Sonification Tools and Resources for Analysis Using Sound Synthesis
"Sonification" is the process of conveying data via the medium of sound. Sonification can be used to make scientific data more accessible to those with visual impairments, enhance visualisations and movies, and even convey information more efficiently than by visual means. The STRAUSS python package is intended to make sonification simple for both scientific and outreach applications.
Access the full documentation here (under construction!) and read more about the associated Audio Universe project here.
STRAUSS is PyPI hosted package and can be installed directly via pip:
pip install strauss
For a standard install (without text-to speech support).
If you would like access to all the resources and explore the code directly, make a copy of the STRAUSS repository via SSH,
git clone [email protected]:james-trayford/strauss.git strauss
or HTTPS if you don't have SSH keys set up,
git clone https://github.com/james-trayford/strauss.git strauss
and install STRAUSS from your local repository using pip
cd strauss
pip install .
For development purposes, you can instead use:
pip install -e .
where the -e option allows a local install, such that you can modify and run the source code on the fly without needing to reinstall each time.
We recommend using a conda environment to avoid package conflicts. Type
conda env create -f environment.yml
before pip install -e .
and activate the environment with
conda activate strauss
STRAUSS can also be installed with text-to-speech (TTS) support, allowing audio captioning of sonifications and future accessibility features, via the TTS module. Due to the specific module requirements of this module, install can sometimes lead to incompatibilities with other modules and be slower, so is packaged with STRAUSS as an optional extra. If you'd like to use these features, its easy to directly from PyPI:
pip install strauss[TTS]
or if you're working from a local copy of the repository, as above, use
pip install -e ".[TTS]"
with or without the -e option depending on whether you want to edit the STRAUSS code or not, as above.
STRAUSS is developed and provided free and open source, supported by a UKRI Early Stage Research and Development Award, grant code ST/X004651/1.
The STRAUSS code has also benefited from funding via an Royal Astronomical Society Education & Outreach grant award, providing hardware and software for sound development and spatialisation testing.