The SoDA project proposes the design and implementation of a sound synthesis engine in real-time for sound design, interfaced through semantic analysis with sound libraries.
The project has been developed by:
- CIRMA (Turin University’s Inter-Department Research Center on Audiovisuals and Multimedia)
- CELI (software solutions for the analysis of natural language)
- Machiavelli (music licensing, clearance, consulting, collection, synchronization and production)
- Zero dB (Sound Post-production studios)
SoDA allows to retrieve audio material from a library, to spatialize it, and to make the sound available to the user in the requested format. The term “spatialization” indicates not only the definition of the sound source position in space but more generally the application of digital signal processing algorithms capable of simulating the overall influence of the diffusion of the sound in space, such as, filtering, reverberation, etc.
At the base of SoDA there is the concept of “sound object”. A sound object represents a certain sound material to which a position in a reference space is added. That is, the hypothetical source responsible for the sound object explicitly receives a position in the scene. The scene also includes a listening position (“listener”), which is the audio equivalent of the point of view of the frame.
The application has several goals:
– operability either in real and non-real-time;
– management of a generic multichannel audio delivery;
– integration of static and interactive audio;
– communication with other software applications.
Evaluation of the SoDA engine is crucial, as the project aims at providing the sound designers a tool that can be used in real-world situations. We’re currently looking for sound designers/professionals who want to test our engine, providing some feedback on the software usage.
If you want to be involved in our evaluation process, please drop me a line: paolo[dot]armao[at]gmail[dot]com
Link to the paper presented at ICMC|SMC 2014:
https://www.academia.edu/8493660/SoDA_A_Sound_Design_Accelerator_for_the_automatic_generation_of_soundscapes_from_an_ontologically_annotated_sound_library
Website:
http://soda.machiavellimusic.com/wp/
PAOLO ARMAO 