Final Report Summary - NESS (Listening to the Future: Next-generation Sound Synthesis through Simulation) The aim of the NESS Project has been, in short, to extend the boundaries of computer-generated musical sound. This has been done through an appeal to physical models of sound-producing systems and acoustic spaces, simulation algorithm design, as well as large scale parallel computing. Systems have been chosen from across the range of acoustic musical instruments, including the brass instrument family, bowed strings, guitars, and percussion instruments; beyond this, new modular instrument construction frameworks have been developed, allowing the musician complete freedom in the design and performance of a virtual musical instrument. A related research question has involved the rendering of such sound in three-dimensional environments, leading to very large computational problem sizes, and the necessity of working in specialised parallel hardware (graphics processing units). Such work has led, ultimately, to a general framework for wave-based modelling of room and architectural acoustics. A web-based interface to a suite of synthesis codes has been developed, and has been used by visiting musicians in order to generate experimental multichannel pieces of music, which have been performed internationally on many occasions.
