STRAUSS - A Tool to Sonify the Universe

To create sonfications, we primarily utilise our new code Sonification Tools and Resources for Analysis Using Sound Synthesis (STRAUSS). This is an open source code and we welcome new users and contributors. An article introducing STRAUSS and its functionality appears in ICAD in 2023 (Trayford et al. 2023).

Briefly, this Python code allows the user to synthesise sounds or manipulate pre-recorded audio samples with properties (e.g. pitch, volume, timbre) that are mapped from input data. You can also move objects in artificial space around an ‘observer’ and the code will correctly calculate the relative volumes for the different channels of different speaker setups (e.g. stereo, 5.1 systems or ambisonics).

STRAUSS can be used as a sonification tool for all kinds of data analysis and communication tools.

For education and public communications: For example, it was used to create the sonifications in Audio Universe: Tour of the Solar System. We have also created sounds to be used as part of our educational workshops and make virtual reality experiences.
Scientific analysis: For example, we turned the light-curves of stars into sound (see Tucker-Brown et al. 2022) and we have turned galaxy spectra into sound for both 1-dimensional and 3-dimensional datasets (Trayford et al. 2023).

The STRAUSS code is publicly available on GitHub, which includes some example Python note books. If , instead, you want to get started trying STRAUSS using example Python notebooks within the browser, check our the examples on these pages.

If you want to be kept up-to-date about STRAUSS developments you can join the mailing list by completing this Google Form.

Try for yourself

The only requirement is that you need your own Google Account so that you can save a copy of the notebook into your own Google Drive. Once you have done this, everything will run for you in the browser (no need to run Python/STRAUSS on your own machine) and any edits will be saved to your Google Drive.

Instructions:

1. When the project opens in Colab, immediately do File>Save a Copy in Drive. This will save a copy to your own Google Drive, so that you can make your own edits and save them as you explore the notebook.

2. Select Edit > Clear All Outputs.

3. Start reading the instructions inside the notebook.

4. To execute a code cell, click in the cell and then press the “Play” button

5. Feel free to edit the code and explore! For example, you can change the example data that is read in to experiment with sonifying the different examples.

Try the examples bundled with strauss:

Sonifying 1D data in STRAUSS: Introduction to basic sonification of 1D data series, using a variety of expressive sound properties
Spectral Audification in STRAUSS: Direct audification of spectral data (or "spectralisation"), and how to represent 2D image data
Stars Appearing sequence (from AUTotSS): Creating the stereo Stars Appearing sonification from Audio Universe: Tour of the Solar System
Earths Oceans sequence (from AUTotSS): How to generate the earth rotation sequence, where we map a musical chord with 'brighter' sound to higher ocean coverage (and hence glare from the sun) as the earth rotates, from Audio Universe: Tour of the Solar System
Planetary Orbits sequence (from AUTotSS): Creating the individual planetary orbit sounds from Audio Universe: Tour of the Solar System, and their stereo spatialisation
Day to Night Sequence (from AUTotSS): Provided for completeness, the sunrise to dusk sequence using the custom sun sounds from Audio Universe: Tour of the Solar System.

More extended examples, produced for strauss workshops:

dotAstronomy 2024 workbook:

Link: https://githubtocolab.com/james-trayford/dotAstro13/blob/main/strauss_dotAstro13.ipynb

An extended example bringing together a number of case studies fomr other notebooks as well as new material. Example data is downloaded in-notebook.

Notebook example with star light curves:

Link: https://githubtocolab.com/james-trayford/AudibleUniverseWorkbooks/blob/group4/STRAUSSdemo.ipynb

The data is also stored in the Google Drive in the form of csv files. There are three examples provided:

GALEX_NUV_LC.csv: Flare stare

tic_lc.csv: Exclipsing binary star

kid11616200_lc.csv: Heartbeat star.

Notebook example with AGN galaxy spectra:

Link: https://githubtocolab.com/james-trayford/AudibleUniverseWorkbooks/blob/group3/STRAUSSdemo.ipynb

The data is also stored in the Google Drive in the form of csv files. These are grouped into three directories "Type1/" (four examples), "Type1.5/" (two examples) and "Type2/" (four examples).

Section 2 of the notebook explains how to access the data with the different file names.

Notebook example with multi-variate galaxy simulation data

Link: https://githubtocolab.com/james-trayford/AudibleUniverseWorkbooks/blob/group4/STRAUSSdemo_bonus.ipynb

This example accesses the star-formation and metal-enrichment histories of 5 galaxies from the EAGLE simulations. It shows an example of how to sonify multiple properties at once (in a time-series like sonification).

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