Real-Time Sound Synthesis of Audience Applause

Lee JRR, Reiss JD. Real-Time Sound Synthesis of Audience Applause. J Audio Eng Soc. 2020;68(4):261-272. doi:10.17743/jaes.2020.0006

@article{Lee2020_20732,
  author = {Lee, Jake Ryan Rajjayabun and Reiss, Joshua D.},
  title = {{Real-Time Sound Synthesis of Audience Applause}},
  journal = {Journal of the Audio Engineering Society},
  volume = {68},
  number = {4},
  pages = {261--272},
  year = {2020},
  month = apr,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  doi = {10.17743/jaes.2020.0006},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2020.0006}
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Real-Time Sound Synthesis of Audience Applause
AU  - Lee, Jake Ryan Rajjayabun
AU  - Reiss, Joshua D.
T2  - Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
J2  - J. Audio Eng. Soc.
VL  - 68
IS  - 4
SP  - 261
EP  - 272
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/04/06
DO  - 10.17743/jaes.2020.0006
UR  - https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2020.0006
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - We investigate a procedural model for synthesizing applause sounds that contains novel aspects to ensure high quality and usability. Synthesis of a single clap is generated as a result of filtering a noise source and applying an envelope with exponential decay, based on prior art and existing experimental data. An ensemble approach is introduced to simulate many clappers in a spatially distributed environment. This renders how applause interacts with the space in which it is hosted, including the room impulse response, and where each clap is situated relative to the listener’s position. The applause features realistic build-up and fadeout based on natural audience response. The implementation contains meaningful parameters that allow a user to configure and change the sound to achieve a multitude of different types of applause, such as an “enthusiasm parameter” to simulate the greater perceived intensity from an enthusiastic audience. Subjective evaluation was performed to compare our method against recorded samples and four other popular sound synthesis techniques. It showed that the pro- posed implementation produced significantly more realistic results than other forms of applause synthesis, and it was almost indistinguishable from real-life recordings.
ER  -