Summary of Neural Audio Effects || Christian Steinmetz (Queen Mary University of London)

00:00:00 - 00:45:00

In this video, Christian Steinmetz from Queen Mary University of London discusses the concept of the neural audio effects, which are created by randomly sampling theta from a neural network. The effects can be thought of as audio effects with random parameters, and can be used to create unique sounds. He demonstrates how a neural network can be used to create audio effects that are not possible with traditional methods, and discusses the potential of neural audio effects.

• 00:00:00 Christian Steinmetz from Queen Mary University of London is speaking about neural audio effects. He explains that in the past, audio effects have been important tools for audio production, and that in the present, all of these tools are available to everyone in laptops. He explains that one of the future goals for audio effects is to enable new types of effects that weren't possible before.
• 00:05:00 In this YouTube video, Christian Steinmetz discusses how audio effects can be used to create new audio effects, and how they can be used to expand the creator's agency. He also covers how audio effects are important because they allow for virtual sonic experiences that couldn't exist in the real world. Finally, he discusses how current audio effect design paradigms rely on knowledge from signal processing mathematics and programming, and how an expert user with knowledge of both concepts can come up with an idea to create an audio effect.
• 00:10:00 Neural Audio Effects allow for the data-driven design of audio effects, using a neural network to approximate the real audio effect.
• 00:15:00 This YouTube video provides an overview of neural networks and their applications in audio effects modeling. The video discusses the two predominant approaches to building neural networks--based on convolution (TCNs) and on recurrent networks (RNs)--and provides examples of how these networks can be used to model distortion effects.
• 00:20:00 In this video, Christian Steinmetz from Queen Mary University of London discusses the concept of the neural audio effects, which are created by randomly sampling theta from a neural network. The effects can be thought of as audio effects with random parameters, and can be used to create unique sounds. Two years ago, Steinmetz developed a VST plug-in that uses this approach to create random audio effects. In this video, he demonstrates how it works and plays some sound examples. While this method is not perfect, it is interesting and provides a new way of exploring the neural audio effects space.
• 00:25:00 This video demonstrates how a neural network can be used to create audio effects that are not possible with traditional methods. The user provides steering signals that influence the weights of the network, and after training, the network can create effects that are not seen during training.
• 00:30:00 The project studied how to create new audio effects with just one recording, by modulating the gain of the dc offset in the middle layers of a network. This approach yielded variations of the original effect, which could be controlled by user input. The talk also touched on the human aspect of audio effect design, discussing how we perceive boxes that produce manipulation, and how to build models that could answer the question of whether a given effect is more interesting than another. There are still many challenges to be overcome in this area of research, but the potential for new, more interesting audio effects is something that the audience should be aware of.
• 00:35:00 Christian Steinmetz discusses the potential of neural audio effects, discussing the advantages of a top-down approach over a bottom-up approach and the difficulties of engineering neural audio effects. He also mentions some resources and projects that are relevant to this field.
• 00:40:00 Christian Steinmetz from Queen Mary University of London gave a presentation on neural audio effects, discussing how non-linearity and activation functions affect audio production. He also mentioned that there are a variety of ways to achieve similar results with different wave shaping functions, and that weight shapers could be a helpful addition to this field.
• 00:45:00 This video discusses the use of neural audio effects, which are effects that are created using neural networks. Neural audio effects are used in the audio production industry to create sounds that were not possible to create with traditional audio engineering techniques.