High-Resolution Analysis and Resynthesis of Environmental Impact Sounds

Impact sounds produced by everyday objects are an important source of information about contact interactions in virtual environments and auditory displays. Impact signals also provide a rich class of real and synthetic percussive musical sounds. However, their perceptually acceptable resynthesis and modification requires accurate estimation of mode parameters, which has proved difficult using traditional methods. In this paper we describe some of the problems posed by impact phenomena when applying standard methods, and present a phase-constrained high-resolution algorithm which allows more accurate estimation of modes and amplitudes for impact signals. The phase-constrained algorithm is based on least squares estimation, with initial estimates obtained from a modified ESPRIT algorithm, and it produces better resynthesis results than previously used methods. We give examples with everyday object impact sounds. [