The State of the Art in Procedural Audio

Abstract

Procedural audio may be defined as real-time sound generation according to programmatic rules and live input. It is often considered a subset of sound synthesis and is especially applicable to nonlinear media, such as video games, virtual reality experiences and interactive audiovisual installations. However, there is resistance to widespread adoption of procedural audio because there is little awareness of the state of the art, including the diversity of sounds that may be generated, the controllability of procedural audio models, and the quality of the sounds that it produces. The authors address all of these aspects in this review paper, while attempting a largescale categorization of sounds that have been approached through procedural audio techniques. The role of recent advancements in neural audio synthesis, its current implementations, and potential future applications in the field are also discussed. Review materials are available * .