SOUNDSCAPEGENERATOR: SOUNDSCAPE MODELLING AND
SIMULATION
Marinos Koutsomichalis
CIRMA/StudiUm - Università di Torino
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
This paper describes SoundScapeGenerator, a generic system for modelling and simulating soundscapes both in real
and non-real time. SoundsScapeGenerator features algorithms for three-dimensional sound-localisation and is able
to model complex spaces. The system relies on abstract
rule descriptions (generators) to simulate deterministic, “cartoonified” (loosely modelled) sequencing of sound events.
It further supports virtual P.O.H. (point of hearing) and
is able to render the final output in various channel configurations. Based on generative algorithms, the SoundScapeGenerator implementation allows real-time user interaction with ever-changing soundscapes, and it can easily
communicate with other applications and devices. Finally,
we introduce SoundScapeComposer, a higher level module
developed for the SoDA project (dedicated to soundscape
automatic generation), that has been built on top of SoundScapeGenerator, hiding most of the latter’s details to the
user.
1. INTRODUCTION
Manual or automatic soundscape generation has been the
focus of several projects hitherto. Yet, to our knowledge
no system has been implemented that enables sophisticated
and full-scale modelling/simulation of complex soundscapes.
From our point of view such system should have the following features:
• modelling of complex soundscapes that may consist
of an arbitrary number of zones with different geographical, acoustical and sonic characteristics;
• 3-dimensional sound-localisation that takes into account listener’s and source’s positions, source’s size,
sound-zone’s acoustic features (reverberation, dampening, resonance, etc);
• both deterministic and non-deterministic sequencing
and localisation of individual sounds;
• generation of sound events out of atomic sounds and
samples in both deterministic and non-deterministic
ways;
Copyright:
is
an
©2014 Marinos Koutsomichalis,
open-access
article
distributed
Andrea Valle,
under
Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 Unported,
the
which
.
terms
permits
• modelling of sound events that may move in deterministic or non-deterministic ways in 3D space;
• modelling and simulation of POH (Point Of Hearing) “soundwalks” within the soundscape using virtual listeners;
• multi-purpose audio decoding to various speaker configurations –e.g. mono/stereo/quadraphonic/5.1/etc;
• Real-Time and Non-Real-Time operation.
Before examining the specifics of the proposed implementation, it is interesting to briefly discuss existing solutions,
which in some cases successfully address some of the previously introduced issues and propose plausible soundscape
generation paradigms. Regarding automatic soundscape
generation, at least four relevant research projects need to
be cited. The European project Listen [1] coordinated by
the Fraunhofer Institut für MedienKommunikation is focused on the generation and control of interactive soundscapes, although it is specifically targeted at innovative,
media-oriented experimentation on augmented reality. Its
main goal is to create a new medium: the immersive audioaugmented environment (IAAE). Nevertheless, Listen is
not targeted at explicitly modelling the soundscape. Tapestrea [2] is intended to create “environmental audio” in
real-time: however, it does not define any explicit relationship between sound and space, and it does not provide user
interaction. Physis 1 is an industrial research project led
by IRCAM that deals with the modelling and the synthesis
of virtual soundscapes. Physis is exclusively oriented towards the game industry and implementation details have
not been published yet. GeoGraphy [3] is designed for the
real-time simulation of existing soundscapes, starting from
a database containing sound materials and other information. It can work interactively and in real-time, and includes the modelling of a virtual listener. Nonetheless, the
organisation of audio materials is based on specific data
structures (the so-called “graphs”) which are potentially
very complex and thus hard to handle. A generation technique of realistic soundscapes by means of a higher level
methodology based upon GeoGraphy has been proposed
too [4].
This
of
the
unre-
stricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author and source are credited.
Andrea Valle
CIRMA/StudiUm - Università di Torino
[email protected]
1 http://www.ircam.fr/305.html?&tx_
ircamprojects_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=74&tx_
ircamprojects_pi1%5BpType%5D=p&cHash=
ed317fa8927e424c8700c020b1812a58&L=1 Retrieved June
14, 2014.
2. SOUNDSCAPEGENERATOR (SSG)
SoundScapeGenerator (SSG) is an autonomous soundscape
synthesis engine capable of modelling soundscapes with a
variable degree of realism. It has been designed trying to
include all the features mentioned in Section 1, and has
been prototyped using the SuperCollider programming environment. In SoundScapeGenerator the audio is generated by a Renderer that expects as arguments a SonicScape
(the model of the soundscape, see Section 3), a Listener,
which may be fixed or movable in the space, and a Decoder. The Decoder manages the desired output format.
Internally, SSG relies on ambisonics spatialisation algorithms [5], so that, given the appropriate decoder, the same
audio stream may be decoded (at least, theoretically) to any
of the standard formats such as mono, stereo, 5.1, but also
to a custom, arbitrarily speaker configuration in 2D or 3D
space. The Renderer takes into account these three components to generate the final audio signal. It can operate both
in real- and non-real time, thus making the system suitable
for a wide range of applications. The SonicSpace is intended as a model of the desired space. A SonicSpace is
built as an aggregation of an arbitrary number of individual “SoundZones” and with respect to their individual geographic, acoustic and sonic characteristics. SoundZone’s
geographical features refer to their spatial boundaries and
their absolute positioning in 3D virtual space. Their acoustic features refer to modeled physical phenomena such as
reverberation and resonance. Acoustic features are modelled independently and not with respect to the geometric
properties of a modelled SoundZone—geographical informations are merely used to position/localise sounds. SSG
also allows the user to model the acoustic properties of
the boundaries (e.g. walls) that delimit the various SoundZones by means of various filtering. The sonic features of a
SoundZone refer to the type of sound events that may occur
inside a SoundZone and have to be specified using an arbitrary number of individual “SonicSources”. SonicSources
are conceived as containers for some sort of audio event
which may or may not be repeated in time—their only differences lying in their spatial positioning and directionality. This means that a SonicSource consists of both the
audio data to be reproduced and the information regarding
timing and location for generation. In our model, audio
data are intended as sound samples, as typically happens
in real soundscape modelling. Timing is defined by means
of a pattern-based mechanism (see next section); location
depends also on the type of source. Figure 1 depicts the
structure of a SonicSpace. SoundScapeGenerator features
five different types of SonicSources:
• SonicAtmosphere: non-directional sonic ambience;
• FixedSound: directional and fixed in space;
• AmbulatorySound (2): governed by envelopes or by
a callback function;
• SoundCloud: representing complex events, such as
e.g. rain or crowds, that are characterised by multiple appearances of similar sonic sequences at everchanging and random positions within a given cubic
area and with respect to a density factor.
SonicSpace
Geography
Acoustics
Sounds
SoundZone 1
SonicAtmosphere
SonicSource 1
SonicSource 2
...
...
Figure 1. Structure of SonicSpace.
Each SoundZone has to be associated with at least one
SonicAtmosphere, that functions as a background ambience and, therefore, provides a sort of canvas upon which
individual SoundSources are positioned. The presence of
such a background sound is useful also in order to mask
unwanted artefacts in the sound samples, such as e.g. background noises in sound samples. The particular acoustic profile of a SoundZone will also add coherence to the
scenery since all sound events within a given area will be
processed in a similar way. The various directional SonicSources are localized using ambisonics algorithms thata
have been further customized to allow for size-awareness
(objects emitting sound from a larger area should have a
broader spatial footprint than smaller ones) and listenerawareness (concomitant to the topological positioning and
the listening radius of a virtual listener), as to be subsequently explained.The algorithm first encodes the audio
source into an omnidirectional soundfiled (a four-channel
b-format signal). Then the spherical coordinates of each
SonicSource with respect to the virtual Listener’s positioning in the SonicSpace are calculated as shown in equations 1, 2 and 3. In our implementation, the Listener’s and
Source’s position coordinates are internally represented as
three-channel control signals (to allow for ambulatory Listeners/Sources) and in Cartesian notation—channel 0 stands
for the x, 1 for the y and 2 for the z dimensional axis. In the
above equations, ρ stands for radius, φ for azimuth angle,
θ for zenith, ∆x, ∆y and ∆z for the difference between
the Listener’s and the SonicSource’s coordinates for every
dimensional axis. All coefficients are represented as functions of time (t) since they are audio signals. Note also
that the equation to calculate the radius has been modified
to account for the Source’s size (Rs )—each SonicSource
is assumed to be a spherical object that emits sound in all
directions.
ρ(t) =
p
∆x(t)2 + ∆y(t)2 + ∆z(t)2 −
Rs
2
(1)
φ(t) = arctan
∆y(t)
∆x(t)
(2)
θ(t) = arccos
∆z(t)
ρ(t)
(3)
Each SonicSource’s corresponding audio signal is then
localised according to equation 4 which demonstrates how
a source soundfield is localised. Soundfields are notated
as a standard b-format ambisonics signal (b-format signals comprise of 4 coefficients, namely w, x, y, z [5]). ar
stands for relative amplitude and is a parameter associated
with each SonicSource so that the algorithm takes into account the phenomenological amplitude characteristics of
the Source (e.g. recordings of a space-rocket and a bird
may be of the same amplitude yet the first is phenomenologically understood as much louder to the latter) which
has to be taken into account for a dynamic and realistic
SoundScape to be generated. Pr is a synthesis module used
to simulate the proximity effect. Pu is also a synthesis
module that ‘pushes’ the soundfield in a particular direction, taking into account a distortion angle (ω, calculated
as in equation 5) and the azimuth and zenith angles as calculated in equations 2 and 3. A distortion angle of 0 stands
for a non-directional soundfiled coming from all directions
while one of π2 stands for sound localised at a single spot.
The proposed algorithm will result in ‘pushing’ all sounds
that are outside a five meters range from the Listener’s position to behave as nominal single-spot Sources while it
will maintain a broader spatiality for those Sources located
closer to it. Finally, the aρ represents a amplification factor which is calculated as an exponential mapping of the
radius (ρ) (which represents the distance of a Source’s to
the Listener) to a range of 0, 1 and with respect to the Listener’s listening radius (ρl )—as shown in equation 6. The
formula first produces a value between 1, 2 and then subtracts 1, to compensate for the idiosyncrasies of the unit
generators used internally in our implementation.
Si
w
y
x
w
(t) = ar ×aρ (t)×Pr (Pu (
z
y
ω(t) =
aρ (t) =
π
2
π
2
×
ρ(t)
5
x
(t), ω, φ, θ))
z
(4)
if 0 ≤ ρ(t) ≤ 5
if ρ(t) > 5
ρ
(( 21 ) ρl × 2) − 1
0
if ρ(t) ≤ ρl (t)
if ρ(t) > ρl (t)
(5)
(6)
All SonicSources belonging to a SoundZone and the
SonicAtmosphere associated with it are mixed and further
processed with respect to the acoustic profile of the SoundZone, as shown in equation 8. Then, the audio output of
all SoundZones (Zi−n ) is mixed and routed to the a Decoding module which will generate the SoundScape (Sf )
in the desired format. Equation 7 demonstrates the decoding algorithm.
Sf = D(
n
X
Zi (t))
(7)
i=1
Zi (t) = Acoustics (Atmo +
n
X
Si (t))
(8)
i=1
Therefore, the proposed algorithm takes into account
the Listener’s relative three-dimensional positioning with
respect to each SonicSource, their distance (also accounting for the the potential proximity effect), the size of the
SonicSource and the acoustic profile of each SoundZone.
Insofar as localisation of audio samples is concerned, it
has to be kept in mind that sounds that already have spatial information registered within the recording should be
treated differently when modelling a soundscape. Close-up
of sound events, for example, should be positioned according to where the sound’s source should be, e.g. in the sky
in the case of a bird, while sound events recorded from a
distance should be positioned somewhere next to the listener, since they already convey a listener’s perspective of
something occurring in a distance. When positioning such
Sources, it should be also kept in mind that, as already explained the algorithm will progressively ‘push’ non-directional soundfields to directional ones within a five meters range from the Listener’s positioning; therefore and
for most cases, this means that such Sources should be
positioned at a distance no less than 5 meters. Figure 2
demonstrates the flow of audio and control signals within
our current implementation of SoundScapeGenerator. As
already mentioned, the Listener’s and the various Sources’
positioning are represented as three-channel control-rate
signals that feed into internal virtual buses. Audio is also
streamed internally using four-channel virtual-buses.
2.1 Pattern-based Sequencing
One of the most difficult aspects in soundscape simulation
and generation concerns the modelling of a source’s behaviour in time. In real-life soundscapes, sound events
may repeat themselves in irregular patterns. An interesting approach in relation to sound synthesis is cartoonification as devised by the Sounding Object project [6]; here
sounds are described not in terms of the real mechanics
of their production, but following a phenomenologicallycompliant and physically-simplified approach. The idea
at the base of cartoonification can be extended from sound
synthesis to the organisation of sound sequences. In SoundScapeGenerator, time-organisation of sound events is thus
cartoonified (loosely modelled) by means of specific data
structures, namely generators [7]. A generator can be thought
of as a rule for generating sequences. When executed,
a generator will result in a stream of values of a certain
length and with respect to some high-level rule. As the rule
is specified rather than the actual data, the sequence can be
of infinite length. In relation to SoundSources, a generatorbased strategy allows for quick and efficient emulation of
a variety of time behaviours: from one-shot to repetitive
sound-events, from deterministic to stochastic sequences.
Thus, in SoundScapeGenerator, all SoundSources have to
be associated with a pattern that defines the exact time of
their first appearance and their repetition scheme. Support
for generators is native in the SuperCollider language by
means of “Patterns” and “Streams” of data that result from
their execution [8]. Hence on, we will use the term “pattern” and the relative SuperCollider notation. Built-in patterns include representations for linear sequences, random
selections from lists, probability-based number generators,
random walks, and other similar mathematical constructs
that provide a conceptually straightforward way to model
streams of values. Such patterns may be chained and/or
nested recursively, allowing for a very compact notation of
Encode to nondirectional
soundfield
b-format
signal
Zone I Group
b-format
signal
Zone I
b-format
signal
Localise Soundfield
b-format signal
...
Acoustic Profiles
SonicSource I
Atmosphere
(Sequence or
Object)
SonicSpace
b-format signal
3 ch control
signal
3 ch control
signal
b-format
signal
SonicSource II
Localise Soundfield
b-format signal
3 ch control
signal
Encode to nondirectional soundfield
Encode to nondirectional soundfield
Source’s
Positioning
Source Audio
Listener’s
position
Source Audio
Master
Group
b-format
signal
Source’s
Positioning
Decoding
Figure 2. Audio flow within SSG.
0
1
1
1
2
1
2
3
4
2
5
6
2
7
8
9
10
Figure 3. Barking Sequence.
very complex behaviour. Consider, for instance the following pattern:
P seq([0, 1], 2)
This stands for a linear sequence of 0 and 1 repeated twice
(2), representing time intervals. As a model of temporal
behaviour, it will result in the corresponding SoundSource
being reproduced 4 times: immediately once the Renderer
is asked to play (0 seconds), 1 second after having finished playing back, immediately after this second appearance has finished (again, 0 seconds), and 1 second after
the third appearance. As an example, it is easy to model a
highly realistic, ever-permuting dog barking by means of
simple patterns applied to just a few barks, like that:
P rand([a, b, s], inf )
P white(0.5, 2.0, rrand(3, 10))
This two patterns will result in a virtual dog barking every now and then, as shown in Figure 3 in irregular patterns and having a varying duration. The first pattern defines the atomic sounds that will be used, with a and b
representing two different bark atoms, s standing for silence and inf for infinity (it is upon the duration pattern
to define the total number of atoms used). The second pattern defines their durations as random numbers between
0.5 and 2 seconds and will aggregate a random number of
atoms between 3 and 10 (the rrand function). Then, a
Source which points to the aforementioned sequence object will cause it to generate a new audio sequence whenever needed and with respect to its particular repetition
schemata. A graphical representation of a possible barking sequence (here made up of 7 sounds for ≈ 9 seconds)
is shown in Figure 3, where each bark sound is given an index (1 and 2) and silence is represented by 0. To compensate for potential discontinuities when joining sound samples together and to seamlessly truncate audio files when
needed, SSG uses parametrisable linear (cross)fades. The
designer may select the appropriate cross-fade time with
respect the idiosyncracies of the audio samples in use; e.g.
joining individual footsteps together to form a larger sequence requires minimal or even not fade times between
each sample, while joining city ambiences to construct a
longer Atmosphere requires fade times of several seconds
(even minutes). In any case, looping may be achieved using pattern sequences: the algorithm will simply create
crossfades with a sound and a repetition of itself.
2.2 Composing soundscape as a hyper-narratives
As discussed, SoundScapeGenerator features different kinds
of Listeners. Listeners are given a listening radius as well,
outside of which no sound is audible. After having localised the sounds using the extended ambisonics techniques described before, the algorithm modulates their amplitude proportionally to their distance from the Listener’s
positioning to deliver a POH (Point of Hearing) interpretation of the SonicSpace. In that sense, SoundScapeGenerator follows a listener-oriented and phenomenological approach. The exported soundscape is analogous to a virtual
listener’s perspective of the SonicSpace and with respect
to their spatial positioning, their listening radius and the
particular acoustic features of the area in which they are
positioned. Therefore, rendering with different Listeners
may result in dramatically different versions of the very
same SonicSpace.
Considered as a semiotics for the description of soundscape, SSG is able to output soundscapes as its utterances,
depending on various factors. In contrast to a DAW-like
purely “syntagmatic” (sequential) approach, SSG models
a SoundScape as a “semiotics” where each Listener’s particular trajectory through a SonicSpace can be seen as a
realisation of virtual possibilities (its “paradigm”). In that
sense, and from a user-perspective, SSG may be conceptualised as a tool to model a broader hyper-narrative (or
maybe, a hyper-soundscape) that may yield very different
outputs. Hyper-narratives are to be understood as the sum
of the multiple trajectories through a paradigm [9] or, in
this particular case, as the aggregate of all possible combinations of the elements in a SonicSpace. Each time SSG
is asked to produce audio, a new narrative is generated, yet
one which is always a subset of a broader hyper-narrative.
Audio (RT/NRT)
web interface
form
User
Sequence/Atom Selection
Generators
download
System
Decoding
Decoder
Sonic Sequences
Atomic Sound
Objects
Semantic
search engine
Acoustic Profiles
P.O.H.
Specialisation
Localisation info
Listener
Sonic Sources
Soundscape
HyperNarrative
SoundScape Composer
Topology
Sequence Generator
SoundScape Generator
audio file
SonicSpace
Semantic
index
Figure 4. General structure go the SoundScapeGenerator
Model.
From a practical point of view, using such an approach is
highly advantageous in that coherency and consistency are
easily achieved. A hyper-narrative remains identifiable as
such and, if carefully designed, it outputs a unique, dynamic and unpredictable utterance–thus offering a highly
personalised and dynamic experience that does not suffer
from the problems normally associated with fixed soundscape recordings[10]. Figure 4 shows the complete architecture of SSG in four stages (dark grey): A “hypernarrative” (designed by means of a SonicSpace) is to be
“specialised” (with respect to a Listener object) and then
“decoded” (with respect to an ambisonics decoder) so that
audio is generated (in RT or NRT). Figure 4 further illustrates how a SonicSpace is designed by means of defining
Acoustic, Topological and Sonic profiles (for each SoundZone). SonicSources are then shown to be depend on Generators (as already explained), localisation information and
sound samples (be in an atomic sound object or in a sequence concatenated by generators).
3. THE SODA PROJECT:
SOUNDSCAPECOMPOSER
SoundScapeGenerator has been designed as a generic system. While it is theoretically possible to directly embed
it in third-party application, its current intended use is either as a stand-alone autonomous unit or as part of broader
SuperCollider-based systems. Even in that form, however,
it is quite straightforward to use SuperCollider’s built-in
communication channels (OSC, MIDI, etc) so that SSG
can be controlled by other software or hardware applications. In this vein, SSG features no graphical user interface
to avoid specialisation and keep the project generic 2 . Possible applications for SSG may include soundscape composition, acoustic ecology projects, virtual or augmented
reality environments, interactive sound design. The system’s NRT mode makes it a possible solution for audiovisual sound designers and composers looking for simulations of real or artificial environments to be used in other
contexts. SSG’s hyper-narrative paradigm in combination
with its real-time capabilities makes it suitable for interactive or reactive navigation in virtual spaces. These include for example video games, animation, virtual reality
or augmented reality applications, etc . We now describe
2 In any case, SuperCollider has a sophisticated support for designing
GUIs and it is a trivial task to create a GUI according to one’s needs.
references
Audio
storage
Figure 5. SoDA Architecture.
the SoDA project for which a specialised module has been
devised as a higher level interface to SSG.
The SoDA (Sound Design Accelerator) project 3 aims at
providing automatic soundscape composition by means of
an ontologically annotated sound library [11]. SoDA requires a NRT sound engine which nevertheless should be
automatically parametrisable according to the results of
a semantical analysis engine. The idea is that the sound
designer simply queries the system by inputting few keywords, and gets back an automatically generated soundscape. SoDA aims at providing –with respect to the creation of soundscapes– a twofold computational “acceleration” (hence its name): on the selection of relevant sound
elements to be composited and on their organisation. Figure 5 shows SoDA’s architecture and the various modules
involved. The user is asked to provide a number of keywords through a web interface, then the semantical analysis engine is responsible for analysing the query so to return the sound files to be used in the generation step. Sound
files have been previously annotated by a semantical analysis phase. Each of the audio files in the library is annotated
so that technical as well as contextual information is associated, e.g. type of shot, relative amplitude, etc. SoDA then
relies on an automated SoundScapeComposer. The latter
is intended as a high level interface to SSG, as it provides
SSG all the required data by taking into account the results
of semantical analysis and by some ad hoc algorithms for
compositing sound files. Once opportunely tuned, SSG is
then responsible for the final audio rendering. Complying
with SoDA’s requirements for a fully automated soundscape composing paradigm, SoundScapeComposer (SSC)
has being conceived as a bridge between SSG and the other
components of SoDA. SSC has 4 tasks to address (6): parsing and interpreting the result of the semantical analysis
engine; modelling a SonicSpace with the adequate features; populating it with SoundSources; placing a Listener
within it. In the context of SoDA, a soundscape is intended as a background ambience with some possible moving sources: thus, a SonicSpace of a singleton Zone inhabited by a fixed Listener is enough. This is already an example of the specialisation achieved on SSG through SSC.
SSC associates to the SonicSpace an ever-present Atmo3
http://sodaproject.wix.com/soda
Semantic engine
Semantic data
Defaults
Soundscape generator
Behaviour list
Memory manager
User regulations
Rule-based engine
Stochastic functions
Figure 6. SoundScapeComposer Overview.
sphere, in order to provide a first background layer. One
of the most difficult tasks of SSC is to figure out when and
how individual atoms should be joined to form “meaningful” sequences. This is achieved by considering special
meta-tags entries as well as the technical data retrieved
from the files using a FEUtil –a special Feature Extraction Utility expressively designed for SoDA, which relies
on machine listening algorithms to extract various spectral and psycho-acoustical information from audio files.
To accomplish each task, SSC relies on three modules:
an algorithmically generated Behaviour list; a Rule-based
Engine, featuring general rules, stochastic and probability
functions and user-defined regulations; a memory manager
(Figure 6). The Behaviour list is intended as a description
of the way a SonicSource behaves. It is built from the ontological data returned by the semantical engine, and provided with default states for everyday sounds: for example,
animals or cars may occasionally move while architectural
structures do not; speech is generally not to be repeated;
cars move mostly on ground-level while elevators move
vertically, etcetera. A behaviour list should be understood
as numerical answers to certain properties, such as: the
minimum/maximum allowed deviation in each spatial dimension for the localisation of a Sonic-Source, the minimum/maximum speed of their movement and their acceleration pattern, the maximum number of repetitions allowed
for a SonicSource, and so on. The Rule-based Engine
is, then, deputed to convert the data provided by the behaviour list into the required SonicSources and to provide
them with their spatio-temporal features. SSC also features
an intrinsic Memory module, initially empty, that is incrementally populated at runtime with the features of the generated SonicSources. Then, and unless the behaviour lists
or the user-defined rules suggest otherwise, SSC attempts
to accelerate variance by consulting the memory manager
in order not to generate objects with almost identical features.
SSG is intended as a low-level, fine-tuneable engine. On
the contrary, the purpose of SSC is to define an even higher
level, by hiding the user the complexities involved in manually designing a soundscape with SSG. Interaction is intended to happen primarily through the various semantical
filters s/he may apply to the query: the semantic engine
becomes the main user interface.
4. CONCLUSIONS
The SoundScapeGenerator has been designed as a generic
system suitable for generic soundscape simulation that in-
volves sound samples. Its pattern-based logic and its hypernarrative compositional paradigm are intended to provide
a flexible, interactive and generative low-level engine. Indeed, it still requires the user a certain amount of work to
be set up. But its modular nature allows to define higher
level interfaces that provide automatic parametrisation and
specialisation, as in the case of SoDA’s SoundscapeComposer. In fact, the latter relies on a minimum set of SSG’s
features. SoundScapeGenerator’s current implementation
is stable and fully functional. SSG has been initially tested
in a wide range of soundscape-generation scenarios. A rigorous user evaluation has not been carried on yet, and it
will be the next step of the project. Also, there is still room
for improvements (e.g. concerning fidelity, efficiency, flexibility and ease of use), that will become more evident by
taking into account users’ feedback.
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