🎓 October Student Special: Functional Sounds & Neural Music Production

It's the Student Special of our monthly meetup with talks by PhD student Annika Frommholz and research group team lead Fares Schulz. See talk details below.

As always, there will be time to network over drinks and pizza after the talk. Anyone interested in Audio development is welcome!

Attendance is limited to people who have RSVP'd. If the event is full, please register for the waiting list in case a spot opens up.

Audio Communication Research: How Functional Sounds Improve Human-Computer Interaction - Annika Frommholz
Interacting with electronic devices is part of our daily life, and functional sounds—short audio cues in devices like phones, cars, and smart home gadgets—play a key role in guiding users and shaping experiences. But what makes a sound intuitive, informative, or even enjoyable? And how can we predict how users will interpret a sound before it’s released?

In this talk, I’ll share insights from my research at the Audio Communication Group, Technische Universität Berlin, blending social science, music information retrieval, and machine learning. We investigate how functional sounds communicate information and brand personality, how design choices influence perception, and how predictive models can help designers create more effective and expressive sounds.

Advances in Neural Music Production - Fares Schulz
This talk begins with an outline of the key milestones that have led to the current boom in neural network-based approaches to music production, before exploring a handful of the latest state-of-the-art models and techniques. We will look at how these models can be used in a variety of ways, from synthesizing sounds to helping with mixing and mastering. Additionally, we will discuss the challenges associated with transitioning these models from the research stage to production. I will conclude by positioning our latest research contributions within this rapidly advancing field.