A comparative perceptual evaluation of thunder synthesis techniques

Reiss JD, Tez HT, Selfridge R. A comparative perceptual evaluation of thunder synthesis techniques. In: AES Convention 150. Audio Engineering Society; 2021. Paper 640. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21101

@inproceedings{Reiss2021_21101,
  author = {Reiss, Joshua D and Tez, Hamre Tez and Selfridge, Rod},
  title = {{A comparative perceptual evaluation of thunder synthesis techniques}},
  booktitle = {AES Convention 150},
  note = {Paper 640},
  year = {2021},
  month = may,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21101}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - A comparative perceptual evaluation of thunder synthesis techniques
AU  - Reiss, Joshua D
AU  - Tez, Hamre Tez
AU  - Selfridge, Rod
T2  - AES Convention 150
M1  - Paper 640
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21101
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - The sound of thunder is widely used in game, film and virtual reality sound design. It is also a phenomenon for which we seek a better understanding of the physics underlying the sound. Though many models of thunder have been proposed, there has not yet been a formal perceptual evaluation of the models to assess their realism and sound quality. Here, we present and evaluate the implementation of several thunder sound effect synthesis models. The models include different physical modeling and signal-based approaches, as well as a recorded sample. Evaluation was with over 50 participants. The results showed that none of the models were close to the recording in terms of realism, though signal-based models slightly outperformed the physical models. This highlights the need for comparative perceptual evaluation in sound synthesis, and identifies the limitations of current thunder simulation approaches.
ER  -