Deep Machine Learning for Parameter Estimation in Physical Modelling

One of the most challenging tasks in physically-informed sound synthesis is the estimation of model parameters to produce a desired timbre. Automatic parameter estimation procedures have been developed in the past for some specific parameters or application scenarios but, up to now, no approach has been proved applicable to a wide variety of use cases. A general solution to parameters estimation problem is provided along this paper which is based on a supervised convolutional machine learning paradigm. The described approach can be classified as end-to-end and requires no specific knowledge of the model itself.
The proposed examples are taken from a flue pipe organ physical model [1] and from dry recordings of a Montre 8 stop. 

Sound examples B3

Original contrived B3
Estimated with STFT mag+phase
Estimated with MEL
Estimated with STFT, Trained with random dataset

Sound examples G5

Original contrived G5
Estimated with STFT mag+phase
Estimated with MEL
Estimated with STFT, Trained with random dataset

Sound Examples - Non-Contrived

Original dry recording (B3) from a Montre 8 pipe
Estimated with STFT, Trained with contrived dataset
Original dry recording (G5) from a Montre 8 pipe
Estimated with STFT, Trained with contrived dataset

Sound examples A4

Original A4 tone "Stentor" Generated A4 tone "Stentor" with STFT spectrogram
Original A4 tone "HW-DE" Generated A4 tone "HW-DE" with STFT spectrogram

Figures

Compressed package containing spectra, attack and error plots for the B3 and G5 tones. The spectral plots show black lines and balls for te target and gray lines and crosses for the estimated tones.

figures-pipe.tar.gz

Spectra and harmonic content for two A4 tones from (a) Principal stop named ``Stentor'', and (c) Principal stop named ``HW-DE''. The gray lines and crosses show the spectrum and the harmonic peaks of s(n), while the black line and dots show the spectrum and the harmonic peaks of s^(n).

"Stentor" spectra - waveforms

"HW-DE" spectra - waveforms