Ryguasu/sirens

Digitally Synthesizing Siren Sounds (Police, Air-raid, etc.)

I'm trying to write a program to produce various types of siren sounds, so as to immitate police sirens, abulance sirens, air-raid sirens, etc.. I already have a program that can take a sine wave and modulate the pitch up and down to create a bad impression of a siren. Unfortunately, the result sounds more like someone playing with the pitch-bend wheel on an analog synth than any siren one might actually hear in the real world. I suspect I'd get pretty similar results if I substituted, say, a square wave or a triangle wave for the sine wave in my program. Does anyone know if there are any easy-to-synthesize waveforms that might sound more like a siren? Or am I going to need to actually go out and digitize sounds from a real-life siren (a la Sampler (musical instrument))? --Ryguasu 04:58, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • A simple sine wave might be a good starting point for a siren sound, but sounds in the real world are generally made up of a number of different waveforms at different frequencies - for a halfway believable siren, you might try adding some harmonic overtones and maybe a tiny bit of phase distortion (more of both for a classic air raid siren than for a modern police siren). It also seems that with most sirens, different frequencies aren't shifted up and down by the same pitch which leads to a slightly more distorted sound as the siren's wail reaches its highest pitch - I guess it would be pretty tricky to sysntheize a naturally-sounding siren unless you either have a pretty detailed idea what you are doing or you are willing to experiment for a couple of hours with some wave-shaping software (which is generally great fun but rarely leads to the results you were trying to achieve - at least, that's the case with most of my synth experiments :P ) -- Ferkelparade π 22:14, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • . As Ferkelparade said, you'd need multiple frequency sources to get the overtones. Notice that the highest frequencies bend up over a longer time period than the root frequency. Also note that this siren has 2 separate whistles, overlapping in time. An alternative to multiple sines or sampling the whole siren would be to record a siren, then take a small looped sample while it is steady at its highest frequency. Then you could pitch bend one or more copies of that waveform to get different siren patterns. -Key45 22:57, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
      • Speaking of synthesizing instrument sounds, I've been trying to make them using overlapped sine waves at different frequencies and amplitudes, but it doesn't seem to work. What am I doing wrong, and where can I find analyses of real instruments to work from? Alphax (t) (c) (e) 16:27, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)
**** search for "Physical Modelling" and "Modular Synthesis". Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics is one place to start. -Key45 02:26, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
broadbeach, queensland
tcf bank stadium
burleigh heads, queensland
sempati air transport
roman catholic diocese of belleville
the grove
san romn
currumbin, queensland
lounge ax
imperial party
ishenbai kadyrbekov
the death tower
main beach, queensland
barbara carrera
periderm
he got game
alonzo c. mather
gettysburg (episode)
kort kramer
bor, sweden
u.s. highway 47
talk means trouble
bicester group
kiev (disambiguation)
nick acuna
9:18
dawg pound
a new theory of the earth
j. j. jameson
design patterns
sonnenbrink tower
masculin, fminin
roman catholic diocese of gaylord
big wild goose pagoda
young corbett iii
amin gulgee
amby
unununium (operating system)
mudgeeraba, queensland
trailing wheel
battle of petersburg i
fernmeldeturm dissen
small wild goose pagoda
person colby cheney