Aurally Relevant Analysis by Synthesis: A New Software Approach to Sound Design

A new tool for the visual perception of sound quality and sound design is presented. Requirement for the visualization of sound quality is a signal analysis modelling and the information processing of the ear. The first step of a signal processing implemented in the software in the calculation of an auditory spectrogram by a filter bank adapted to the time - and frequency resolution of the human ear. The second step removes redundant information by extracting time - and frequency contours from the auditory spectrogram in analogy to contours of the visual system. In a third step contours auditory spectrograms can be resynthesised confirming that only aurally relevant information were extracted. The visualization by contours allows intuitively grasping the important components of a signal. Contributions of parts of a signal to the overall quality can be easily auralized by editing and resynthesising them. Resynthesis of time contours alone allows to auralize impulsive components separately from the tonal components. Further processing of the contours determines tonal parts in form of tracks.