Music Tech Away Day 2012 Jonathan P Wakefield Overview of current research supervisions: Mark Mynett – PhD p/t - Music Production for Contemporary Metal Steve Fenton – PhD p/t - Objective Measurement of Sound Quality in Music Production Braham Hughes – PhD p/t - Development of a Tool to Assist in the Creation of Effective Audio/Visual Environments in Film and TV post-production Neil Fitzpatrick – PhD p/t - The Global Studio: An evaluation of emergent technologies and practices relating to real-time online collaboration and production of popular music Ruth Taylor – EntD p/t - An Alternative Model for Enterprise in Higher Education Chris Dewey - MRes p/t - A Visual Interface for Mixing Popular Music Currently being examined: Ben Evans - MRes p/t - The Evaluation and Optimisation of FFT and Multiresolution FFT parameters for use in automatic music transcription algorithms

Interface for Mixing Popular Music Jonathan P Wakefield User interface for mixing (and recording) sound really hasn’t changed in 50 years Is it the best interface? Does it provide all the information an engineer needs? Rather than the channel strip approach can’t we provide views of the whole mix? We’re drawing on ideas from David Gibson (see left) but importantly trying to make a practical tool for engineers Current thinking is to flag up problems in mix to engineer for manual resolution but may move into automating of aspects of mixing

Ambisonic decoders for 5.1 Jonathan P Wakefield Development of improved Ambisonic decoders for 5.1 surround sound playback Horizontal only Ambisonics (omni mic plus 2 figure of 8s) Can convert a mono source to Ambisonics B format: Speaker feeds are then:

Ambisonic decoders for 5.1 Jonathan P Wakefield So we need to find values 15 for parameters for a working decoder Determined by having a multi-objective fitness function that is based Gerzon’s meta- theory of localisation which is based on: Velocity vectors Energy vectors Vectors quantify low to mid and high frequency localisation performance A heuristic search algorithm is used to find parameter sets with good fitness values We run multiple local searches to come up with a “good” parameter set We have also done two HPC implementations where we have ran exhaustive global searches at reduced parameter resolution

Ambisonic decoders for 5.1 Jonathan P Wakefield Have developed decoders that : Provide even performance around listener Take account of Human Spatial Resolution (MMA) Optimise for multiple off centre listeners Optimise for constrained listening spaces (and simultaneously determine best speaker positions within constraints) Also developed a Design Tool Used Range-Removal and Importance concepts in fitness function 1 st Order, 2 nd Order, 4 th Order decoders

Ambisonic decoders for 5.1 Jonathan P Wakefield Currently doing listening tests to confirm validity of velocity and energy vectors in determining human perception of localisation Future Work Trying to find a way to convert discrete 5.1 mixes into Ambisonic format ?!?!?!? Extend to with height surround sound reproduction Compensate for playback room acoustics

Loudspeaker Arrays Jonathan P Wakefield Planned experiments: Single line: Automatically take stereo and play across (say) 9 speakers instead of stereo pair Get multi-track and pan to 9 speakers and compare to stereo mix Get producers to mix to format and compare to stereo mix Do same for 2-D spearker arrangement

Computer-based Musical Evolution Jonathan P Wakefield Tim Milllea – Automated Composition of Popular Music Need to analyse existing good songs Analysis feeds into a fitness function Genetic Algorithms evolves a population of solution guided by fitness function GA needs a crossover function (hierarchical) GA also needs a mutation function With Dr Steven Jan Replicating the evolution of music (classical/folk) Unsuccessful AHRC bid this year Supervising a Visiting Researcher/ Academic for 12 months Also have a German Cognitive Sciences undergraduate coming for 3 months