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k-young-audio · 3 years

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Non-creative applications in audio programming and processing.

The success of an audio processing application to be used in a creative success can be argued as subjective. In the world of plug-ins audio application has been programmed to have a purpose, but weather that purpose is successful depends on the individual using it. In some cases, an individual with a non-academic background can use the audio application in a musical sense, apply it to their music while not necessarily being able to describe what it does.

In this blog post, I want to focus on the other side of audio processing; audio applications that have been designed for a non-musical purpose. As well as delve into how we measure their success.

Audio processing for a medical use- Hearing Aids.

Within non-creative, non-musical audio devices, the hearing aid stands out as a simple design to forfill a medical need to help people who have been born with, or have developed hearing loss. Digital hearing aids are designed around and analogue/digital converter, a means to amplfy the signal, and finally a digital to analogue converter directed towards the ear drum.

Schneider. T, Brennan. R, Balsiger. P, Heubi. A (1999) An Ultra Low-power Programmable DSP System for Hearing Aids and Other Audio Applications (Online) ICSPAT’99 Proceedings, November 1-4, 1999, Orlando, FL. Available at

https://www.onsemi.jp/site/pdf/DSP_System.pdf (Accessed 18th Nov 2020)

This is a patent for technology used to describe an application specific signal processor suitable for hearing aids amongst other audio applications. This patent is particularly good at specifying the limitations of DSP in a real-time environment and offers solutions as how to conduct DSP with ultra low power. Section 3 lays out the fundamentals of the programming design. This source is dated and is not relevant to creating audio plug-ins specifically, and, although dated, the information provided is valuable as an insight into the fundamentals of DSP theory in audio as the hearing aid was a breakthrough in ultra low powered DSP.

Digital hearing aids are now the standard QUOTE, so we can see, objectively, that the development of the hearing aid as an audio device was a success.

Audio processing for support evidence -Audio forensics.

Audio forensics is a field where audio is used to obtain evidence through enhancing or processing an audio signal to gather information to support a criminal or civil case. This process is non-creative and non-musical, and should be approached with an objective mindset as the aim is not to make something sound good musically, but use audio as a means to support an investigation.

“Audio forensic evidence may come from a criminal investigation by law enforcement or as part of an official inquiry into an accident, fraud, accusation of slander, or some other civil incident. The primary aspects of audio forensics are establishing the authenticity of audio evidence, performing enhancement of audio recordings to improve speech intelligibility and the audibility of low-level sounds, and interpreting and documenting sonic evidence, such as identifying talkers, transcribing dialog, and reconstructing crime or accident scenes and timelines.” (Audio Forensics Expert, n.d.)

Upon investigating signal processing in audio forensics, I encountered this article, supporting the idea that audio forensics is an entirely different discipline to audio engineering. “Audio engineers can go with whatever feels good, without worrying about documenting their processes, but forensic analysts must only apply what can be referenced and proven to be an accepted technique, and have to write down everything. And with the implementation of the ISO 17025 guidelines making the transition to the audio forensics world infinitely more difficult, anyone who wants to get into the field in the future could find themselves jumping through a whole lot more hoops.“ (Zjalic, 2018)

I feel article relays an important message, especially within my professional practice of audio programming; understanding that audio isn’t just about producing audio for a creative means, and there is another side that requires objectivity and an understanding of the physics and inner workings of sound.

One notable case where audio was used as supporting evidence was the Watergate case, an example that shows not only that audio can be used as evidence, but “doctored” audio can be detected and used as supporting evidence too. Below I have included an extract from an article describing the audio tapes in the Watergate cover-up.

“In 1974, interest turned to a particular recording of a con- versation between President Nixon and his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman recorded in 1972 in the EOB. The investigators were suspicious that the recorded conversation included re- marks about the Watergate cover-up, but when the record- ing was examined, the investigators discovered that 181⁄2 minutes of the recording were obliterated by an unexplained gap consisting of audible buzz sounds but no discernable speech. Investigators suspected that someone had deliber- ately erased or recorded over that section of the tape to de- stroy the originally recorded conversation, perhaps with the intention of eliminating incriminating remarks.

John J. Sirica, Chief Judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, determined that the potentially altered tape required expert analysis beyond the routine capability of the court (McKnight and Weiss, 1976). He requested that the Watergate Special Prosecutor and the counsel for the president jointly nominate a group of six outside technical experts (including several ASA members) to form a special Advisory Panel on White House Tapes “...to study relevant aspects of the tape and the sounds recorded on it” (Advisory Panel on White House Tapes, 1974).

The Advisory Panel analysed the physical tape itself and the electrical signals observed on playback and, ultimately of greatest importance, performed magnetic development us- ing ferrofluid to reveal latent magnetic domain patterns on the tape and the magnetization signatures of the recording and erase heads installed in the tape recorders known to be present in the White House. The magnetic development of the tape led the Advisory Panel to the conclusion that the 181⁄2-minute gap consisted of several overlapping start-stop erasures performed with a specific tape recorder available in the White House but not the same device that was used to make the original recording (Advisory Panel on White House Tapes, 1974).” (The New York Times, 1974)

A piece of audio should be subjected to critical analysis when being used as evidence, the reliability of the audio can be questionable “Assessing the reliability of audio forensic opinions can be a challenge. Unlike DNA comparisons that can be expressed in a formal statistical sense, a forensic acoustics question such as “Is the utterance present in the evidentiary recording the voice of Suspect A?” (Maher, 2016)Especially if the audio is from a low quality source and noises can be difficult to determine.

Modern audio tools have been programmed to change the audio in order to help determine noise sources and allow for a clearer picture for the listener to make an informed critical analysis of what they are listening to. An example of these are some of the audio tools in Izotope RX. RX allows the user to see a detailed report of the audio, and then deconstruct the audio in order to enhance specific noise sources.

I have created the following example using Izotope RX.

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Audio for speed detection- Speed cameras.

Kubera. E, Wieczorkowski. A, Kuranc. A, Słowik. T (2019) Discovering Speed Changes of Vehicles from Audio Data (Online) Advance in Sensors and Sensing Systems for Driving and Transportation. Available at https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/14/3067. (Accessed 18 Nov 2020.)

I have found further research into devices and methodology utilising non-musical audio processing. This is a piece of research with the aim of using audio to detect car driving speed. Viewing the research shows that the research was successful in detecting an fairly accurate speed audio data recorded from the vehicle. “The presented results show that even a simple feature vector, representing lines in a spectrogram, yields 90% accuracy, even though tracking these lines is difficult, and errors in these parameters are possible.” While the accuracy is high enough for the general research to be considered a success, using recorded audio to replace speed cameras in the modern world woulf be problematic and inpractical, as it is less accurate, leaving it far more open to legal disputes than speed cameras that have a lower margin of error, that are already often legally disputed for their accuracy. “Speed cameras are officially described as being calibrated to an accuracy of two per cent. However, in recent years some well-publicised court cases have hinged upon alleged inaccuracies in the speed camera evidence.” (nationalprobationservice, 2015)

Although this research at this time is not accurate enough to be used practically, one can question how this research can be expanded on to for the purpose of a practical need. In future, audio speed detectors could be used to detect speed in low visibility conditions.

Exploring these non-musical/creatives avenues has been especially useful for my practice as an audio programmer because they have shown the potential that audio signal processing can have in society, as well as show the benefits of approaching audio programming with an objective mindset. All of the devices I have found have been created for a practical use, and it is interesting to see where societal needs have been filled by audio programming and how this research can be taken further. To become a practitioner in creating audio devices for practical solutions, an understanding of audio from an objective viewpoint is fundamental. Approaching audio in this way is essential to my practice as programming is rooted in having a logical and objective discipline. Even if one is programming a tool for the purpose of creativity, as an audio programmer, one needs to understand exactly what is happening in the program.

References

Audio Forensics Expert. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 2020, from https://www.audioforensicexpert.com/what-is-audio-forensics/

Maher, R. C. (2016). Lending an Ear in the Courtroom: Forensic Acoustics. Retrieved 12 2020, from Acoustics Today: https://acousticstoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Lending-an-Ear-in-the-Courtroom-Forensic-Acoustics-Forensic-acoustics-deals-with-acquisition-analysis-and-evaluation-of-audio-recordings-to-be-used-as-evidence-in-an-official-legal-inquiry..pdf

nationalprobationservice. (2015). nationalprobationservice. Retrieved 11 2020, from nationalprobationservice/speedcameras: https://www.nationalprobationservice.co.uk/speedcameras.html

The New York Times. (1974, 1). ext of Advisory Panel's Report to Judge Sirica on Tape Recording. Retrieved 12 2020, from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/16/archives/text-of-advisory-panels-report-to-judge-sirica-on-tape-recording.html

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alanafsmith · 7 years

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‘Social mobility initiatives are targeting the wrong people: I would know — I was one of them’

Legal Cheek’s Katie King explains why they must be more selective

Over the past ten years, the legal profession has pushed for better inclusion and representation, and it has pushed hard. Social mobility programmes are now targeting children as young as 12, providing education and experience to students they believe are in some way less able to go out and get it for themselves.

These programmes include the Citizenship Foundation, whose focus is running mock trials and conferences for school children to give them a flavour of life as a lawyer. I’ve attended some of these events and they are excellent.

There’s also Big Voice London, which helps young people feel empowered through legal education. The team runs fantastic interactive sessions on, for example, law reform and criminal law advocacy. Pathways to Law, by the Sutton Trust, does a similar thing, though its scheme is more of a commitment because it runs over two years.

I did the Pathways to Law programme with the London School of Economics when I was in sixth form, and it was one of the best things I ever did. I enjoyed it so much, I worked as a mentor for the scheme while I was in the second year of my LLB at the University of Bristol.

But the Pathways to Law programme’s big sell isn’t fun, it’s social mobility. The whole premise of these schemes is to give underprivileged aspiring lawyers the tools to make it to university and, later, the profession.

There has to be a filter in place here, some sort of definition of what it means to be somehow in need of help from social mobility programmes.

The words that get bandied around a fair bit are ‘underprivileged’ (Oxford English dictionary: “not enjoying the same standard of living or rights as the majority of people in a society”) and ‘disadvantaged’ (“in unfavourable circumstances, especially with regard to financial or social opportunities”). Though we could argue all day about what these words mean in practice, in my opinion the criteria adopted by the initiatives are just so far away from the OED definitions it’s running their credibility into the ground.

Citizenship Foundation and Big Voice London first. On the social mobility side of things, all you have to do to benefit from a place on these programmes is to be from a state school — that’s it.

So first of all a big congratulations to the 90% of the country who meet that criteria, and secondly how is it possible for someone to be from a “disadvantaged background” if they’re not even below average? They’re in exactly the same situation as the vast, vast majority of all other 11-18-year-olds in the country.

It’s also worth noting ‘state school’, for these purposes, includes ‘grammar school’ too. The winners of this year’s Bar Mock Trial competition, run by the Citizenship Foundation, were from a top grammar school in Plymouth whose website claims “the vast majority of our students go on to study at university”. Few would call these girls ‘disadvantaged’. When we got in touch with the Citizenship Foundation, Ruth Dwight, programme director, said:

Our well established and popular public legal education programmes… are primarily designed to increase young people’s legal capability — i.e. their ability to recognise when they have a legal problem and to be able to deal with it if and when they have. A clear secondary outcome of these initiatives is to build social mobility within the legal profession, as they reach a wide range of young people across the UK — many of whom have had little (particularly positive) previous experience of the law — although this is not the main aim of the Citizenship Foundation.

The Pathways to Law programme is more stringent in its entry criteria.

To apply, you must attend a state school plus be either in the first generation of your family to attend university or be eligible (or have been eligible) for free school meals.

The extra hoop applicants must jump through helps, but there were still people in my cohort swimming in legal work experience offers from their barrister uncles and legal executive cousins. There were others whose parents had enrolled at university, but dropped out because they received good job offers and were now, to put it bluntly, pretty rich. ‘Disadvantaged’ — I’m really not convinced.

As I’ve stressed above, the Pathways to Law programme was absolutely excellent, I completed the full two years and had a place to study law waiting for me at the end of it all. I can’t throw my toys out of the pram too much, but there are two big concerns I have regarding these social mobility initiatives and their entry criteria.

The first is the most obvious: for every rich kid from a top performing grammar school that gets a place on the scheme, someone, and possibly someone more *lots of quote marks* disadvantaged, doesn’t.

Because there’s often grade requirements for the scheme (at Pathways it’s a minimum of 5 As at GCSE), aspiring lawyers from underperforming schools may be bumped out in favour of strong candidates from good state schools who probably would’ve got into law school without the programme’s help anyway. It takes more work to find candidates truly deserving of a place on these schemes, but if the programmes want to fulfil their mantra — getting ACTUAL, REAL disadvantaged children into good universities to study law — the work must be done.

Binda Patel, head of programmes at the Sutton Trust, realises this. She told us:

For social mobility initiatives to really make a difference, it’s crucial they get to the young people who will benefit the most. To make sure we do that with Pathways to Law, we’ve developed a set of eligibility criteria that take a number of different factors into account. Aside from academic potential, we look at things like whether an applicant comes from a particularly deprived neighbourhood, or goes to a school where not many young people go on to higher education.

Secondly, has anyone ever considered the impact on 12-year-old kids from pretty well off families being constantly referred to as “under-privileged” and “disadvantaged”? They’re not nice words — having them drummed into you just before you head off to a posh university with a large public school population can make you feel like quite an outsider.

Telling people at university you’ve benefited from a diversity initiative often leads to raised eyebrows and questions. People think there’s something weird about you, or take a disliking to you because you’ve secured your university place on a lower, contextual offer. There is the expectation of a sob story. In my case, and I’m sure most people caught by ‘the social mobility initiative net’, there never was one.

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The post ‘Social mobility initiatives are targeting the wrong people: I would know — I was one of them’ appeared first on Legal Cheek.

from All About Law https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/06/social-mobility-initiatives-are-targeting-the-wrong-people-i-would-know-i-was-one-of-them/

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