Medieval church bell sound generation for vibroacoustic landscape studies

This paper presents a method for generating synthetic bell sounds from in situ recordings of historical church bells, aimed at heritage-oriented metrological analysis and immersive applications. Starting from a real recording of a 13th century bell, still operating in Salerno Cathedral (Campania Region, Italy), the signal is denoised using spectral subtraction with adaptive control. Bell strikes are detected through RMS envelope analysis, and the tonal structure is extracted via FFT-based peak detection. A synthetic signal is generated by preserving both the amplitude proportions and phase information of the original spectral peaks. The resulting waveform replicates the temporal, spectral, and perceptual features of the original bell while eliminating environmental noise. A spectral comparison confirms the high coherence between the denoised and artificial signals. The proposed synthetic source is suitable for spatial audio testing, acoustic metrology, and the reconstruction of historical soundscapes, offering repeatability and fidelity for applications in heritage science, including Wave Field Synthesis and immersive cultural experiences.