Contact Sound Synthesis in Real-time Applications

• Main Author: Nilsson, Robin Lindh
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för kreativa teknologier 2014
• Subjects: Sound synthesis; parallel computing; auditory feedback; Human Computer Interaction; Människa-datorinteraktion (interaktionsdesign); Signal Processing; Signalbehandling; Software Engineering; Programvaruteknik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-3938

Synthesizing sounds which occur when physically-simulated objects collide in a virtual environment can give more dynamic and realistic sounds compared to pre-recorded sound effects. This real-time computation of sound samples can be computationally intense. In this study we investigate a synthesis algorithm operating in the frequency domain, previously shown to be more efficient than time domain synthesis, and propose a further optimization using multi-threading on the CPU. The multi-threaded synthesis algorithm was designed and implemented as part of a game being developed by Axolot Games. Measurements were done in three stress-testing cases to investigate how multi-threading improved the synthesis performance. Compared to our single-threaded approach, the synthesis speed was improved by 80% when using 8 threads, running on an i7 processor with hyper-threading enabled. We conclude that synthesis of contact sounds is viable for games and similar real-time applications, when using the investigated optimization. 140000 mode shapes were synthesized 30% faster than real-time, and this is arguably much more than a user can distinguish. === Syntetisering av ljud som uppstår när fysikobjekt kolliderar i en virtuell miljö kan ge mer dynamiska och realistiska ljudeffekter, men är krävande att beräkna. I det här examensarbetet implementerades ljudsyntes i frekvensdomänen baserat på en tidigare studie, och utvecklades sedan vidare till att utnyttja multipla trådar. Enligt mätningar i tre olika testfall kunde den multitrådade implementationen syntetisera 80% fler ljudvågor än den enkeltrådade, på en i7-processor. === <p>Author's website: www.robinerd.com</p>