo)
• 11 triggers
• also comes with a version of stereo speaker amplifier (16 MB)

• Only compatible with ATMega328 based Arduino
• It Can play up to 22KHz 12-bit uncompressed audio files of any length and momo wave files of any size
• Need to buy SD card separately
• Our ordered Arduino board is based on ATMega328, so it is compatible with wave shield

## Andy

• Mathematica
• Python and R libraries for sound analysis: I’d said I’d look into analysis for python and R: here are some early looks

# June 13, 2022: 9 am

## Biplov

• Mathematica?
• Under control
• Norsemathology?
• Purchases....
1. 2 - arduino Uno starter kit
2. 4 - potentiometers
3. 10pcs pack - minature full range speakers
• Fill Background in report

## Andy

• Mathematica
• Play
• Sample rate
• Audiograms -- how they work. Why do they choose those frequencies?
• gizmos suggested by Joe Longstaff:
• Wave board?
• Electet

## Steve

• Unavailable
• We need an image of his (relatively normal) audiogram

# Meeting, Tuesday, June 7th, 2022: 9 am

## Biplov

• Biplov was not feeling well, and couldn't attend.

## Andy

• Mathematica
• Play
• Sample rate

## Steve

• Hearing test!

# Meeting, June 2nd, 2022

1. We need a better name. Retraining your brain? I've switched to HearWell....
2. Andy's items
1. Bring Steve up to speed
2. A couple of my audiograms....
3. starting the report
4. some imaginings, to share with Steve â thinking like a bat, for example. Biplov talked about stereo mics, and Andy suggested three mics might work (three satellites are necessary to geolocate a position on the Earth).
5. Sound file examples we might want to use. (Didnât get to this)
6. Andy asked Biplov to look into two things:
1. Publication options, and
2. Intellectual property issues.
3. Biplov items:
1. regarding prices of apps and such. Andy has an email from Brooke offering up to \$500 more, if necessary.
2. Mathematica activation? Still not thereâ¦.
3. wiki access? Ditto: not yet.
4. Biplov had several questions, some of which were related to
1. technical definitions of hearing (e.g. Tone versus Timber, pitch versus frequency, color; 12-tone scale)
2. nerve and other hearing damages â what are the mechanisms for causing one to lose hearing? Questions for Dr. Sharmaâ¦..
1. interference? Collisions?
4. Steve:
1. Mathematica commands
2. We talked about how Peterâs work might be helpful. Also whether it would be better to switch to python, say, or R â something public domain. Biplov described how the Arduino connects with Mathematica, but mentioned that he would look into what options exist for python or R.

# Meeting, May 30th, 2022

1. Andy's items
1. Dr. Sharma's notions â in working document
2. Some references â from homepage
3. Mathematica tools â in todos
1. In particular, it seems that the periodogram function does the Fourier Series Analysis that weâre going to want to do.
4. IRB approval â I need to get on this! Add this to todosâ¦.