About This Issue

Abstract

This issue’s articles each consider a different area of audio processing. The first three deal with specific signal-processing techniques in the areas of filtering, spatialization, and synthesis, respectively. The fourth concerns data mining in audio corpora, typically employing descriptors obtained from signal processing. In the first article, Lazzarini and Timoney present their digital filter designs that are derived from analog filters. The authors contend that examining the high-level block diagrams and transfer functions of an analog model can yield benefits not found in the “virtual analog” approach of attempting to analyze and reproduce every detail of a specific analog circuit. As evidence, they offer both linear and nonlinear versions of a digital filter derived from the analog state variable filter. They then extend the nonlinear design to a filter that goes beyond the analog model by incorporating ideas stemming from waveshaping synthesis. In the area of spatialization, the article by Schlienger and Khashchanskiy demonstrates how acoustic localization can be used effectively, and at low cost, for tracking the position of a person participating in a musical performance or an art installation. Acoustic localization ascertains the distance and direction of a sound source or a sound recipient. The authors take advantage of loudspeakers already deployed in a performance, adding a measurement signal that is above the frequency range of human hearing to the audible music that the loudspeaker may be concurrently emitting. The human participant