Watch a recording of the seminar below

ABSTRACT:
Any acoustically-produced sound produced must be the result of physical laws that describe the dynamics of a given system---always at least partly mechanical, and sometimes with an electronic element as well. One approach to the synthesis of natural acoustic timbres, thus, is through simulation, often referred to in this context as physical modelling, or physics-based audio.  

In this talk, the principles of physics-based audio, and the various different approaches to simulation are described, followed by a set of examples covering: various musical instrument types; the important related problem of the emulation of room acoustics or “virtual acoustics”; the embedding of instruments in a 3D virtual space; electromechanical effects; and also new modular instrument designs based on physical laws, but without a counterpart in the real world. Some more technical details follow, including the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of such methods, and pointers to some links to data-centred black-box approaches to sound generation and effects processing.

The talk concludes with some musical examples and recent work on moving such algorithms to a real-time setting.
 
BIO & INFO:
https://www.acoustics.ed.ac.uk/people/dr-stefan-bilbao/
https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/prof-stefan-bilbao
https://physicalaudio.co.uk/