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Realtime GPU Audio
CowboyRobot writes "Two researchers at San Francisco State University has successfully implemented hardware acceleration for realtime audio using graphics processing units (GPUs). 'Suppose you are simulating a metallic plate to generate gong or cymbal-like sounds. By changing the surface area for the same object, you can generate sound corresponding to cymbals or gongs of different sizes. Using the same model, you may also vary the way in which you excite the metallic plate — to generate sounds that result from hitting the plate with a soft mallet, a hard drumstick, or from bowing. By changing these parameters, you may even simulate nonexistent materials or physically impossible geometries or excitation methods. There are various approaches to physical modeling sound synthesis. One such approach, studied extensively by Stefan Bilbao, uses the finite difference approximation to simulate the vibrations of plates and membranes. The finite difference simulation produces realistic and dynamic sounds (examples can be found here). Realtime finite difference-based simulations of large models are typically too computationally-intensive to run on CPUs. In our work, we have implemented finite difference simulations in realtime on GPUs.'"
What does it sound like when you strike a neutered cat with graphene carrots of varying length?
Something to do with all those GPUs when ASIC mining of Bitcoin takes over. It's going to get noisy.
" simulate nonexistent materials or physically impossible geometries"
the sound of one hand clapping
Might be interesting to me, if it was ported to Linux and could use AMD GPUs! Mac and Nvidia,no way!
Yeah, you can do computationally heavy things in a GPU. We've done that for years. All this is saying is that some audio signal processing tasks are computationally heavy.
When will you people LEARRRNNNN???????
Maybe when there is something to learn? Both forms are in common use, including physics textbooks and papers.
resonant frequency n. Physics a frequency at which resonance (of any kind) takes place.
1897 L. Bell Electric Power Transmission x. 393 When the [electrical] oscillations are strongly damped by the presence of iron, the total resonant rise is considerably diminished, but it varies less rapidly as the resonant frequency is departed from.
1934 J. P. Den Hartog Mech. Vibrations ii. 52 The forced frequency coincides exactly with the natural frequency... This important phenomenon is known as ‘resonance’, and the natural frequency is sometimes called also the ‘resonant frequency’.
2001 S. Hawking Universe in Nutshell ii. 52 (caption) Just like the strings on a violin, the strings in string theory support certain vibrational patterns, or resonant frequencies, whose wavelengths fit precisely between the two ends.
Two researchers at San Francisco State University has
*facepalm* Fucking illiterates, learn to read and write.
Looks like you need some GPU acceleration to handle realtime first posting.
then we'll finally have the answer to "what is the sound of one hand clapping"
You should see 3d graphics done with my audio card.
perfect example - the popular use of the term 'iPod' to refer to all MP3 players, regardless of their lack of affiliation with Apple.
What do they mean by "physically impossible geometries"? Are they talking about things that have a higher or lower number of physical dimensions (eg: a 4 dimensional object or a 2 dimensional object)? A weird combination of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry?
Dear anonymous moron,
Established use of a term is what gives it definition. That's how language works. if we decided that "cow" is a small bird that's delicious, then that's what a cow would be.
News at 11.
GPU : Graphics Processing Unit lvl 17 evolves to Generic Processing Unit.
(re-)Choose your specialization :
- Audio Processing Unit (APU)
- Stocks Processing Unit (SPU)
- First Post Unit (FPU)
Dear Nobel Laureate,
I'm guessing you got your "Nobel" in Economics? Because you're clearly completely delusional about how the real world works, and consider your "correct" definitions to establish the basis for all truth. Here's a clue: language is created by the people who use it. When a huge number of published physicists use a phrase in countless papers and textbooks, it is by virtue of that widespread use "correct" regardless of any other syntactical, etymological, or semantic arguments.
GPU audio processing makes hobbits late for dinner!
I'm an Engineer, and this is the first time in my life I've heard "Resonance" and "Frequency" in that order.
I studied that stuff for a while. Had some tests on it. Read some books on it. Look into it at work.
I'm also a bit of a musician.
I'm not saying you're incorrect -- I've just never heard that phrase before.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
To be fair though. I don't care how many people tell me it is legitimate.
If you try to "Aks" me a question I judge them an idiot. Period.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
One of the fundamental problems with computer based music production is that we're still, unless we're working with synthesized music, limited to pre-recorded samples.
Vienna Symphonic Library, for example, is well over several hundred gigabytes in size, many of those samples covering various articulations (playing techniques) of the same instrument.
One set of violins playing legato. One set of violins playing pizzicato. Marcato samples etc. etc. With virtual instruments that is no longer necessary. We can just "tell" the virtual musician where to place his fingers and how to do that and cconfigure a bunch of presets for the composer to use as he wishes.
One fundamental problem at the moment is dealing with smooth transitions from one note to another in sequence. For example the violas of a real orchestra playing a transition from one note to another would slide between them smoothly. This CAN be simulated by changing the note pitch digitally, but that loses authenticity.
VSL solves this by pre-recording the musicians playing the most common note transitions. This is a huge undertaking and takes up a lot of space as you have to record C to C#, C to D, C to D# etc. etc.
If we can simulate the instruments without relying on samples we can do away with all that and create some truly amazing things for musicians. I suspect that in the future we will have synthesized orchestration packages so that we can do away with samples entirely.
Those who play real instruments will be considered hipsters, music is seeing its final days, on the other side it's an awesome thing, I'm just sad for good music.
Please
I was thinking that it would be good for mapping out real "surround sound" similar to how complex reflection and/or ray-tracing is done.
Even if the initial sounds themselves are canned, the sound through a wooden hallway, a hallway with a carpet, or a large open room would be different. Combine that with digital surround and it could be quite useful.
There are many reasons that make GPU not as useful for audio.
The second is that most audio processing usually relies on complex directed graphs consisting on nodes that each process a different task, and that kind of interaction is too complex for the simpler, massively parallel GPU architecture.
It would be fanastic for us that work in the audio industry to have some sort of DSP acceleration coprocessors for audio, but there's not enough demand to make that affordable so we can only wait for GPUs to become more flexible and realtime friendly, or CPUs to become more parallel.
That's a mispronunciation, not a misused word.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Maybe it was ADD N to (X) or Einsturzende Neubauten... or Human League (Mmmmm... Travelogue I LURV U)
Maybe it was Autobahn... maybe it was Metal Fingers in My Body, Nervous Gender, Storm the Studio or many more.
Maybe it was all the acid I did back in the 90's...
Just saying...
ANON!
"A sound is no more than a fart unless wrapped in meaning" - purrpurrpussy.
Also engineer; concur with parent.
Dear ball licker,
If you had received a private education, you would understand that a frequency cannot resonate. Frequency is an abstract measurement. However, a frequency can exist where resonance occurs.
I deem you not worthy of licking my balls, but my girlfriend offers you to lick her ovaries instead.
Cheers,
The educated
(captcha: sincere)
Yes, like the referer in HTML.
...perhaps it would be easier to visualize it? The frame buffer is just one bit-throw away...
4wdloop
I could care less how many people tell me it is legitimate.
FTFY.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I remember when sound cards accellerated sound processing. It wasn't that long ago. Now the processing has to be done on the video card?
I'm cracking your code, you fucking faggot!
That's like comparing baseball bats to outer space. iPod is not incorrect terminology. The use of iPod to mean an MP3 player, Xerox to photocopy, and the like is "genericizaiton." Frequencies don't resonate, so it just makes you sound stupid.
Hopefully this means my old college buddy Marc can finally graduate. :p
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
At first I thought that post was a April fools from the submitted articles date - but this has actually been done before:
Fragment Shader Audio
and
Fragment Shader Audio with Delays
This is a much simpler implementation and is great for rapid real-time synthesizer development - and no messing around with compute shaders or openCL.
It is not RESONANT frequency. It is RESONANCE frequency. When will you people LEARRRNNNN???????///slash
I've never seen that in a text. The CRC/IEEE Electrical Engineering Handbook uses the term "resonant frequency". Some math texts refer to it as "natural frequency," particularly when a mechanical system is being modeled -- like the traditional mass-on-a-spring thing. Musicians use "fundamental" (or "fundamental frequency"), but what's a couple "pi"s between friends?
Now if you'd go crack down on "damp" versus "dampen," I could totally get behind that.
I am not a crackpot.
You fucking moron. Resonate frequency refers to the natural frequency of which an object resonates. Not some frequency that resonates. The commonly used textbook definition of resonate frequency is defined as such, not by some arbitrary meaning ascribed by you.
If I call some device that opens letters a beansplitter and it becomes common use even though its name implies something else does not mean the word is wrong. They are just some sounds that common use gives a meaning, this is how language works.
Dear ball profferer,
I'm glad to hear your GF enjoyed my performance enough to want me back for more. By the way, you should spend more time listening to her and learning how her body works --- you might find out that "ovaries" aren't the part you lick.
Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with my education (public elementary and high school, followed by private college and gradschool), which puts me on the side of this terminological issue with Feynman, Hawking, and the Oxford English Dictionary. Perhaps with a more highly privatized education, I would instead side with the ranks of "the educated" internet AC trolls --- but such is life.
I can't wait until real-time synthesized voices escape the uncanny valley. Neal Stephenson was pretty prophetic in 'The Diamond Age' of having live voice actors behind dynamically scripted content; not that we have that, but that we still don't have good voice generators.
Voice 'acted' games without requiring actors to pre-record every possible phrase would be great.
[Damp vs dampen (vs moisten)]
Look, I LIKE my sonic disturbances to come with a little added moisture, ok? Is that so wrong?!
Same with my inertia! Dry inertia is just erosive as hell, and very uncomfortable!
I don't *care* that those are both things that fudamentally cannot be made moist. I want to dampen them anyway!
(Lol!)
DSPs have done sound modeling for years. So is the GPU the new DSP? Or is it simply cheaper because your desktop machine already has a GPU, whereas it may not have a DSP?
Dear challenged Nobel Laureate,
Use by experts in the field defines the correct use.
Yours,
Moron
Everybody knows that. What are they teaching kids these days? SKINNER!
Also engineer; I disagree. A frequency can't resonate. An oscillator can.
"I couldn't care less how many people tell me it is legitimate."
FTFTFY
As a pedantic engineer, I beg to differ. A frequency can very much resonate, just not the way you're thinking. Ever seen any scary movie from before 1980?
One thing I don't get is why is it "contributing factor" and not "contribution factor". Contribution = noun and contributing = present progressive verb. Usually the way it works in English is noun adjective.
Wait, I'm retarded. My brain musta had a giant momentary lapse of reasoning. I take back my last post.
You should see 3d graphics done with my audio card.
Are you referring to Oscillofun? I thought that was interesting.
It can be used either way. In Pro-audio speakers, each has a Resonant Frequency. It's tested as "Fs" or "Free air Resonance" as a result the community ended up mixing the two words ages ago and now everyone calls it Resonance Frequency, Resonant Frequency, Fs or RF. It all means the same thing. Language is a living breathing thing and this guy is only wrong in trying to get someone else to stick to rules that don't exist. His use of the term isn't incorrect, he's just being a dick.
"I WHOOOOOSH how many people tell me it is legitimate."
FTFTFTFY
I have always bought Creative players, so I refer to all MP3 players as "Zen".
Yep. Pretty much any linguist worth his salt will tell you that unofficial and incorrect useage of language is largely how language evolves.
Old german didn't evolve into old english via committee, nor did old english evolve into new english via committee. It came from peasants abusing language , speaking in slang, fucking up grammar and generally speaking however felt comfortable. And here we are centuries later, with the language of academia, commerce and international relations (yeah yeah, french guys, i know, but your fighting a losing battle fellas)
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Isn't this basically what Roland's SuperNatural has been doing for years? I don't get it...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I'm also an engineer, a structural engineer who is currently doing research in dynamic analysis.
It's both ressonance frequency and ressonant frequency. They are both used in reference works.
Ressonant frequency:
"Dynamics of structures" - Anil Chopra
"Dynamics of structures" - Clough & Penzien
Ressonance frequency:
"Root cause failure analysis" - Mobley
In English, at least, there's only one s in resonant & resonance.
Do you often drink a glass or a bottle, litterally? Saying "a frequency" rather than "a pressure wave with a given frequency" is a metonymy.
"Frequency is an abstract measurement."
Nobel failure. Frequency can be quantized and measured non-abstractly.
I work with frequencies all day long, in the THz range. Try again when you actually understand something.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
you could bang an actual gong and join the rest of us in the real world.
The difficulty in synthesizing sound is getting the models right. You can't simulate each atom so you need a simplifying model that allows you to reduce the work. And that model has to be accurate in the areas where it matters.
While moving stuff to a GPU gives more computing power (but in a more constrained fashion than a CPU) and certainly helps, the models aren't there yet.
The people researching physical modelling continue to make progress, but I think that if you put state of the art in a game, you'd perhaps have more lively sounds, but they'd probably sound worse than sampled sounds.
"I accidentally part of the word." FTFTFTFTFY
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Because if it's not, why should we care?
GPU processing for DSP is not news.
That's funny. I'd say you got cheated, then.
Because at the merely-public huge university engineering school I attended, one of the earliest things we learned about was the "resonant frequency" of a bridge could cause it to be destroyed by wind or marching soldiers. Yeah, professors with 30 years tenure used that term, as did all of the physics professors at that same institution. And that people and buildings have resonant frequencies as well (as Tesla showed when he scared his neighbors badly.)
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
It is not RESONANT frequency. It is RESONANCE frequency. When will you people LEARRRNNNN???????///slash
So, when will you youngsters stop with this nonsense of misapplying the word "energy" to science-y stuff? As any theology student knows it's always meant the activity of God in the world. Gee, silly 16th'ers and their "mechanics" distorting the plain meaning of the language for us good folk!
And get off (the ancient ruins of) my lawn!
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
We agree, so you may be a response level too deep.
Resonant frequency = yes
Resonance frequency = no
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.