Briefs
Short notes on the week in sound — the news, read for you.
Aberdeen’s soundfestival makes listening itself the theme this year
From October 22 to 31, more than 30 events across Aberdeenshire, including string quartets bowed with fern fronds and a Gaelic birdsong soundwalk on…
Stanford physicists watched a single quantum of sound vanish
A chip-scale vibrating crystal held its motion for about 2 milliseconds, long enough for a qubit to catch it dropping from one energy step…
Demant’s hearing-aid sales grew 17% in the third quarter
The Oticon maker raised its 2026 outlook on a strong launch of its Reveal hearing aid, and now expects the whole market to grow…
A singing digital swamp from Berlin’s lost wetlands opens at MoMA
Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s Berl-Berl, built with the musician Arca from field recordings and old Slavic wayfinding songs, runs in New York into March.
One missing gene cost female mice their hearing early, not males
Without the energy-transport gene Slc16a5, female mice lost high-frequency hearing by 6 weeks while males kept theirs at 12, a UT Dallas team reports.
A Case Western lab is turning live brainwaves back into music
Revived from 1960s experimental music, the Brain Media Lab plays EEG signals as sound, with a David Rosenboom concert in Cleveland on February 14.
Two siblings born deaf now hear after a one-time gene therapy
A brother treated at 3 and a sister treated at 1 at Cincinnati Children’s were in the trial behind Otarmeni, the hearing gene therapy…
A sharper ear for plain tones helps learners hear foreign vowels
In 140 Japanese students learning English, telling apart tones a few hertz apart predicted vowel accuracy about as well as time abroad did.
New US tinnitus guideline backs sound enrichment and rejects supplements
The first update in 12 years from the ear, nose and throat surgeons’ foundation lists 16 action statements and asks every clinician to screen…
Blind listeners tell pitches apart better because their brains are quieter
A Georgia Tech study found the advantage is not in the ear but in less trial-to-trial noise in the brain, the same change musical…
Cevdet Erek mixes 1980s metal with sound art history in Queens
The artist and musician’s first New York solo show gathers five site-built sound works at SculptureCenter, where a 1984 exhibition helped name sound art.
Hearing-aid glasses from two Bose veterans go on sale at $999
Legato Frames put microphones and open-ear speakers in the arms of ordinary-looking glasses, with a strong lab score and no published study of wearers…