Interactive Auditory Demonstrations 
Martin Cooke 
Speech and Hearing Research 
Department of Computer Science 
University of Sheffield 
Regent Court 
211 Portobello Street 
Sheffield S 1 4DP 
UK 
m.cooke@dcs.shef.ac.uk 
Abstract 
The subject matter of speech and hearing is 
packed full of phenomena and processes which 
lend themselves to or require auditory demon- 
stration. In the past, this has been achieved 
through passive media such as tape or CD (e.g. 
Houtsma et ai, 1987; Bregman & Ahad, 1995). 
The advent of languages such as MATLAB 
which suppor!s sound handling, modern inter- 
face elements and powerful signal processing 
routines, coupled with the availability of fast 
processors and ubiquitous soundcards allows 
tbr a more interactive style of demonstration. 
A significant effort is now underway in the 
speech and hearing community to exploit these 
favourable conditions (see the MATISSE pro- 
ceedings (1999), for instance). 
Excitingly, it is now possible to allow explora- 
tory access to part or all of the parameter space 
underlying each phenomenon. Over the past 18 
months, more than 20 interactive auditory 
demonstrations have been produced at Shef- 
field as part of an ongoing project to provide 
teaching material for the diverse disciplines 
which contribute to speech and hearing. Many 
of the demonstrations are suitable for under- 
graduate courses, while others encode phe- 
nomena which are primarily of interest to 
researchers. 
The motivation for and design ethos behind 
this project has been described previously in 
Cooke & Brown (1999) and Wrigley, Cooke & 
Brown (1999). In this extended abstract, a gal- 
lery of screenshots which focus on the auditory 
(as opposed to speech) demonstrations is pro- 
vided. The aim is to show the breadth of what 
is possible in a relatively short time and to 
encourage others to produce similar tools. 
The demonstrations can be freely downloaded 
via http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/-martin. 
Acknowledgements 
Demonstrations described here were pro- 
grammed by Guy Brown, Martin Cooke and 
Stuart Wrigley (Sheffield, UK) and Dan Ellis 
(ICSI, Berkeley, USA). Stuart Cunningham 
and Ljubomir Josifovski helped with the test- 
ing. Funding for some of the development 
work was provided by the ELSNET LE Train- 
ing Showcase, 98/02. 
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