Acoustics and Audio Group, University of Edinburgh

28/01/2021

Dear MusICA followers,

We are excited to announce our next Zoom seminar, by Charis Saitis, on Semantic Processing of Timbre. Please DM for link and password to join the virtual meeting which will take place on Monday 1st of February, 5:30pm GMT.

Abstract: Because humans lack a sensory vocabulary for auditory experiences, timbral qualities of sounds are often conceptualized and communicated through readily available sensory attributes from different modalities (e.g., bright, warm, sweet) but also through the use of onomatopoeic attributes (e.g., ringing, buzzing, shrill) or nonsensory attributes relating to abstract constructs (e.g., rich, complex, harsh). The analysis of the linguistic description of timbre, or timbre semantics, can be considered as one way to study its perceptual representation empirically. In the most commonly adopted approach, timbre is considered as a set of verbally defined perceptual attributes that represent the dimensions of a semantic timbre space. Previous studies have identified three salient semantic dimensions for timbre along with related acoustic properties. Comparisons with similarity-based multidimensional models confirm the strong link between perceiving timbre and talking about it. Still, the cognitive and neural mechanisms of timbre semantics remain largely unknown and underexplored, especially when one looks beyond the case of acoustic musical instruments.

25/11/2020

Dear MusICA followers

We are extremely excited to host our second guest speaker for the semester, a very special one indeed: Dan Gillespie of Newfangled Audio. It is rare to meet someone equally knowledgeable in music, maths and programming, all key qualities to anyone wishing to pursue a career in the plugin-making business, but Dan is one of such examples.

Date: Wed 2 December 2020, 5:00pm GMT

This is a virtual Zoom meeting, please DM to get the link.

Abstract
For the past 20 years much of the field of music DSP has been devoted to preserving and accurately recreating physical and analog equipment and phenomenon. These two types of systems tend to form similar models, and using a physics based modelling approach can produce results which sound “good”. However, by changing frames and focusing on the human auditory system rather than the physical phenomena which generate sounds we can create things which sound “good” to humans and aren’t tied to the constraints of physics. In this talk we’ll explore these two frames of thinking about good sound and I’ll give some examples of auditory algorithms.

Bio
Dan Gillespie is a digital signal processing researcher and founder of the audio software company Newfangled Audio. Dan spent thirteen years at the digital audio effects company Eventide, releasing many award winning products, publishing papers and patents, and running the DSP and Plug-In groups. He started Newfangled Audio in 2015 with the mission of bringing novel ideas to the field of music technology, and has released music software containing new applications of auditory modelling, psychoacoustics, and chaotic systems.

09/11/2020

We are happy to announce our upcoming MusICA seminar, by Prof Vesa Valimaki, this Wednesday 11th November, 5:10pm GMT. This is a virtual Zoom meeting, all welcome. (DM to get the meeting link.)

Title: Graphic Equalizer Design
Abstract: This seminar will give an overview of graphic equalizers (EQ). Any intelligent EQ method must rely on automatic design, which should not deviate much from the target magnitude response. Today we can design highly accurate cascade and parallel graphic EQ filters. However, former designs have been surprisingly inaccurate. A cascade graphic EQ consists of a chain of parametric EQ filters, which may be based on various alternative coefficient formulas. This presentation shows that the choice of the parametric EQ design has a major impact on the accuracy of the graphic EQ, as it determines the interaction between the filter bands. The filter gains must be different from the target gains. They can be optimized for example using the least squares (LS) method. A parallel graphic EQ filter is more difficult to design accurately than a cascade one, because the design needs to account for the phase response of each band filter. A recently introduced series-to-parallel conversion technique offers a simple solution, as it enables the design of a parallel EQ based on the cascade one. This presentation finally explains a recent idea of controlling the graphic EQ with a neural network: A multilayer perceptron predicts quickly and precisely the filter gains from target gains, replacing the LS optimization.

12/07/2020

The latest effort from the Acoustics and Audio Group is now available in the CMJ.

NEW CMJ Double Issue: Volume 43, No. 2-3 - Physical Modeling, the Prepared Digital Piano, and Systems for Composition or Improvisation.

Free PDF sound synthesis article: "Physical Modeling, Algorithms, and Sound Synthesis: The NESS Project"

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/comj/2-3

24/01/2020

We're absolutely delighted to announce that Prof Murray Campbell, founding member of at the The University of Edinburgh has recently been awarded the Silver Medal by the Acoustical Society of America.

Prof Murray Campbell receives Silver Medal in Musical Acoustics from the ASA We are delighted to announce that Prof Murray Campbell of the Acoustics and Audio Group has recently been the recipient of the Acoustical Society of America’s “Silver Medal” award. Murray is a founding member of the U...

07/10/2019

The MusICA seminar series is back this Wednesday with an exciting talk on music information retrieval and artificial intelligence!

The talk will be held in the Atrium of Alison House, at 5.10pm.

See you all there!

Li Su: AI and recent developments in music information retrieval When: Wednesday 9th October 2019 @ 5:10 PM Where: The Atrium (G.10), Alison House, 12 Nicholson Sq, University of Edinburgh Title: AI and recent developments in music information retrieval Speakers: Dr Li Su (Music and Culture Technolo...

28/09/2019

The MusICA seminars are back!

We are very excited to announce our first speaker for the year, Chris Buchanan, who will be presenting his work on singing synthesis.

Time: Wednesday 2 October, 5.10pm
Location: Atrium, Alison House, 12 Nicolson Square

See you all there!

Chris Buchanan: Singing Synthesis When: Wednesday 2nd October 2019 @ 5:10 PM Where: The Atrium (G.10), Alison House, 12 Nicholson Sq, University of Edinburgh Title: Singing Synthesis Speaker: Chris Buchanan (Cereproc, Edinburgh, UK) Abstract In the last two years speech synthesis technology has chan...

30/05/2019

We're delighted to announce a 2 day workshop next week (June 6-7) on sound synthesiser design with a former AAG student, Fabian Esqueda (now of Native Instruments).

This workshop is kindly funded by Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh's micro-residency scheme, and is designed for students of acoustics, music technology, sound design, and related subjects. Registration is open to students from both Edinburgh and beyond.

Full details and registration (which is free, but required!) at:

Fun with Sine Waves – A Workshop on Synthesizing Bass, Leads and Beats from Scratch Introduction What do the TR-808 kick drum and the DX7 electric piano have in common? For staters, they are among the most iconic and recognizable sounds in popular music. Moreover, they share a common design elemen...

25/03/2019

We are looking forward to our next MusICA seminar, by Dr Kurt Werner. This seminar is really exciting as it deals with the modelling of drum machines! Nothing sounds quite like the 808 ... or does it?
Come find out this Wednesday 27th March, 5.10pm at the Informatics Forum.

More info here

Kurt Werner: “Boom Like an 808” – Secrets of the TR-808 Bass Drum’s Circuit When: Wednesday 27th March 2019 @ 5:10 PM Where: Room 4.31/4.33, Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton St, University of Edinburgh Title: “Boom Like an 808″ – Secrets of the TR-808 Bass Drum’s Circuit Speaker: Dr Ku...

05/03/2019

BIG NEWS. We have released Pro Tools versions of our plate and spring reverbs for macOS. Download the free demo at https://physicalaudio.co.uk/downloads