Mobile Sound Lab – From Prototype to Musical Showcase

^{Author: Sebastian Merchel}

Exploring both traditional and newly developed musical instruments offers students a motivating opportunity to apply and deepen their understanding of theoretical concepts from the fields of physics, electrical engineering, psychoacoustics, computer science, and signal processing in a practical setting. This takes place, for example, in the course “Physics of Musical Instruments and Trends in Audio Technology” offered by the Chair of Acoustics and Haptics at TU Dresden. Through student projects in this and other courses, as well as in the Loudspeaker Club and for thesis projects, new concepts and prototypes are continually being developed to improve both conventional and innovative electronic musical instruments. Unlike classical instruments, sound generation in electronic musical instruments is usually decoupled from the instrument itself. The sounds are generated in real time on a microcontroller optimized for audio applications or on a separate computer using sound synthesis methods.

To make these methods immediately tangible and to develop new instrument prototypes, a powerful computer with capabilities for generating audio signals via software with low latency is required. In particular, physical modeling, granular synthesis, and AI-based neural synthesis place high demands on the hardware used to ensure smooth operation without sound dropouts. As part of the “Mobile Sound Lab for Digital Education” project, funding from the TDLförderING program made it possible to acquire such a computer with strong capabilities. This enables the smooth processing of parallel plug-in chains, polyphonic modeling, and complex real-time interactions.

The new hardware has already borne fruit: it has been used to develop and test innovative instrument prototypes in various projects. Some of these developments have even made their way onto the stage, sparking interest in the study of engineering—particularly acoustics—within a musical context. A highlight was the use of the mobile sound lab at this year’s annual conference of the German Acoustical Society. There, three instrument prototypes were presented in action and generated great interest among the participants.

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© Sebastian Merchel

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Mr Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Merchel

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Professur für Akustik und Haptik

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