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A hidden gem in sound symmetry

soundshader.github.io

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Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#11

Post by klik99 »

gbh444g wrote: post #2

Hi HN, author here. A few comments on how I came up with this idea. I've been trying to find a "proper" connection between audible sound and visible shape, a connection that would not only preserve all the information, but would also properly visualize the "symmetry" in sound, so that messy sound would turn into messy images and harmonic sound would turn into visually appealing images. The latter part is hard, as per…

In your example saying that the ear doesn’t work as an FFT, I think you’re confusing physical processes (the ear) with perceptual processes (psychoacoustics and interaction between the brain and ear). The cochlea itself is a physical FT, based on resonances in the thickness at various points. That gets passed to the brain as basically sine-frequency data. The autocorrelation part comes in when the brain processes this and actually reinforces it by feeding back signals it thinks are peaking back into the inner ear.

(Edit) also this is a really fascinating and enlightening way of viewing it - didn’t mean to imply otherwise with this quibble :)

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#13

Post by gbh444g »

mattdesl wrote: post #12

Very nice. Curious how colors are chosen? Can’t try it on my dated iPhone - you need to vendor prefix the AudioContext with webkitAudioContext if AudioContext is undefined.

`z = acf(x, y) / (3 sigma); color_rgb = z That's really it. The (4, 2, 1) is the oversaturated orange color, i.e. it would progress as (1, 0.5, 0.25) -> (1, 1, 0.5) -> (1, 1, 1). None of the tricky HSL/HSV schemes worked better than this.

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#14

Post by hashtagmarkup »

gbh444g wrote: post #2

Hi HN, author here. A few comments on how I came up with this idea. I've been trying to find a "proper" connection between audible sound and visible shape, a connection that would not only preserve all the information, but would also properly visualize the "symmetry" in sound, so that messy sound would turn into messy images and harmonic sound would turn into visually appealing images. The latter part is hard, as per…

Are you familiar with the "Circle of fifths"? That's the first thing that came to mind when I saw your circle patterns, and it directly relates to "harmony".

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#15

Post by totemandtoken »

gbh444g wrote: post #2

Hi HN, author here. A few comments on how I came up with this idea. I've been trying to find a "proper" connection between audible sound and visible shape, a connection that would not only preserve all the information, but would also properly visualize the "symmetry" in sound, so that messy sound would turn into messy images and harmonic sound would turn into visually appealing images. The latter part is hard, as per…

This is gorgeous! I'm going to have to spend more time with this. Very interesting approach

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#16

Post by friendlybus »

Seems to work really well! Playing Gasoline by Audioslave, it really misses the high intensity peaks.

It interprets the trumpet in Miles Davis - It Never Entered my Mind as dark ripples and is beautiful in it's own way.

It's a long way from the last time I used a visualizer on Winamp, nice!

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#18

Post by MauranKilom »

I'm very interested in this, but I can't seem to get the demo page working in latest Firefox:

> AudioContext.createMediaStreamSource: Connecting AudioNodes from AudioContexts with different sample-rate is currently not supported.

Edge worked though. Didn't try Chrome.

Edit: This is beautiful!

I have checked out a variety of songs, and I feel the visualization is rather dominated by whatever frequency is loudest. (E.g. bass sound -> three- to five-fold symmetry and most detail obscured by it).

Have you considered applying something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour somewhere in the process to more evenly weight the frequency contributions according to human hearing perception? Not sure if would have the intended effect, but I'd be curious what happens.

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#19

Post by TheRealPomax »

gbh444g wrote: post #6
dharma1 wrote: post #4

beautiful. What's the demo soundtrack?

It's a file from freesound that captures the male "A" vowel, but slowed down like 20x.

Why the slowdown? (given that slowdown typically introduces artifacting, making the result as much a pattern of those artifacts as it is of the original signal)

(also note that your site does not currently work in Firefox, which would be nice to fix)

Re: A hidden gem in sound symmetry

#20

Post by gbh444g »

hashtagmarkup wrote: post #14
gbh444g wrote: post #2

Hi HN, author here. A few comments on how I came up with this idea. I've been trying to find a "proper" connection between audible sound and visible shape, a connection that would not only preserve all the information, but would also properly visualize the "symmetry" in sound, so that messy sound would turn into messy images and harmonic sound would turn into visually appealing images. The latter part is hard, as per…

Are you familiar with the "Circle of fifths"? That's the first thing that came to mind when I saw your circle patterns, and it directly relates to "harmony".

ACF composes all harmonics together and that's what likely makes the images visually appealing. However ACF doesn't give special treatment to harmonics that are exactly N octaves apart, e.g. A4 and A7 notes.
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