Tags : #audio

AIM-Framework

Designing a complete in-car audio experience requires rapid prototyping solutions in a complex audio configuration, bringing together different areas of expertise ranging from sound-design and composition, down to hardware protection, with every conceivable layer of audio engineering in-between, up to A-B comparisons setups for end-users perception evaluation in real demonstration vehicules.

The AIM project started as a request from the Active Sound eXperience team at Volvo Cars Company to meet such goals.To this end, it was decided to develop a framework on top of Max/MSP, so that dedicated audio processing modules could be easily created, with the ability to store presets for various configurations, and to take advantage of Max’s modular design to distribute the complexity of audio engineering among the various expert teams involved in the project.

The core part of the package (building blocks) was presented at the Sound and Music Conference (SMC’22) organized by GRAME in Saint Etienne, France.

Summary: https://zenodo.org/record/6800815

Sagrada — Sample Accurate Granular Synthesis

 

Sagrada is an open-source Max package performing sample-accurate granular synthesis in a modular way. Grains can be triggered both synchronously and asynchronously. Each grain can have its own effects and eveloppes (for instance the first “attack” and last “release” grains of a grains stream).

You can get it from the Github repository:

https://github.com/vincentgoudard/Sagrada

Sagrada screenshot
sagrada.play~ will play grain synchronously or asynchronously (click for video demo)
Sagrada multilayers
sagrada.multilayer~ allows for running multiple streams of grains in parallel (click for video demo)

Sagrada was partly developed during my PhD at LAM. It was inspired by the very good GMU tools developped at GMEM (and its sample-rate triggering) and the FTM package developed at IRCAM (and its modularity). Not to mention all of Curtis Roads’ work on granular synthesis.

L’arbre qui cachait la forêt

Sisyphus in the anthropocene hamster-wheel.

L’arbre qui cachait la forêt is a multimedia installation originally proposed for the Festival of Lights of Lyon (FR) happening on december 8th. The theme was about ecology and artists were encouraged to make use of little and/or renewable energy.

The installation consists of an interactive video projection of a tree, with the screen placed precisely where the filmed tree is located. The screen offers a view that corresponds to the perspective of the global environment. In front of this screen, a giant hamster wheel awaits a visitor. The rotation of the wheel causes the video to progress from the current date of the festival, close to the winter solstice, when the tree is apparently dead, to the summer solstice at midday, when the tree is fully green against the deep blue sky. But as soon as the visitor stops running after that desired blue summer sky, the video rewinds to the cold winter night.

Prior to the installation, the tree has been shot with timelapse photography technique during a whole season.

Vincent Goudard - L'arbre qui cachait la foret - Project preview
On-site installation preview.
Giant hamster wheel draft for the project
Giant hamster wheel draft design by Ulysse Lacoste.

107724404×8

Digital moving picture.
107724404×8 is the audiovisual rendering of a binary pdf file raw data.

The video reveals the internal structure of the file as both visual and sonic shapes. Compressed parts of the file will look and sound noisy while uncompressed parts will show redundant patterns and somewhat harmonic sound spectrum.

Original video is 10min long and 1024× 768px.
Beware of the rrrraw sound.

media music room

transforming a place into a collective audiovisual instrument

media music room is a collaborative workshop held in DauHaus, Sofia [BG], aiming at transforming a place into an interactive and collaborative music audiovisual instrument, through hacking and bending things at hand. During a week, a small team worked using all kinds of recycled and in-situ materials (bench, lamps, microphones, clothe) and softwares (max/MSP, pure data, processing, flash, etc.) to create an interactive setup, made of a bench-o-phone, ceiling-lamps-turned-to-audio-delays, pen tablet drumloop mixer, joystick-contolled sound scrubbers, audiovisual feedback and synched projection fitting the location architecture. This camp was open to any visitor as an opportunity for local people to meet, share ideas, bring their own audio/video material and conceive together. At the end of the week, an event was organized where anyone could play the multimedia instruments.

The project was also meant as a thought-provoking exchange on the notion of instrument in the contemporary society, following theories raised by John Cage or Christopher Small.

MMM_48_BenchoBass01

The project took place in studio DauHaus, during my residency in Sofia at InterSpace Media Art Center.

Special thanks goes to the French Institute for their support, and to Goethe institute and Pro-Helvetia for lending beamers.

 

XSPIF – Cross Standard PlugIn Framework

XSPIF stands for the acronym of Cross Standard PlugIn Framework.

It is an xml to (vst/au/pd/ladspa) translation utility written by Rémy Muller and myself for our final study project in 2003 inspired by Steve Harris way of writing ladspa plugins.

Instead of abstracting the different plugin formats into a C/C++ library as most professionnal companies do, we choose for both academic and time reasons to write an xml to C/C++ translator using Python.

It has many limitations and is now outdated, but it can prove useful as a learning tool or just as a template generator for the target plateforms.

XSPIF released under the GNU General Public License