Stefan Bilbao & colleagues: Next Generation Sound Synthesis (NESS)
When: February 13, 2013 @ 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Where: Room 4.33, Informatics Forum, Crichton Street, University of Edinburgh
Seminar Title
The NESS Project (Next Generation Sound Synthesis)
Seminar Speaker(s)
Stefan Bilbao, Paul Graham, Alan Gray, Brian Hamilton, Kostas Kavoussanakis, James Perry, Alberto Torin and Craig Webb.
Seminar Abstract
NESS is a new ERC funded project running jointly between the Acoustics group and EPCC between 2012 and 2017. It is concerned with physical modelling sound synthesis and effects processing: the emulation (through simulation) of acoustic entities, ranging from standard acoustic musical instruments to 3D acoustic spaces to analog electronic components and hybrid electromechanical systems, and finally virtual constructions without a real world counterpart. The goals are multifold: to increase synthetic sound quality, to offer simplified user control, and to allow flexible new effect/instrument design exploration while retaining sound output with an acoustic character. In spirit, such an approach is analogous to similar developments in computer graphics, but in more technical regards, however, it presents distinct challenges. One centres around adapting numerical designs to the constraints of human audio perception, in order to avoid audible artefacts; another major challenge, due to relatively high audio sample rates, is that of computational cost, particularly for systems in 3D, and in this regard, fast implementations on GPU are under development. Sound examples and video demonstrations will be presented.
Presentation Slides