Police Sirens and Frequency Modulation
Ah, the allure of the police siren call! Have you ever wondered how they sing their magical song?
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Join For Freeyesterday, i was looking into calculating fluctuation strength and playing around with some examples. along the way, i discovered how to create files that sound like police sirens. these are sounds with high fluctuation strength.
the python code below starts with a carrier wave at f c = 1500 hz. not surprisingly, this frequency is near where hearing is most sensitive. then this signal is modulated with a signal with frequency f m . this frequency determines the frequency of the fluctuations.
the slower example produced by the code below sounds like a police siren. the faster example makes me think more of an ambulance or fire truck. next time i hear an emergency vehicle, i’ll pay more attention.
if you use a larger value of the modulation index β and a smaller value of the modulation frequency f m , you can make a sound like someone tuning a radio, which is no coincidence.
here are the output audio files in .wav format: slow.wav , fast.wav
from scipy.io.wavfile import write
from numpy import arange, pi, sin
def f(t, f_c, f_m, beta):
# t = time
# f_c = carrier frequency
# f_m = modulation frequency
# beta = modulation index
return sin(2*pi*f_c*t - beta*sin(2*f_m*pi*t))
def to_integer(signal):
# take samples in [-1, 1] and scale to 16-bit integers,
# values between -2^15 and 2^15 - 1.
return int16(data*(2**15 - 1))
n = 48000 # samples per second
x = arange(3*n) # three seconds of audio
data = f(x/n, 1500, 2, 100)
write("slow.wav", n, to_integer(data))
data = f(x/n, 1500, 8, 100)
write("fast.wav", n, to_integer(data))
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Published at DZone with permission of John Cook. See the original article here.
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