Speaker
Description
Sound perception and design courses are rarely included in higher education, particularly in engineering programs which lead to industrial activities where product design plays a significant role. We present the "Acoustic Design" course offered in the University of Technology of Compiègne. This course addresses the fundamentals in psychoacoustics, audio recording and analysis, source categorization, verbal description, sound synthesis and design. At least two external professionals, from academia, industry or independent sound designers, are invited each semester. Two short projects, one in sound product perception and one in sound design, are conducted by students working in pairs. A focus will be made on the sound design projects: recent subjects include sound logos as well as soundscape generations, first based on sequencers and secondly using quadriphonic loudspeaker configuration. A special attention is paid to the ideation process: students are required to follow a systematic methodology based on preliminary sketches, inspired by sound representations used for the analysis of electroacoustic music. Selected examples of student works will be presented with schematics and audio samples.