Acoustics of Speech and Hearing
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course examining the physical processes behind human speech production, sound propagation, and hearing. The course covers how the mechanics of the vocal tract and auditory system shape which sounds humans can produce and perceive, including acoustic cues used to localize a sound source's direction, the mechanical mechanisms of speech generation, and how the ear transduces and analyzes incoming sound waves. Materials include lecture notes, assignments, and readings drawn from MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Health Sciences and Technology departments. The course suits students with a background in signal processing or physiology who want a rigorous treatment of the physics underlying spoken language and auditory perception, rather than a general introduction. As with other MIT OCW offerings, materials are free to access under a Creative Commons license, with no certificate attached.