Sound Component¶

Play recorded files or generated sounds

Categories:: Stimuli
Works in:: PsychoPy, PsychoJS

Parameters¶

Basic¶

The required attributes of the stimulus, controlling its basic function and behaviour

Name: Everything in a PsychoPy^® experiment needs a unique name. The name should contain only letters, numbers and underscores (no punctuation marks or spaces).

Start: When the Sound Component should start, see Defining the onset/duration of components.

Expected start (s): If you are using frames to control timing of your stimuli, you can add an expected start time to display the component timeline in the routine.

Start type

How do you want to define your start point?

Options:

time (s)
frame N
condition

Stop: When the Sound Component should stop, see Defining the onset/duration of components.

Expected duration (s): If you are using frames to control timing of your stimuli, you can add an expected duration to display the component timeline in the routine.

Stop type

How do you want to define your end point?

Options:

duration (s)
duration (frames)
time (s)
frame N
condition

Sound: A sound can be a note name (e.g. A or Bf), a number to specify Hz (e.g. 440) or a filename.

Sync start with screen: A reaction time to a sound stimulus should be based on when the screen flipped

Device¶

Information about the device associated with this Component. Keyboards, speakers, microphones, etc.

Device label: A label to refer to this Component’s associated hardware device by. If using the same device for multiple components, be sure to use the same label here.

Speaker: What speaker to play this sound on

Resample: If the sample rate of a clip doesn’t match the sample rate of the speaker, should we resample it to match?

Latency/exclusivity mode

How should PsychoPy handle latency? Some options will result in other apps being denied access to the speaker while your experiment is running.

Options:

Shared: Don’t take exclusive control over the speaker, so other apps can still use it. Send sounds via the system mixer so that sample rates are all handled, even though this introduces latency.
Shared low-latency: Don’t take exclusive control over the speaker, so other apps can still use it. Send sounds directly to reduce latency, so sounds will need to match the sample rate of the speaker. Recommended in most cases - if :ref:`soundcomponent-resample` is checked then sample rates are already handled on load!
Exclusive low-latency: Take exclusive control over the speaker, so other apps can’t use it. Send sounds directly to reduce latency, so sounds will need to be the same sample rate as one another, but this can be any sample rate supported by the speaker.
Exclusive aggressive low-latency (with fallback): Take exclusive control over the speaker, so other apps can’t use it. Send sounds directly to reduce latency, so sounds will need to be the same sample rate as one another, but this can be any sample rate supported by the speaker. Force the system to prioritise resources towards playing sounds on this speaker for absolute minimum latency, but fallback to mode 2 if the system rejects this.
Exclusive aggressive low-latency (no fallback): Take exclusive control over the speaker, so other apps can’t use it. Send sounds directly to reduce latency, so sounds will need to be the same sample rate as one another, but this can be any sample rate supported by the speaker. Force the system to prioritise resources towards playing sounds on this speaker for absolute minimum latency, and raise an error if the system rejects this.

Playback¶

Volume: The volume with which the sound should be played. It’s a normalized value between 0 (minimum) and 1 (maximum).

Hamming window: For tones we can apply a hamming window to prevent ‘clicks’ that are caused by a sudden onset. This delays onset by roughly 1ms.

Stop with Routine?: Should playback cease when the Routine ends? Untick to continue playing after the Routine has finished.

Force end of Routine: Should the end of the sound cause the end of the Routine (e.g. trial)?

Data¶

What information about this Component should be saved?

Save onset/offset times: Store the onset/offset times in the data file (as well as in the log file).

Testing¶

Tools for testing, debugging and checking the performance of this Component.

Disable Component: Disable this Component

Validate with…: Name of the Validator Routine to use to check the timing of this stimulus. Options are generated live, so will vary according to your setup.