Guide to lab spaces

Access and layout of the Lab

The PhonLab is located in 50-52 Dwinelle on the classroom side of Level C, along with the offices across the hall (49-57 Dwinelle).

• Room 50 is the office space for grad students and visitors. The Lab printer is also here.
• Room 51 and Room 53 have small sound booths for running perception experiments.
• Room 52 has a large sound booth and is primarily used for speech production experiments.
• Room 55 contains the Lab library and sometimes houses visitors.
• Room 57 is for sociophonetic research. It is called SpARCL (Sociophonetic Area for Recording Conversational Language).

Graduate students and visitors who need unrestricted access to the Lab or any of its equipment for use in research should contact Keith Johnson or Susan Lin for permission to obtain a key, and Ronald Sprouse for an alarm code and instruction on how to use it.

Lab security

The PhonLab is located in the public portion of Dwinelle Hall. This part of the building is open on evenings and weekends, and is usually bustling with people. It is important to keep in mind that there are people out there who would be very happy to take our computers off our hands. Arm the alarm system when the space is not in use!

Room 50

The offices (50 and 55 Dwinelle, and 556 Evans) are intended to be used as work spaces, for reading, writing, studying, analyzing data, etc. Conversation, whether professional or personal, is inevitable, but please respect your colleagues’ need for quiet, and keep your conversations brief and at a reasonable volume.

Offices should not be used for

• GSI office hours -- you should have been assigned a GSI office for those purposes (Evans may be used for GSI office hours)
• Research meetings
• Behavioral research

Room 51

There are two WhisperRoom one-person soundbooths in this room that are used almost exclusively for speech perception experiments. Each booth is equipped with a Mintbox computer, a PST response box, and a pair of AKG K240 headphones. The left booth also has a pair of external speakers in addition to headphones.

The operating system on the little Mintboxes is the same as on the Berkeley Phonetics Machine, so when you develop software on the BPM using OpenSesame, for example, it should work with no changes on these machines.

Outside the sound booths is a large desk with a PC that runs Windows 7, and storage space for extra cables.

To use this room, reserve time on the lab calendar. See the Lab scheduling page for instructions.

Room 52

This is the Articulatory Phonetics Lab. The equipment in this room includes:

• one large double-walled WhisperRoom soundbooth that measures 100 square feet
• one Ultrasonix ultrasound machine
• one aerodynamics rig (Biopac)
• supplies for static palatography, including a camera, oil, charcoal powder, mirror, and brushes
• supplies for palate casting
• two microphones and a Steinberg UR22 audio interface
• a conference table and extra desks

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Room 53

There is one WhisperRoom one-person soundbooth in this room that is used for speech perception and production. It is equipped with a PC that runs Windows 7, an AKG C3000 cardioid microphone on a stand with a shock mount, an AudioBuddy pre-amp, a PST response box, external speakers, and a pair of AKG K271 headphones.

Outside of the soundbooth, there is are two desks (one large and one small), and a PC that runs Windows 7.

To use this room, reserve time on the lab calendar. See the Lab scheduling page for instructions.

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Room 55

This room is partially a library of working papers and reprints, and also has desk space for two researchers.

Room 57

This room is called the Sociophonetic Area for Recording Conversational Language (SpARCL). It is designed to record naturalistic conversation between multiple speakers. The room is arranged to look like a living room, with furniture to accommodate up to four people. It is equipped with two Sony ECM-77B Omnidirectional lavalier microphones with lapel clips, one Audio-Technica AT8035 shotgun microphone with a shock mount and stand, a Tascam US-4x4 USB Audio Interface (functioning as a preamp), one pair of AKG K240 headphones, and a desktop Mac with OS High Sierra (10.13.6).

When using this room, it is recommended to place the "Recording in Progress" sandwich board outside in the C-Level hallway, as SpARCL is located right next to classrooms and bathrooms, and it gets very noisy.

To use this room, reserve time on the lab calendar. See the Lab scheduling page for instructions.