Topic List

This is a very preliminary list of topic areas which we would like to explore in Audio Anecdotes. This work is a product of the audio community so we look forward to contributions we haven’t anticipated!

  • Synthesis techniques
    • Noise Synthesis (1/F noise, white noise, high quality, low overhead)
    • Oscillators (inexpensive, low drift, fixed point)
    • Physical synthesis
    • Additive synthesis
    • Subtractive Synthesis
    • Layered Sound
  • Filters:
    • DSP based spectral filters
    • Environmental
    • 3D/HRTF
    • Echo cancellation
    • Dynamic range compression/expansion
    • Fast filter implementations
  • Effects:
    • Chorus
    • Reverberation
    • Phase
    • Flange
    • Pitch invariant time scaling
  • Sample Plumbing:
    • FIFOs
    • Ring buffers and ring buffer math
    • Multiplexing/demultiplexing
    • Format conversion
    • Mixing
    • Limiting
  • Analysis:
    • FFT/Power spectrum
    • dithering at each quantization
    • quantization error
  • Human physiology:
    • Minimum detectable frequency/loudness change
    • Masking
  • Physical phenomena:
    • Sound attenuation in a real room versus empty space
    • Doppler effect
    • Table of sound pressure levels of common sounds (whisper, conversation, typewriter, automobile, jet engine)
  • Sonification:
    • Techniques for aurialization of numeric data
  • Synchronization:
    • SMPT timecode encode/decode
    • Resampling
    • Synchronization strategies for multimedia (animation, movies, 2-way, n-way)
  • Compression:
    • Lossy
    • Lossless
    • High quality
    • Inexpensive
    • Wavelets
    • Related file formats
  • Voice:
    • Synthesis (probably too deep a subject, however related articles may work)
    • Recognition (same comment as above)
    • Formant shifting
    • Concatenation considerations
    • Detection
    • Voice Gates
    • Lip sync
  • Telephonics:
    • DTMF decode/encode
    • Signal detector (busy, ring, dialtone)
  • Audio Representation:
    • Time Domain
      • PCM
        • Fixed point
        • Floating point
    • Frequency Domain
      • FFT
        • Windowing considerations and consequences
      • Wavelets
  • Creative Techniques
    • Theatrical sound design
    • Cinematic sound design
    • Packaging sound for interaction
    • Building sound behavior
    • Composing music for interaction
  • Appendix:
    • Mathematics of audio (dB, power, logs)
    • Fast math techniques
    • Fixed point math techniques
    • Library of streaming audio I/O needed to make the examples work on various platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux)

Comments? Have other topics to suggest? Please let me know!