Physical Modeling Sound Synthesis Research Articles

Nonlinear physical modeling sound synthesis of cymbals involving dynamics of washers and sticks/mallets

Nonlinear physical modeling sound synthesis of cymbals involving dynamics of washers and sticks/mallets

SonifEye: Sonification of Visual Information Using Physical Modeling Sound Synthesis.

Sonic interaction as a technique for conveying information has advantages over conventional visual augmented reality methods specially when augmenting the visual field with extra information brings distraction. Sonification of knowledge extracted by applying computational methods to sensory data is a well-established concept. However, some aspects of sonic interaction design such as aesthetics, the cognitive effort required for perceiving information, and avoiding alarm fatigue are not well studied in literature. In this work, we present a sonification scheme based on employment of physical modeling sound synthesis which targets focus demanding tasks requiring extreme precision. Proposed mapping techniques are designed to require minimum training for users to adapt to and minimum mental effort to interpret the conveyed information. Two experiments are conducted to assess the feasibility of the proposed method and compare it against visual augmented reality in high precision tasks. The observed quantitative results suggest that utilizing sound patches generated by physical modeling achieve the desired goal of improving the user experience and general task performance with minimal training.

Physical modeling sound synthesis using embedded computers: More masses for the masses

Physical modeling for sound synthesis is a technique in which musical acoustic equations are simulated by computer to synthesize sound. In prior decades, either offline simulation or powerful desktop or laptop computers were required in order to synthesize high-quality sound. However, increasingly small and relatively low power embedded computers are presently becoming available that can natively perform real-time simulations using floating-point computations. For example, the Raspberry Pi 2 is an embedded computer, which incorporates a quad-core 1GHz embedded microprocessor, and currently costs only US$35. This implies that physical modeling sound synthesis may become accessible to a wide range of people for many diverse applications. Furthermore, larger and larger numbers of virtual masses will be computable in real time. A poster with embedded Raspberry Pi 2 and amplified speaker is presented that uses Synth-A-Modeler to simulate a wide variety of physical models in real time.

Acoustical and metalworking techniques study of cornua, roman brass instruments, and their sound reproduction by physical modeling sound synthesis

Under the musical instrument analysis project of ancient societies, combining musical archaeologists and research laboratories on materials and acoustic, a first technological study was conducted in the storage rooms of the Naples Archaeological museum. The five instruments were incomplete and consist of several pieces assembled on a plexiglass tube that does not allow the direct measurement of the bore. Two mouthpieces were associated with these instruments. Morphometric study was conducted and detached fragments of the Cornua were collected. The corresponding samples were then analyzed under a Bright Field Optical Microscope (BFOM) and a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in order to determine the metalworking techniques. To determine the elemental composition of the Cornua (alloying and trace elements), analyses by means of Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) using the Ion beam facility AGLAE at C2RMF. From the morphometric data, the bore of the different cornua was reconstruct and their resonant frequencies calculated. Several possibilities of reconstituting the bore were tested and compared. Finally, the resonances obtained from the reconstructions of these instruments of the past will be compared with those of present instruments like French horn and trombone. The various reconstructions will also be compared from sound examples obtained through physical modeling synthesis.

Block based physical modeling for virtual musical instruments

A variety of methods for physical modeling sound synthesis has been developed so far, mostly for single sound objects like strings, plates, etc. However, complex virtual musical instruments require not only advanced models but also methods for combining one or more sound objects with excitation mechanisms and resonating structures. This presentation shows how to derive modeling blocks from basic physical laws and how to connect them in a physically meaningful way. The first step is to establish a physical model of a dynamical structure in terms of potential and flow variables, like force and velocity. It is important to observe also the boundary conditions because firstly they shape the spectrum of the vibrating structure and thus the timbre of the sound and secondly they determine the exchange of energy with the environment. The second step is the discretization of the physical model. This procedure is shown for the functional transformation method, which delivers discrete‐time models with direct access to the parameters of the physical model and which reproduces the original sound spectrum. In the last step, the resulting modeling blocks are connected by scattering elements which reflect energy back into the model or transmit it to neighboring blocks.

Robust Physical Modeling Sound Synthesis for Nonlinear Systems

Direct numerical simulation methods have played a growing role, albeit a background one, in musical sound synthesis for some time now. Yet, they appear to be the most straightforward and general approach to physical modeling. For such general techniques applied to complex nonlinear systems, the problem of numerical stability lies on the horizon. This article has attempted to outline a more modern time-domain technique for the analysis and construction of physical modeling sound synthesis algorithms, which addresses this issue, as well as some of the more delicate questions of boundary termination. Neither of these is dealt with adequately using frequency domain methods. In essence, the closer attention one pays to the underlying dynamics (particularly the energetic properties), the more robust a method may be constructed

A Method for Modeling Finite Width Excitation in Physical Modeling Sound Synthesis of Bowed Strings

In this article, a new method for modeling the excitation of bowed string instruments in digital physical modeling sound synthesis is presented. The method, referred to as fractional variable excitation point (FVEP) model, is based on physical modeling by digital waveguides (DWG). The FVEP model applies the fractional delay (FD) technique to the excitation of a finite width region of the bowed string. The method is applied to a physical model of the violin, but is extensible to all bowed strings. The FVEP model is applicable to DWG embracing several physical modeling variables, such as torsional vibrations and stiffness of the string. The effect of the FVEP model parameter values and the control parameter values of the violin model on the sound quality is examined. These results are compared to laboratory measurements of real bowed strings as well as to results from physical modeling synthesis techniques. It is found that the FVEP method provides major improvements over previous sound synthesis models, in terms of both sound quality and computational efficiency. Furthermore, it provides a novel way for the imitation of realistic excitation in bowed instrument sound synthesis.

The digital waveguide mesh: Applications in acoustic modeling and current research directions

The digital waveguide mesh (DWM) was first introduced as a modeling technique for musical acoustics applications in 1993 as a natural extension to the 1D digital waveguide that is widely used in physical modeling sound synthesis. DWM related work at York has focused on a number of areas with notable results including reverberation simulation using the 2D triangular mesh, modeling enclosed spaces with the 3D tetrahedral mesh, improved anechoic absorbing boundary conditions (ABCs) and the analysis and validation of spatial properties of DWM-based room impulse response measurements. This paper presents recent results from three current areas of research. RoomWeaver is a development environment that facilitates research into the application of DWM-based models for virtual acoustic spaces, incorporating new hybrid mesh-types in 2D and 3D through the use of KW-pipes. The second parallel research area involves the development of new boundary formulations that extend the anechoic ABC to the more general frequency dependent case with variable diffuse reflection control. Finally, Digitract is a speech synthesis research tool based on a 2D DWM model of the human vocal tract that offers improved control over formant bandwidths and greater naturalness in the production of speech sounds.