Sound Design Strategies for Latent Audio Space Explorations Using Deep Learning Architectures

The research in Deep Learning applications in sound and music computing have gathered an interest in the recent years; however, there is still a missing link between these new technologies and on how they can be incorporated into real-world artistic practices. In this work, we explore a well-known Deep Learning architecture called Variational Autoencoders (VAEs). These architectures have been used in many areas for generating latent spaces where data points are organized so that similar data points locate closer to each other. Previously, VAEs have been used for generating latent timbre spaces or latent spaces of symbolic music excepts. Applying VAE to audio features of timbre requires a vocoder to transform the timbre generated by the network to an audio signal, which is computationally expensive. In this work, we apply VAEs to raw audio data directly while bypassing audio feature extraction. This approach allows the practitioners to use any audio recording while giving flexibility and control over the aesthetics through dataset curation. The lower computation time in audio signal generation allows the raw audio approach to be incorporated into real-time applications. In this work, we propose three strategies to explore latent spaces of audio and timbre for sound design applications. By doing so, our aim is to initiate a conversation on artistic approaches and strategies to utilize latent audio spaces in sound and music practices.Comment: In Proceedings of Sound and Music Computing 2023, ISBN 978-91-527-7372-

On the Sum of Fisher-Snedecor F Variates and its Application to Maximal-Ratio Combining

Capitalizing on the recently proposed Fisher-Snedecor F composite fading model, in this letter, we investigate the sum of independent but not identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) Fisher-Snedecor F variates. First, a novel closed-form expression is derived for the moment generating function of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio. Based on this, the corresponding probability density function and cumulative distribution function of the sum of i.n.i.d. Fisher- Snedecor F variates are derived, which are subsequently employed in the analysis of multiple branch maximal-ratio combining (MRC). Specifically, we investigate the impact of multipath and shadowed fading on the outage probability and outage capacity of MRC based receivers. In addition, we derive exact closed-form expressions for the average bit error rate of coherent binary modulation schemes followed by an asymptotic analysis which provides further insights into the effect of the system parameters on the overall performance. Importantly, it is shown that the effect of multipath fading on the system performance is more pronounced than that of shadowing.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The polarization of the planet-hosting WASP-18 system

We report observations of the linear polarization of the WASP-18 system, which harbors a very massive ( approx 10 M_J) planet orbiting very close to its star with an orbital period of 0.94 days. We find the WASP-18 system is polarized at about 200 parts-per-million (ppm), likely from the interstellar medium predominantly, with no strong evidence for phase dependent modulation from reflected light from the planet. We set an upper limit of 40 ppm (99% confidence level) on the amplitude of a reflected polarized light planetary signal. We compare the results with models for a number of processes that may produce polarized light in a planetary system to determine if we can rule out any phenomena with this limit. Models of reflected light from thick clouds can approach or exceed this limit, but such clouds are unlikely at the high temperature of the WASP-18b atmosphere. Additionally, we model the expected polarization resulting from the transit of the planet across the star and find this has an amplitude of about 1.6 ppm, which is well below our detection limits. We also model the polarization due to the tidal distortion of the star by the massive planet and find this is also too small to be measured currently.Comment: 23 pages, 10 Figures, 6 Tables, Accepted to A

Local anthropogenic aerosol sources effect on winter clouds and precipitation in the Colorado Park Range

Includes bibliographical references

Audio Fingerprinting to Identify Multiple Videos of an Event

The proliferation of consumer recording devices and video sharing websites makes the possibility of having access to multiple recordings of the same occurrence increasingly likely. These co-synchronous recordings can be identified via their audio tracks, despite local noise and channel variations. We explore a robust fingerprinting strategy to do this. Matching pursuit is used to obtain a sparse set of the most prominent elements in a video soundtrack. Pairs of these elements are hashed and stored, to be efficiently compared with one another. This fingerprinting is tested on a corpus of over 700 YouTube videos related to the 2009 U.S. presidential inauguration. Reliable matching of identical events in different recordings is demonstrated, even under difficult conditions

Audio Fingerprinting to Identify Multiple Videos of an Event

The proliferation of consumer recording devices and video sharing websites makes the possibility of having access to multiple recordings of the same occurrence increasingly likely. These co-synchronous recordings can be identified via their audio tracks, despite local noise and channel variations. We explore a robust fingerprinting strategy to do this. Matching pursuit is used to obtain a sparse set of the most prominent elements in a video soundtrack. Pairs of these elements are hashed and stored, to be efficiently compared with one another. This fingerprinting is tested on a corpus of over 700 YouTube videos related to the 2009 U.S. presidential inauguration. Reliable matching of identical events in different recordings is demonstrated, even under difficult conditions