A method for including manner of contact in the synthesis of impact sounds for perceptual research.
Christophe N. J. Stoelinga, Robert A. Lutfi · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2010
Impact sounds synthesized according to a physical model have increasingly become the stimulus of choice in studies of sound source perception. Few studies, however, have incorporated manner of contact in their models because of the many parameters entailed in its description. Based on the work of Zener [Phys. Rev 669–673 (1941)], we show that the seven Hertzian parameters required to completely describe the contact can be reduced to just three: force of contact, duration of contact (tc) and a non-dimensional parameter (λ). Using only these parameters for the contact, a simplified method is presented to synthesize the impact sounds of simply supported plates. The results of the method are shown to be in good agreement with those of the more comprehensive method of Chaigne and Lambourg [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1422–1432 (2001)], the only such method to receive validation through acoustic measurement of plates. Psychometric functions obtained from listeners for the discrimination of tc and λ also show these parameters to be clearly discriminable over the range for which they would realistically vary. Potential advantages of using the simplified method over more comprehensive methods of sound synthesis in perceptual studies are discussed. [Research supported by NIDCD Grant No. 5R01DC006875-05.]