AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Fourier Analyses, or, how the Orchestra learned to play "Jet Engine"

(hank alrich) wrote in message ...
Ryan wrote:

I'd be surprised if some type of
math couldn't be rigged up that would do as good a job as a human.

If the math is required to make the assumptions you make in the next few
sentences putting the calcs together is going to be tough.

It's all analytical, and actually not too subjective. It will either
sound like a jet engine or not, and since the computer will "know"
what a jet engine sounds like thanks to the FFT and differential
analysis, it seems to me this shoud be as easy as asking a computer to
come up with a number that adds to 7 to make ten.

Do all oboes sound the same? All violins? All trumpets? _All jet
engines_?

"Not too subjective" goes into the grist mill when a creative mind
chooses among available voicings for a given instrument.

Well, I'm just starting to get my hands around this. I think I may be
suffering from "don't know how to ask the right questions" syndrome.
Just to clarify a bit: It is certainly true that no two oboes sound
the same, in fact the very same oboe can sound different from day to
day or from climate to climate. I think we could aproximate the sound
of a bassoon, and since this is is only a learning tool, not intended
to produce a perfect final product, that would be good enough. On the
other hand, for this problem, there is only one sound of a jet engine,
and that sound would be whatever soundfile I choose to feed to the
software. Although both sounds will have to be analyzed to produce
the desired effect, the file I seek to emulate, "the jet engine
sound," will never have to suffer from aproximation. That's what I
meant by "the computer will know" what a jet engine sounds like.