Tweety Birds and Their Bionic Successors

Play the above set of sounds for a fun example of different types of resynthesis.  The first is a recording of a bird in Big Bend National Park, TX.  I've no idea what species of bird it is, but it does have a strange sort of oscillation in its calls.  The spectral view is just as interesting and is included with each clip.  Below is a brief description of each sound.

You know, I seem to say the word "resynthesis" a lot these days (especially here).

Sum of Sines
Achieved by first performing a spectral analysis to determine the sound's fundamental and partial frequency components, then using that information to resynthesize it with (in this case) 28 sine oscillators. Similar to a vocoder, except it uses oscillators in the place of filters.  For this one, I used a Wacom Pen/Tablet to "draw" the pitches by hand, and used pressure to slow time by a factor of 100, effectively "freezing" the sound as it continues to play.

Cloud Bank
Uses analyzed data (fundamental and partial frequency components) to resynthesize the sound through granular synthesis.

Filter Bank
Uses analyzed data (fundamental and partial frequency components) to resynthesize the sound by controlling a bank of filters that open and close to "reveal" pitches.

All of the above methods can be tweaked to the heart's content, sounding radically different when certain parameters are shifted.  For example, you can control the bandwidth of the filters in the Filter Bank, or the number of oscillators used in the Sum of Sines (unlimited).  One of my favorite things about these is actually the spectral view of the cloud bank.

As you can imagine, it took quite a bit of noise removal before I could do the analysis properly.  I am constantly amazed by RX3.

You can see some photos of Big Bend in the next post over, 

New Furniture for the New Year

In other news, I'm building some new furniture for my home studio.  It's a simple 24U rack enclosure, and should get every remaining item off the face of my desk, besides, of course, the keyboard, mouse, etc.  It isn't finished yet, but here are some pics of the progress.

8' x 4' x 3/4" Maple, cut into the appropriate pieces, with a few left over.

Mostly assembled, with 1U spacers at the top and bottom to measure width.

Some light load testing. Not all of the screws are in yet, so I can't go too crazy until it's really ready. Feels very sturdy so far!