The Synthesis of Environmental Sound Textures by Iterated Nonlinear Functions, and its Ecological Relevance to Perceptual Modeling

Abstract

This paper overviews an approach of digital sound synthesis based on iterated nonlinear functions, and describes its use in the creation of sounds of textural type. Due to the nonlinear dynamics in the iterated process, time-changing sonorities are synthesized reminiscent of environmental sound events and effects of “acoustic turbulence.” This opens to the modeling of perceptual attributes of complex auditory images. The experiments documented here are drawn from the author's computer music composing. They may extend to the creation of synthetic, but credible, auditory scenes in multimedia applications, virtual reality and film soundtracks. However, the paper mainly emphasizes a systemic view of sound synthesis. By arguing that special attention should be payed to the dynamics internal to the sound generating mechanism, it raises the issue of the ecological relevance of the sound synthesis techniques to an approach of perceptual modeling.