Experimenting with Doppler Sound Effects
This project seeks to explore the doppler sound effect in several different scenarios.
In Part 1, the source sound moves towards a listener on the same plane.
Part 1 code and figures
Part 1 sound
In Part 2, the observer is separated from the source sound trajectory by an offset.
Part 2 code and figures
Part 2 sound
In Part 3, the offset remains, but the tone from the source consists of three tones. For this, I chose a major triad.
Part 3 code and figures
Part 3 sound
Part 4 had two different components. The components replicate Parts 1 and 2 respectively, but they add a second observer. The two observers act as “ears” of a listener, and a stereo track is produced as a result.
Part 4a code and figures
Part 4a sound
Part 4b code and figures
Part 4b sound
Here, you can download all five m-files and run them on any copy of MATLAB.
Download M-Files as a ZIP
Conclusion and Results
The sound files with an offset sounded much better than those with the source and observer on the same plane. This is due to the clicking that occurs when the two are sufficiently close together to cause the envelope to tend towards infinity. This problem was mitigated by limiting the maximum values of the envelope, but it is a non-ideal solution, and discontinuities still occur.
When simulating a person’s two ears, the fact that the distance between ears is very small led to the graphs looking very similar. I changed the distance to something unrealistic (i.e. 4 meters) to make sure that the files were working properly.
