Advances in Thunder Sound Synthesis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a physics-inspired, signal-based thunder sound synthesis method aiming to produce more realistic sounds, achieving the highest perceptual realism among tested techniques but still distinguishable from real recordings.

Contribution

It presents a novel thunder synthesis approach that combines physics-inspired and signal-based elements, improving perceptual realism over existing methods.

Findings

The new synthesis method was perceived as the most realistic in listening tests.

Participants still distinguished the synthesized sound from real thunder.

Further model improvements were guided by listening test insights.

Abstract

A recent comparative study evaluated all known thunder synthesis techniques in terms of their perceptual realness. The findings concluded that none of the synthesised audio extracts seemed as realistic as the genuine phenomenon. The work presented herein is motivated by those findings, and attempts to create a synthesised sound effect of thunder indistinguishable from a real recording. The technique supplements an existing implementation with physics-inspired, signal-based design elements intended to simulate environmental occurrences. In a listening test conducted with over 50 participants, this new implementation was perceived as the most realistic synthesised sound, though still distinguishable from a real recording. Further improvements to the model, based on insights from the listening test, were also implemented and described herein.