Sound Synthesis of Objects Swinging through Air Using Physical Models

Abstract

Featured Application: A real-time physical model sound effect that can replicate the sound of a number of swinging objects, such as a sword, baseball bat and golf club, has great potential for dynamic environments within virtual reality or games. The properties exposed by the sound effects model could be automatically adjusted by a physics engine giving a wide corpus of sounds from one simple model, all based on fundamental fluid dynamics principles.Abstract: A real-time physically-derived sound synthesis model is presented that replicates the sounds generated as an object swings through the air. Equations obtained from fluid dynamics are used to determine the sounds generated while exposing practical parameters for a user or game engine to vary. Listening tests reveal that for the majority of objects modelled, participants rated the sounds from our model as plausible as actual recordings. The sword sound effect performed worse than others, and it is speculated that one cause may be linked to the difference between expectations of a sound and the actual sound for a given object.

Evaluating a sonic interaction design based on a historic theatre sound effect

“…A prototype digital model of this working acoustic theatre wind machine was then programmed in Max/MSP using a procedural approach to sound modelling (Farnell , 2010). This was based on the rubbing and scraping interaction between each wooden slat and the encompassing cloth of the wind 6 machine during a rotational gesture performed with the crank handle, rather than a physical model of real-world aeroacoustics (Selfridge et al (2016(Selfridge et al ( , 2017) or a signal-based method using noise and band-pass filters (Farnell , 2010). In this way, the perceptual experience and potential distinctions between real-world wind sounds and the cloth-based effect of the acoustic wind machine could potentially be examined, and the primacy of the performer's gesture in the realism of the wind effect could be transferred more explicitly to the digital prototype.…”

The State of the Art in Procedural Audio

“…Comparison of synthesis methods, recorded samples, and a specific anchor was undertaken for a range of procedural audio models for aeroacoustic sounds in a series of papers by Selfridge et al [72,74,18,67,66]. Comparison of synthesis methods was also used in [155] and in [79] but without the anchor.…”

“…They classified the existing approaches into two main categories: time domain approaches that perform sound synthesis followed by propagation, and frequency domain approaches that perform propagation followed by sound synthesis. In a minor review, Selfridge produced and summarized various procedural audio models for producing aeroacoustic sounds, such as aeolian harp, propeller, and cavity tones, using physically derived equations [18]. Böttcher et al produced, tested, and reviewed a niche of techniques for creating aerodynamic sounds using the visual programming language Max/MSP and a Wii controller, providing results from a subjective evaluation [19].…”

Special Issue on “Sound and Music Computing”

“…In Selfridge et al [16] several physical models of objects swinging through air are presented. Listening tests showed that the models were rated as plausible as recordings.…”