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.'"

Comments

Re:Yawn

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I think what's most important is now we have the mathematical models in place that allow us to simulate convincing sounds rather than "sample and include". For the creative types, this will save a ton of effort and money. It also has implications for games, e.g. with the given environment model, be able to produce convincing sounds in real-time rather than taking sound samples mixing them with reverb, attenuation, positioning, etc.

Re: Impossible geometries?

[JWW]

Imagine a metal cymbal shaped as a sphere with no holes in it floating free in the air. Now hit that cymbal with a mallet that is longer than the diameter than the cymbal. But hit the cymbal on the inside of the sphere. Oh and the interior of the sphere is a vacuum.

There you go, there are a few impossible geometries (and other things) in that scenario.

Re:Yawn

[Instine]

I'm also excited by this. Especially as to what this could mean for Text to Speech. Generating more organically modeled TTS could really push it out of the uncanny valley. Currently if you ask a tts engine to say a word or phoneme, it is identical to the last time it was made. What if it were generated in realtime with the same variances as a human voice.