Sound in multimedia, movies, games, virtual reality, and human-computer interfaces is a growing field that encompasses the disciplines of analog and digital signal processing, physics, speech, music, perception, and computer systems architecture. This overview of sound production and modeling techniques surveys the state of the art in sound technology. Sound has become a critical component in modern multimedia systems, especially multispeaker surround-sound entertainment systems. Many of the components and techniques in these systems are also applicable in virtual and augmented reality systems. With basic sound hardware now available for most (but not all, as in some palmtops) computer systems, and increasing processor speeds allowing direct real-time sound manipulation, enhancing multimodal computer-human interfaces by using the sonic channel is becoming commonplace. Sound in games and other graphics-intensive real-time applications is achieving higher levels of sophistication and promises to undergo even further advancements in realism and responsiveness.