An intelligent system approach to sound synthesis parameter optimisation

An intelligent audio system for sound design using artificial intelligence techniques is reported. The system is used to analyse acoustic recordings, extract salient sound features and to process them to generate parameters for sound synthesis, in a manner that mimics human audio experts. Preliminary tests show that the use of the system reduces design time and yet the quality of the resulting sound is considered high by audio experts INTRODUCTION A new approach to sound design and modeling of musical instruments is presented. An intelligent audio system, based on fuzzy logic techniques, is used to analyse acoustic recordings, extract salient sound features and to process them to generate parameters for sound synthesis, mimicking human audio experts. The main goal of our research is to investigate and develop artificial intelligence based techniques to capture and exploit audio expertise in the design of high quality sound. Our principal aim is to automate, as far as possible, the complex and time-consuming task of sound design for musical instruments, by exploiting the experience and knowledge of professionals such as musical instrument manufacturers, audio engineers and musicians. The project is being carried out in collaboration with two audio companies, one of which has expertise in organ pipe sound synthesis. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt in computer music to capture and exploit, explicitly, knowledge from audio experts for sound design. In this paper a description of the concept and implementation of an intelligent audio system is given together with preliminary results. SOUND DESIGN ENVIRONMENT The sound design environment depicted in Figure 1. It consists of an acoustic unit, an intelligent audio system and an electronic unit. The acoustic unit is an organ pipe (other acoustic musical instruments may be used, but we are using organ pipe as a vehicle for the project). The sound of the organ pipe is recorded using microphones placed at different positions along the pipe. The intelligent audio system is a dedicated multimedia computer with a sound card and a MIDI a interface. The computer is also connected to the sound generator to transfer the setup parameters generated by the intelligent system. The electronic unit is based on a sound generator, supplied by our collaborative companies, connected to a MIDI master keyboard also controlling the multimedia computer via MIDI. A digital mixer interconnects to all three units of the system. The audio expert or user can experiment within the sound design environment, e.g. play the acoustic instrument, record the sound onto disk, use the intelligent audio system to design sounds and listen to synthesized sound to assess their quality. in ria -0 04 41 41 0, v er si on 1 16 D ec 2 00 9 Author manuscript, published in "2nd COST G-6 Workshop on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx99) (1999)"