Publication date: 
2022/11/30
Together with its partners, Faculty of Electrical Engineering announces the seventh year of the Synth Challenge. Participants have until the end of 2022 to submit two tasks that test their ability to synthesize sounds and musical compositions in a software environment. In addition to university students, high school students will be also able to participate for the first time.

Opening up the competition to junior high students is not the only change this year. Unlike previous years, when audio synthesis algorithms were programmed exclusively in MATLAB, this year participants can use any programming environment.

"We are hoping for the involvement of other university departments, a larger number of participants, including talented students from secondary schools, and an increase in interest in the study of acoustic and audiovisual programmes and subjects," explains the main organiser of the competition, Prof. Roman Čmejla from Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

Another change in this year's Synth Challenge is that CTU Faculty of Transportation Sciences and the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, specifically its R&D 4.0 laboratory, have joined the traditional partners of FEL, the Czech Acoustical Society and the software company Humusoft. CTU CIIRC will provide data and video that the contestants will use to generate the best possible simulator sound.

Electric car and typewriter sound

All participants are required to work on the first task - synthesising the sound of the Škoda Superb electric car. It will be entirely up to them how they create the sound. "Although the most important factor defining the resulting sound is the speed and number of engine revolutions, we do not instruct the participants which parameters to select from a possible 70 and use for the synthesis," explain the competition organisers.

The second task is intended solely for university students, involving synthesizing musical instruments used in one of the two given musical pieces. These are 'Barcarola' from The Hoffmann Tales by Jacques Offenbach, which emphasises piano and strings, and 'Typewriter' by Leroy Anderson, which is dominated by piano and a mechanical typewriter with a bell.

The final version of the competition tasks must be submitted by midnight on 31 December 2022. The announcement of the competition results will take place at the FEL CAFÉ on Wednesday 11 January 2023. The detailed version of the assignment can be found here.

Last year's winner scored with his version of Bohemian Rhapsody

You can read how the winner of last year's Synth Challenge 2021, Adrian Pitoňák, a student of Czech Technical University, dealt with the task in this article. He scored with the international jury with his version of Bohemian Rhapsody, which was mandatory for all participants. You can listen to the winning song here.

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