David Moffat

Physically Derived Sound Synthesis Model of a Propeller

A real-time sound synthesis model for propeller sounds is presented. Equations obtained from fluid dynamics and aerodynamics research are utilised to produce authentic propeller-powered aircraft sounds. The result is a physical model in which the geometries of the objects involved are used in sound synthesis calculations. The model operates in real-time making it ideal for integration within a game or virtual reality environment. Comparison with real propeller-powered aircraft sounds indicates that some aspects of real recordings are not replicated by our model. Listening tests suggest that our model performs as well as another synthesis method but is not as plausible as a real recording.

Perceptual Evaluation of Synthesized Sound Effects

Sound synthesis is the process of generating artificial sounds through some form of simulation or modelling. This article aims to identify which sound synthesis methods achieve the goal of producing a believable audio sample that may replace a recorded sound sample. A perceptual evaluation experiment of five different sound synthesis techniques was undertaken. Additive synthesis, statistical modelling synthesis with two different feature sets, physically inspired synthesis, concatenative synthesis, and sinusoidal modelling synthesis were all compared. Evaluation using eight different sound class stimuli and 66 different samples was undertaken. The additive synthesizer is the only synthesis method not considered significantly different from the reference sample across all sounds classes. The results demonstrate that sound synthesis can be considered as realistic as a recorded sample and makes recommendations for use of synthesis methods, given different sound class contexts.