Sounds Interesting
The weekly newsletter for everyone interested in sound, listening and speaking.
The results of my poll show that you prefer my topics (sound, listening, speaking, audio technology) to be mixed rather than dealt with one at a time. I will now be posting around 10 items every Monday, plus something special once a month exclusively for my paying subscribers. So welcome to the first of the new, improved Sounds Interesting newsletters!
A genetic cure for deafness, given away for free
On 23 April 2026, the FDA approved Otarmeni, the first gene therapy ever cleared for hearing loss. A single injection delivers a healthy copy of the OTOF gene to inner-ear cells, restoring the otoferlin protein they use to signal the brain. In trials, 80 per cent of children showed measurable improvement within a year, and 42 per cent could detect a whisper. Regeneron is supplying it free in the US. In my book Sound Affects I describe our hair cells as ‘one-time gifts’; for one inherited form of deafness where they are silent rather than absent, gene therapy now may give them a voice.
Sources:
FDA press release
Regeneron announcement
Harvard Gazette: Hearing breakthrough holds up
Drugs.com news brief
One night of city traffic noise is enough to harm the heart
A double-blind study in Cardiovascular Research, published in February 2026, exposed 74 healthy adults to nights with no traffic noise, 30 noise events, or 60. After a single night of just 30 events at indoor levels under 45 dB, flow-mediated dilation, a marker of blood-vessel health, fell from 9.35 per cent to 8.19 per cent; after 60 events, to 7.73 per cent. Sleep was disrupted and inflammation markers rose. We’ve known for some time that even moderate sustained noise raises heart-attack and stroke risk; this is one of the cleanest demonstrations yet of how quickly the damage starts, and at such a low noise level. Sleep is precious, and noise is its enemy.
Sources:
European Society of Cardiology press release
Cardiovascular Research, Oxford Academic
Medical Xpress write-up
Yale puts conscious listening at the heart of dialogue training
More than 100 Yale students have completed a pilot leadership programme called Cultivating Conversation, designed to help people engage productively with viewpoints they don’t share. Tellingly, the first sessions weren’t on debate technique or rhetoric. They were on conscious listening, led by Dr David Tate of Yale School of Medicine and the School of Management, who showed how listening well strengthens decision-making, trust, psychological safety and influence. It’s a quiet vindication of an idea many of us have argued for years: that listening, not speaking, is the foundational skill of both communication and leadership and the gateway to civil discourse.
Sources:
Yale News, 1 April 2026
Yale Office of the Secretary: Cultivating Conversation
A new certification grades buildings by how they actually sound
On the eve of International Noise Awareness Day this April, Sownd Certification launched at RICS London. This is the first independent accreditation that grades buildings on how they actually sound, rather than what they were designed to do on paper. The scheme is the work of Marion Marincat, founder of Sownd Affects and a facilitator at the WHO World Hearing Forum, who lost his hearing in his twenties and spent a decade developing this new methodology with noise-sensitive communities. Architects, designers and contractors can apply for projects from Q2 2026. I was honoured to speak at the launch, and fully endorse Marion’s important distinction ‘audio-inclusive’ to describe spaces that are tolerable for everyone, include the neurodivers and those with hearing challenges.
Sources:
Building Design: Certification scheme for audio-inclusive design launched
FMJ: Certification for audio-inclusive design launches
Oscar Acoustics: Sownd Certification
A film about audio inclusivity wins prizes on both sides of Europe
Marion Marincat is also the subject of a new documentary, Now Hear This, which follows him and his team as they work with UK based acoustics innovator Oscar Acoustics to retrofit three Hackney music venues (the Vortex Jazz Club, SJQ and Paper Dress Vintage) for audio-inclusive listening. Directed by Craig Norley, the film has already won Best Documentary Feature at the Barcelona Planet Film Festival and Best Short Documentary at the Berlin Indie Film Festival Awards, with a full release planned for summer 2026. It’s fully captioned and subtitled in eight languages: a fitting design choice for a film about hearing accessibility.
Sources:
East End Review: ‘The industry is waking up’
Oscar Acoustics: Sownd Affects Hackney project
Quiet Mark turns A-ha into a love letter to silence
To mark its 15th year, global certification standard Quiet Mark has released a three-minute animated short, Take On Me – A Quiet Love Story, which reimagines A-ha’s 1984 video as a romance set in a world of unwanted noise and eventually rescued by certified-quiet appliances. There are cameos from 25 Quiet Mark Certified household products, the team’s acousticians and Elijah, Quiet Mark’s office cat. A full symphony orchestra, Zymphonica, provides the score. It’s clever marketing with a serious point underneath: in 2026, silence is increasingly a premium feature people will pay for.
Sources:
Find Your Quiet film page
Quiet Mark: Find Your Quiet TV Campaign
Even cartoon faces can spike a speaker’s stress hormones
A team at Michigan State University, publishing in Scientific Reports, put participants in front of immersive-VR audiences and tracked heart rate, breathing, voice and brain activity. Avatars programmed to look distracted or hostile produced significant rises in physiological stress and anxiety, and in some cases the speakers slowed down. The researchers concluded that social-evaluative threat, the fear of being judged, is so deeply wired that the body responds to it even when the audience is plainly fictional. Useful for VR rehearsal, and a reminder that public-speaking nerves are not a character flaw but a fundamental human reflex.
Sources:
MSUToday, March 2026
Scientific Reports paper
Listen to the birds, not just the trees
In a study at the University of Tübingen published on ScienceDirect in early 2026, 233 people walked through the botanical garden in groups, with one group asked to pay deliberate attention to birdsong. Blood pressure, heart rate and salivary cortisol all fell after the half-hour stroll, cortisol by an average of nearly 33 per cent, and the listening group reported the largest gains in psychological well-being. Birdsong is nature’s calm-and-alert signal, making most people feel both secure (when the birds are happily singing, we are usually safe) and awake (birdsong is nature’s alarm clock); this study suggests it boosts wellbeing even more if you actually attend to it.
Sources:
ScienceDirect: Vanhöfen, Stuck, Haag, Härtel & Randler
The Conversation, Christoph Randler
Phys.org summary
RTÉ Brainstorm
What every classroom needs: 0.5s RT and 35 dB
A new framework in Applied Acoustics, summarised by the authors as ‘universal acoustic design for schools’, argues that mainstream classrooms should be designed for the most acoustically vulnerable pupil in the room: the child with hearing loss, the autistic child, the child whose first language isn’t English. The benchmark: a maximum reverberation time of 0.5 seconds and ambient noise no higher than 35 dBA, even when the room is occupied. As my book Sound Affects notes, sustained classroom noise is linked to higher heart-attack risk in teachers and to reduced cognitive performance in pupils, so the case for stricter standards is medical as well as educational.
Sources:
Applied Acoustics paper, ScienceDirect (paywalled)
Anderson Acoustics summary
Sage: school soundscape factors, Kurukose Cal, Aletta & Kang, 2026
Why eating out needs a hearing test
Rough Draft Atlanta surveyed local restaurants in April using the SoundPrint app and found one Buckhead Italian eaterie hitting 87 dB at peak service, well into hearing-damage territory if sustained; the city average was 72 dB, the volume of a vacuum cleaner at three metres. The catering trade press now reflects the appreciation that acoustics is a primary design element rather than a post-construction fix, with ceiling treatments, high-backed booths and felt wainscoting becoming standard kit. My book Sound Business has been making this argument for two decades: hard surfaces and bare floors look chic but turn diners into shouters and waiters into stenographers. The diners rarely complain, but they don’t come back.
Sources:
Rough Draft Atlanta, 9 April 2026
Block Renovation: 2026 restaurant design trends
SoundPrint: Atlanta venues
Europe’s mental health crisis has a sound
In March 2026, the European Environment Agency published Pollution and mental health, a synthesis of recent research that puts environmental noise alongside dirty air and toxic chemicals as a contributor to depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and suicide. The single sharpest finding: aircraft noise is associated with a 12 per cent increase in depression risk per 10 dB rise. Road-traffic noise drives a 3 per cent rise in depression and 2 per cent in anxiety per 10 dB. Railway noise is linked to a 2.2 per cent rise in suicides. The agency’s recommendation is unusually direct: ‘urgent and drastic action’.
Sources:
EEA press release
EEA full report: Pollution and mental health
Euronews coverage, 5 March 2026
Apple raises the spatial-audio bar, again
At WWDC 2025, Apple unveiled a new spatial-audio format called ASAF (Apple Spatial Audio Format) and a matching codec, APAC. The company doubled down in April 2026: its Apple Music VP told reporters that most listeners can’t tell lossless from compressed, but everyone hears the difference with spatial. Unlike Atmos alone, ASAF adapts in real time to head movement and to the virtual environment, altering volume, reverb and echo. APAC squeezes head-tracked spatial audio down to bitrates as low as 64 kbps. My book Sound Affects called spatial sound a ‘seismic innovation’; ASAF moves the goalposts again, though hopefully its ability to work at low bitrates will be irrelevant as the world embraces HD audio in lossless formats that reveal the full glory of any music.
Sources:
TechRadar: Apple’s new spatial audio format
FlatpanelsHD: ASAF goes beyond Dolby Atmos
Apple Developer: Meet ASAF and APAC (WWDC25 session)
MacDailyNews, 23 April 2026
Great new format! One suggestion would be to change the collor of the light yellow links, so it's easier to read against the white background. Thanks!