Download Extending Digital Waveguides To Include Material Modelling Digital Waveguides have been extensively used for musical instrument and room acoustics modelling. They can be used to form simplistic models for ideal wave propagation in one, two and three dimensions. Models in 1D for string and wind instrument synthesis and more recently a model for a drum, realised by interfacing 2D and 3D waveguide meshes, have been presented [1]. A framework is thus in place for the virtual construction of new or abstract musical instruments. However, straight-forward waveguides and waveguide meshes behave in an extremely indeal nature and phenomena such as stiffness and internal friction are often compromised or ignored altogether. In this paper we discuss and evaluate models which incorporate material parameters. We review a 1D bar model, and then present a 2D extension to model plates. We also discuss the problem of modelling frequency dependent damping, by describing a waveguide model of a visco-elastically damped string.
Download On Iterative Solutions for Numerical Collision Models Nonlinear interactions between different parts of musical instruments present several challenges regarding the formulation of reliable and efficient numerical sound synthesis models. This paper focuses on a numerical collision model that incorporates impact damping. The proposed energy-based approach involves an iterative solver for the solution of the nonlinear system equations. In order to ensure the efficiency of the presented algorithm a bound is derived for the maximum number of iterations required for convergence. Numerical results demonstrate energy conservation as well as convergence within a small number of iterations, which is usually much lower than the predicted bound. Finally, an application to music acoustics, involving a clarinet simulation, shows that including a loss mechanism during collisions may have a significant effect on sound production.
Download Digitizing the Ibanez Weeping Demon Wah Pedal Being able to transform an analog audio circuit into a digital model is a big deal for musicians, producers, and circuit benders alike. In this paper, we address some of the issues that arise when attempting to make such a digital model. Using the canonical state variable filter as the main point of interest in our schematic, we will walk through the process of making a signal flow graph, obtaining a transfer function, and making a usable digital filter. Additionally, we will address an issue that is common throughout virtual analog literature; reducing the very large expressions for each of the filter coefficients. Using a novel factoring algorithm, we show that these expressions can be reduced from thousands of operations down to tens of operations.
Download FAUST Architectures Design and OSC Support FAUST [Functional Audio Stream] is a functional programming language specifically designed for real-time signal processing and synthesis. It consists in a compiler that translates a FAUST program into an equivalent C++ program, taking care of generating the most efficient code. The FAUST environment also includes various architecture files, providing the glue between the FAUST C++ output and the host audio and GUI environments. The combination of architecture files and FAUST output gives ready to run applications or plugins for various systems, which makes a single FAUST specification available on different platforms and environments without additional cost. This article presents the overall design of the architecture files and gives more details on the recent OSC architecture.
Download Dynamic Stochastic Wavetable Synthesis Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis (DSS) is a direct digital synthesis method invented by composer Iannis Xenakis and notably employed in his 1991 composition GENDY3. In its original conception, DSS generates periodic waves by linear interpolation between a set of breakpoints in amplitude–time space. The breakpoints change position each period, displaced by random walks via high-level parameters that induce various behaviors and timbres along the pitch–noise continuum. The following paper proposes Dynamic Stochastic Wavetable Synthesis as a modification and generalization of DSS that enables its application to table-lookup oscillators, allowing arbitrary sample data to become the basis of a DSS process. We describe the considerations affecting the development of such an algorithm and offer a real-time implementation informed by the analysis.
Download Doppler Simulation and the Leslie An efficient algorithm for simulating the Doppler effect using interpolating and de-interpolating delay lines is described. The Doppler simulator is used to simulate a rotating horn to achieve the Leslie effect. Measurements of a horn from a real Leslie are used to calibrate angle-dependent digital filters which simulate the changing, angle-dependent, frequency response of the rotating horn.
Download Winding Numbers and Monodromy of Vector Bundles over a Circular Buffer The Möbius strip is perhaps the most recognizable topological object of general knowledge. It can be described mathematically in various ways including the formalism of line bundles. In this paper we discuss the bundle idea in the context of digital processing over a circular buffer and show how the idea leads to a more general notion known as monodromy, which describes the effect of the space on traversing a circle once. In this formulation, the monodromy of the Möbius strip is an orientation inversion characterized by a change in sign. This in turns leads to the concept of the winding number, which describes how many windings it takes to return to the original state. We discuss variable monodromy and illustrate that the winding number is robust under this variation. This will allow us to interpret previous disparate results in audio signal processing from Möbius waveguides to chaotic oscillators in delay loops in one unified framework. We close by showing how extending from line to vector bundles opens up the notion of braids to describe monodromy.
Download Spatial High Frequency Extrapolation Method for Room Acoustic Auralization Auralization of numerically modeled impulse responses can be informative when assessing the geometric characteristics of a room. Wave-based acoustic modeling methods are suitable for approximating low frequency wave propagation. Subsequent auralizations are perceived unnaturally due to the limited bandwidth involved. The paper presents a post-processing framework for extending low-mid frequency band limited spatial room impulse responses (SRIR) to include higher frequency signal components without the use of geometric modeling methods. Acoustic parameters for extrapolated RIRs are compared with reference measurement data for existing venues and a Finite Difference Time Domain modeled SRIR is extrapolated to produce a natural sounding full-band SRIR signal. The method shows promising agreement particularly for large venues as the air absorption is more dominant than the boundary absorption at high frequencies.
Download Distortion and Pitch Processing Using a Modal Reverberator Architecture A reverberator based on a room response modal analysis is adapted to produce distortion, pitch and time manipulation effects, as well as gated and iterated reverberation. The so-called “modal reverberator” is a parallel collection of resonant filters, with resonance frequencies and dampings tuned to the modal frequencies and decay times of the space or object being simulated. Here, the resonant filters are implemented as cascades of heterodyning, smoothing, and modulation steps, forming a type of analysis/synthesis architecture. By applying memoryless nonlinearities to the modulating sinusoids, distortion effects are produced, including distortion without intermodulation products. By using different frequencies for the heterodyning and associated modulation operations, pitch manipulation effects are generated, including pitch shifting and spectral “inversion.” By resampling the smoothing filter output, the signal time axis is stretched without introducing pitch changes. As these effects are integrated into a reverberator architecture, reverberation controls such as decay time can be used produce novel effects having some of the sonic characteristics of reverberation.
Download Unsupervised Taxonomy of Sound Effects Sound effect libraries are commonly used by sound designers in a range of industries. Taxonomies exist for the classification of sounds into groups based on subjective similarity, sound source or common environmental context. However, these taxonomies are not standardised, and no taxonomy based purely on the sonic properties of audio exists. We present a method using feature selection, unsupervised learning and hierarchical clustering to develop an unsupervised taxonomy of sound effects based entirely on the sonic properties of the audio within a sound effect library. The unsupervised taxonomy is then related back to the perceived meaning of the relevant audio features.