Spectron: Graphical Model for Interacting With Timbre

Los algoritmos para crear y manipular el sonido por medios electrónicos o digitales han crecido en cantidad y complejidad desde la creación de los primeros sintetizadores análogos. Sin embargo, las técnicas para visualizar estos modelos de síntesis no han crecido a la par de los sintetizadores hardware o software. En este artículo se muestran posibilidades para representar y controlar gráficamente el timbre, basadas en la visualización de los parámetros involucrados en su modelo de síntesis. Un grupo de datos muy simple fue extraído de un sintetizador substractivo comercial y analizado con dos aproximaciones diferentes, reducción dimensional y visualización abstracta de datos. Los resultados de estas aproximaciones diferentes fueron usados como lineamientos para crear un prototipo de sintetizador digital: el sintetizador Spectron. Este prototipo usa el gráfico de Amplitud vs. Frecuencia como su principal herramienta para informar a cerca del timbre e interactuar con el, fue desarrollado en PureData y su control plantea una simplificación en la cantidad de variables de un oscilador clásico al mismo tiempo que expande las posibilidades para generar timbres adicionales a los de estos osciladores clásicos.The algorithms for creating and manipulating sound by electronic or digital means have grown in number and complexity since the creation of the first analog synthesizers. The techniques for visualizing these synthesis models have not increasingly grown with synthesizers, neither in hardware nor in software. In this paper, the possibilities to graphically represent and control timbre are presented, based on displaying the parameters involved in its synthesis model. A very simple data set was extracted from a commercial subtractive synthesizer and analyzed in two different approaches, dimensionality reduction and abstract data visualization. The results of these two different approaches were used as leads to design a synthesizer prototype: the Spectron synthesizer. This prototype uses an Amplitude vs. Frequency graphic as it´s main interface to give information about the timbre and to interact with it, it´s control offers a simplification in the amount of variables of a classic oscillator and expands its possibilities to generate additional timbre

Timbre from Sound Synthesis and High-level Control Perspectives

International audienceExploring the many surprising facets of timbre through sound manipulations has been a common practice among composers and instrument makers of all times. The digital era radically changed the approach to sounds thanks to the unlimited possibilities offered by computers that made it possible to investigate sounds without physical constraints. In this chapter we describe investigations on timbre based on the analysis by synthesis approach that consists in using digital synthesis algorithms to reproduce sounds and further modify the parameters of the algorithms to investigate their perceptual relevance. In the first part of the chapter timbre is investigated in a musical context. An examination of the sound quality of different wood species for xylophone making is first presented. Then the influence of instrumental control on timbre is described in the case of clarinet and cello performances. In the second part of the chapter, we mainly focus on the identification of sound morphologies, so called invariant sound structures responsible for the evocations induced by environmental sounds by relating basic signal descriptors and timbre descriptors to evocations in the case of car door noises, motor noises, solid objects, and their interactions

Organizing a sonic space through vocal imitations

3noA two-dimensional space is proposed for exploration and interactive design in the sonic space of a sound model. A number of reference items, positioned as landmarks in the space, contain both a synthetic sound and its vocal imitation, and the space is geometrically arranged based on the acoustic features of these imitations. The designer may specify new points in the space either by geometric interpolation or by direct vocalization. In order to understand how the vast and complex space of the human voice could be organized in two dimensions, we collected a database of short excerpts of vocal imitations. By clustering the sound samples on a space whose dimensionality has been reduced to the two principal components, it has been experimentally checked how meaningful the resulting clusters are for humans. The procedure of dimensionality reduction and clustering is demonstrated in the case of imitations of engine sounds, giving access to the sonic space of a motor sound model.reservedmixedRocchesso, Davide; Mauro, Davide Andrea; Drioli, CarloRocchesso, Davide; Mauro, Davide Andrea; Drioli, Carl

Dimensions of Timescales in Neuromorphic Computing Systems

This article is a public deliverable of the EU project "Memory technologies with multi-scale time constants for neuromorphic architectures" (MeMScales, https://memscales.eu, Call ICT-06-2019 Unconventional Nanoelectronics, project number 871371). This arXiv version is a verbatim copy of the deliverable report, with administrative information stripped. It collects a wide and varied assortment of phenomena, models, research themes and algorithmic techniques that are connected with timescale phenomena in the fields of computational neuroscience, mathematics, machine learning and computer science, with a bias toward aspects that are relevant for neuromorphic engineering. It turns out that this theme is very rich indeed and spreads out in many directions which defy a unified treatment. We collected several dozens of sub-themes, each of which has been investigated in specialized settings (in the neurosciences, mathematics, computer science and machine learning) and has been documented in its own body of literature. The more we dived into this diversity, the more it became clear that our first effort to compose a survey must remain sketchy and partial. We conclude with a list of insights distilled from this survey which give general guidelines for the design of future neuromorphic systems