Synthesizing Reverberation Impulse Responses from Audio Signals: Auto-Reverberation and Interactive Environments

A method for creating reverberation impulse responses from a variety of audio source materials forms the basis of a family of novel reverberation effects. In auto-reverberation, segments of audio are selected and processed to form an evolving sequence of reverberation impulse responses that are applied to the original source material—that is, the audio is reverberating itself. In cross-reverberation, impulse responses derived from one audio track are applied to another audio track. The reverberation impulse responses are formed by summing randomly selected segments of the source audio, and imposing reverberation characteristics, including reverberation time and wet equalization. By controlling the number and timing of the selected source audio segments, the method produces an array of impulse responses that represent a trajectory through the source material. In so doing, the evolving impulse responses will have the character of room reverberation while also expressing the changing timbre and dynamics of the source audio. Processing architectures are described, and off-line and real-time virtual acoustic sound examples derived from the music of Bach and Dick Dale are presented.