Evolutionary GUIs for Sound Synthesis

This paper describes an experiment carried out to determine which, among several possible evolutionary and non-evolutionary sound synthesizer graphical user interfaces, is the most suitable for the task of matching a target sound. Results show that standard and new varieties of evolutionary interface are competitive with a standard non-evolutionary interface, achieving better results in some situations and worse in others. Subjects’ comments suggest a preference for a new type of evolutionary interface, presented here, which allows faster audition of the population, avoiding the need for time-consuming fitness evaluation of poor-quality sounds.