Sound Texture Synthesis Using an Enhanced Overlap-Add Approach

MPhil Thesis Defence


Title: "Sound Texture Synthesis Using an Enhanced
Overlap-Add Approach"

By

Mr. Chung Lee


Abstract

Texture synthesis has been an active field of research recently, mainly
focusing on 2D texture synthesis. Some examples are wall and grass
textures in computer-generated graphics and video. In video game sound
design, background sounds are very important in creating different mood
and feeling when game players enter different scenes of the video game. In
order to save disk space and memory, sound designers tend to loop a short
(usually 5~15 second) background sound clip to produce a longer (usually
more than 1 minute) background sound clip. The background sound produced
using this approach often make the player feel bored. So recent work has
applied the idea of visual texture synthesis to audio texture synthesis,
hoping to synthesis a longer sound clip from a shorter one. However, very
little research has successfully synthesized sound textures without
introducing audible artifacts. This paper describes an enhanced
overlap-add method for sound texture synthesis.  It is especially
well-suited to sounds with a quasi-oscillatory or random character such as
waves crashing on the shore and traffic noise. It also works well for
animal sounds when there are several sources, such as a group of
chattering birds. These are important classes of sounds in computer games,
films, and advertisements. The results also suggest that better textures
can be achieved if acoustic effects are applied. The approach allows for
real-time synthesis of sound textures, which is useful in applications
such as computer games and sound editors.


Date:				Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Time:				2:00p.m.-4:00p.m.

Venue:				Room 3501
				Lifts 25-26

Committee Members:		Prof. Andrew Horner (Supervisor)
				Dr. Huamin Qu (Chairperson)
				Dr. David Rossiter


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