Media Arts and Technology

MAT 240 Series - Digital Audio Programming

University of California Santa Barbara

Instructor: Andrés Cabrera
Email: andres@mat.ucsb.edu


MAT 240A - Introduction to Digital Audio Programming

This course is an introduction to audio programming, and it is the first part of the six quarter MAT 240 series. Audio programming can take many shapes, and requires different tools and practices for artistic projects, scientific research or industrial applications. This course will present an overview of these different aspects of audio programming while introducing and exploring key concepts that permeate most audio programming projects.

MAT 240B - Sound Synthesis and Processing

This course surveys established techniques for audio synthesis and digital signal processing applied to sound. Additive, Subtractive, FM and Granular synthesis will be explored and implemented. Additionally, processing techniques like filtering will be covered. It is a practical course focused on software implementations of the various techniques, and will be permeated by discussions about performance and sound quality.
Theoretical aspects related to the various techniques are discussed, and particular emphasis will be placed on their implementation in computer algorithms. Artistic and practical use of the techniques will also be discussed and tested with the implementations. Different existing implementations will be compared and studied, in particular those found in widespread systems like Csound, Supercollider, Gamma and CSL.

MAT 240C - Events and Interactive Control

An indispensable aspect of audio programming in interactive systems is providing real-time control. This entails being able to receive and interpret data coming from physical interfaces and applying it to audio parameters. There are various widespread technologies like MIDI and OSC that enable this, as well as many challenges related to performance, timing and concurrency.

This course will present a low level approach to these technologies to understand what's needed to integrate them in practical software, as well as a look into the natural extensions of interactive control, like network performance and distributed processing.

MAT 240D - Spatial Sound

There are multiple ways of approaching audio for multichannel reproduction systems. The main techniques like VBAP, Ambisonics and WFS are explored, in addition to interchange formats related to spatial representations of sound.

MAT 240E - Audio Analysis and MIR

The field of Music Information Retrieval and automated audio analysis is a rapidly growing field. This course will present the fundamental techniques and the challenges and implications of their software implementations in practice.

MAT 240F - Sonification

Data sonification in auditory displays can provide information to complement, augment or replace visual displays. This course will present the established techniques for auralization, parameter driven sonification and model based sonification.