- Author:
- Andy Farnell
Designing Sound teaches students and professional sound designers to understand and create sound effects starting from nothing. Its thesis is that any sound can be generated from first principles, guided by analysis and synthesis. The text takes a practitioner's perspective, exploring the basic principles of making ordinary, everyday sounds using an easily accessed free software. Readers use the Pure Data (Pd) language to construct sound objects, which are more flexible and useful than recordings. Sound is considered as a process, rather than as dataan approach sometimes known as "procedural audio." Procedural sound is a living sound effect that can run as computer code and be changed in real time according to unpredictable events. Applications include video games, film, animation, and media in which sound is part of an interactive process. The book takes a practical, systematic approach to the subject, teaching by example and providing background information that offers a firm theoretical context for its pragmatic stance. Many of the examples follow a pattern, beginning with a discussion of the nature and physics of a sound, proceeding through the development of models and the implementation of examples, to the final step of producing a Pure Data program for the desired sound. Different synthesis methods are discussed, analyzed, and refined throughout. After mastering the techniques presented in Designing Sound, students will be able to build their own sound objects for use in interactive applications and other projects.
Cited By
- Barahona-Ríos A and Collins T (2024). NoiseBandNet: Controllable Time-Varying Neural Synthesis of Sound Effects Using Filterbanks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, 32, (1573-1585), Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024.
- Gatto R and Forster C (2021). Audio-Based Machine Learning Model for Traffic Congestion Detection, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 22:11, (7200-7207), Online publication date: 1-Nov-2021.
- Colombo M, Dolhasz A, Hockman J and Harvey C Psychometric Mapping of Audio Features to Perceived Physical Characteristics of Virtual Objects 2021 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG), (1-4)
Quinton M, McGregor I and Benyon D Sonification of an exoplanetary atmosphere Proceedings of the 15th International Audio Mostly Conference, (191-198)- Voisin F, Bidotti A and Mourey F Designing Soundscapes for Alzheimer’s Disease Care, with Preliminary Clinical Observations Perception, Representations, Image, Sound, Music, (533-553)
- Liu S, Cheng H and Tong Y (2019). Physically-based statistical simulation of rain sound, ACM Transactions on Graphics, 38:4, (1-14), Online publication date: 31-Aug-2019.
- Trovato G, Paredes R, Balvin J, Cuellar F, Thomsen N, Bech S and Tan Z The Sound or Silence: Investigating the Influence of Robot Noise on Proxemics 2018 27th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), (713-718)
- Moffat D and Reiss J (2018). Perceptual Evaluation of Synthesized Sound Effects, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 15:2, (1-19), Online publication date: 26-Apr-2018.
- Cha E, Fitter N, Kim Y, Fong T and Matarić M Effects of Robot Sound on Auditory Localization in Human-Robot Collaboration Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, (434-442)
- Selfridge R, Moffat D and Reiss J Physically Derived Sound Synthesis Model of a Propeller Proceedings of the 12th International Audio Mostly Conference on Augmented and Participatory Sound and Music Experiences, (1-8)
- Ripamonti L, Mannalà M, Gadia D and Maggiorini D (2017). Procedural content generation for platformers, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 76:4, (5001-5050), Online publication date: 1-Feb-2017.
- Heinrichs C and McPherson A Performance-Led Design of Computationally Generated Audio for Interactive Applications Proceedings of the TEI '16: Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, (697-700)
- Rocchesso D, Lemaitre G, Susini P, Ternström S and Boussard P (2015). Sketching sound with voice and gesture, Interactions, 22:1, (38-41), Online publication date: 8-Jan-2015.
- Greuter S and Nash A Game Asset Repetition Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interactive Entertainment, (1-5)
- Tahiroğlu K, Svedström T, Wikström V, Overstall S, Kildal J and Ahmaniemi T SoundFLEX Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, (267-274)
- Böttcher N, Martínez H and Serafin S (2013). Procedural audio in computer games using motion controllers, International Journal of Computer Games Technology, 2013, (6-6), Online publication date: 1-Jan-2013.
- Fornari J A computational environment for the evolutionary sound synthesis of birdsongs Proceedings of the First international conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design, (96-107)
- Delle Monache S, Rocchesso D, Qi J, Buechley L, De Götzen A and Cestaro D Paper mechanisms for sonic interaction Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction, (61-68)
- Ferrise F and Bordegoni M Fast prototyping of virtual replica of real products Proceedings of the 2011 international conference on Virtual and mixed reality: systems and applications - Volume Part II, (318-326)
- Monache S, Hug D and Erkut C Basic exploration of narration and performativity for sounding interactive commodities Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Haptic and audio interaction design, (65-74)
Index Terms
- Designing Sound
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Reviews
Vladimir Botchev
This book is indeed about audio, and, more particularly, audio synthesis and audio programming; however, it is not about how to create conventional programming language code that could be ported to embedded platforms or eventually be used on personal computers. It is fully centered on the use of the Pure Data (Pd) visual programming language. A potential reader should first check these two sites-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data and http://puredata.info/-and then decide whether or not to go further with this book. Designing sound is like a cookbook for creating sound with Pd. (It is not as much about processing sound, although Pd is powerful and versatile enough to permit that as well.) If a reader expects to get further gains from Pd, in terms of generating some conventional programming language code that could be ported to many platforms and executed in a standalone way, he or she will be disappointed; this option is simply not available. For many, that is a real drawback. The book makes some initial attempts at doing such a "translation." A Pd compiler written in Perl exists (although there is no mention of it in the book), and this compiler will generate C code. It is, however, in the early stages of development. In short, if, after becoming acquainted with the information from the sites listed above, the reader decides Pd could be the preferred way of creating sound, then this book would be extremely valuable and highly recommended. In all other cases, I recommend borrowing it from a library. Online Computing Reviews Service
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