“Hand claps are a relatively primitive conveyor of sonic
information, yet they are widely applied for different
purposes.” though they may be, given just a simple audio
recording of a single handclap, is it possible to determine the
hand-configuration of the clapper via a computer-assisted
digital analysis of the sound? Researchers Antti Jylhä and
Cumhur Erkut at the Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal
Processing, Helsinki University of Technology, TKK, Espoo,
Finland reveal that, yes, it is. Their paper: INFERRING THE HAND
CONFIGURATION FROM HAND CLAPPING SOUNDS (published in Proc. of
the 11th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08),
Espoo, Finland, September 1-4, 2008) describes their experiments
in detail. Using a combination of FFT filtering and the
Steiglitz-McBride algorithm on 40 recordings of claps (two
clappers, 20 claps each), the team have discovered eight
distinct classes of clap. Named as: P1, P2, P3, A1, A2, A3, A1+
and A1- The results showing too that “… it is possible to make i