Mini-Lab: Appending, Mirroring, Adding, Blending Sounds

 


Introduction

In this mini-lab you will gain practice with the techniques of mirroring and adding sounds and working with python lists.



Appending Sounds

  1. It is often useful to take two sounds and combine them into a single longer sound. This can be done easily by making use of the copySoundInto function. Fill in the following code skeleton to create function that combines two sounds end to end.
    def appendSound(sound1, sound2):
      # Make an empty sound long enough to contain both source sounds.
    
    
      # Copy sound1 into the beginning of the new sound using copySoundInto. 
    
    
      # Copy sound2 into the end of the new sound using copySoundInto.
    
    
      # Return the new sound. 
    
  2. Test your function using several different sounds.

Mirroring Sounds

  1. There are many different ways to mirror sounds - we have seen how to mirror an entire sound, through the use of the reverse function. We could write an algorithm that mirrors the first half of a sound over the second half of a sound, or vice versa. In this exercise, we will write a function that will create a new sound that is twice the length of the original sound. The new sound will have the original sound in the first half, and the reverse of the original sound in the second half. This can be accomplished by creating a reversed copy of our original sound, and appending it to the original sound using the appendSound function. Fill in the missing sections of code below. Use the reverse function from Lab 6.
    # Mirror entire sound (new sound is original sound
    # followed by backwards original sound)
    def mirrorEntireSound(sound):
      # Reverse the original sound
    
      # Append sound and reverseSound
    
      # Return the mirrored sound
    
    
  2. Test your function with several different sounds.

Adding Sounds Together

Adding sounds together is very simple using a computer - just add the sample values at the same index numbers in each wave!
  1. Write a function that adds two sounds together. It has been started for you below:
    # Add sound1 to sound2
    # return the resulting sound
    def addSounds(sound1, sound2):
      if getSamplingRate(sound1) != getSamplingRate(sound2):
        print "Error! Sounds must have the same sampling rate."
        return
    
      # Determine which sound has minimum length
    
      # Create a new sound of that length
    
      for index in range(         ):
        # Get the appropriate sample values from each sound
    
    
    
    
        # Add the sample values together
    
    
    
        # Set the sample value at this index in newSound to be the new value
    
    
    
  2. Test your function with several different sounds.

Adding Without Clipping

The addSounds function you wrote above will probably work fine most of the time, but if two loud sounds are added together, the resulting sound could suffer from clipping. One way around this is to store the summed sample values into a python list of numbers rather than directly into the sound. (A python list can store much larger numbers than can be stored in sound samples.) We can then check the summed values to see if any are above the maximum allowed for sounds: 32767. If there are, the list of numbers can be normalized, and the resulting list can be converted back into a sound. In this case, we are using normalization not to create the loudest sound possible, but to ensure that the sound is no louder than it should be.
  1. Complete the addSoundsNoClipping function below by following the comments that ask you to fill in or complete some lines of code. Two helper functions are provided: listToSound which creates a sound object from a list of numbers, and normalizeList which rescales a list of numbers so that it has the desired maximum value.
    #-----------------------------
    #Takes a python list of numbers, and a sampling rate
    #and returns a sound object. 
    #-----------------------------
    def listToSound(list, samplingRate):
      newSound = makeEmptySound(len(list), int(samplingRate))
      for pos in range(getNumSamples(newSound)):
        setSampleValueAt(newSound, pos, list[pos])
      return newSound
    
    #-----------------------------
    #Normalizes a list of numbers so that the maximum value
    #in the list will be newMax. 
    #THIS FUNCTION DOES NOT RETURN ANYTHING. IT CHANGES THE 
    #LIST THAT IS PASSED IN AS A PARAMETER. 
    #-----------------------------
    def normalizeList(list, newMax):
      oldMax = max(list)
      for pos in range(len(list)):
        list[pos] = list[pos] * newMax/oldMax
    
    
    #-----------------------------
    #Add two sounds together, rescaling the resulting sound if necessary 
    #to avoid clipping. 
    #-----------------------------
    def addSoundsNoClipping(sound1, sound2):
      if getSamplingRate(sound1) != getSamplingRate(sound2):
        print "Error! Sounds must have the same sampling rate."
        return
    
      minLength = min(getNumSamples(sound1), getNumSamples(sound2))
      newSoundList = [0.0] * minLength 
    
      #Now add the two sounds together, placing the result in newSoundList
      for pos in range(minLength):
         #ADD CODE HERE TO SUM UP THE SOUNDS
    
      maxVal = max(newSoundList) #calculate the maximum sample value
    
      #ADD CODE TO COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING THREE STEPS...
      #If maxVal> 32767, there has been clipping, normalize the sound.
      #Use listToSound to create the final sound from newSoundList.
      #Return the resulting sound.
    
    
    
  2. Test your function with several different sounds.

  3. Try adding together two loud sounds using both addSounds and addSoundsNoClipping, can you hear a difference in the result?

Submit your results

  1. Submit the file you created in this mini-lab via .