Re: a moronic question

[Mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 3:43 PM +0100 12/1/08, Sjaak wrote:
>  > Michael Noble wrote:
>  > It is also not difficult to conceive of recombinant
>  > sampling techniques that will generate wholly new sounds based on
>>  sample mixing at anywhere from the sample level of microsound to the
>  > sonic event level.

This, if I am not mistaken, is the whole philosophy behind Granular 
Synthesis, which has been around since the 80's.

>Most workstation like synthesizers uses this approach to synthesize 
>sounds. So
>I would say that a synthetic sound can be produced with both a 
>classic waveform (sinus, square, sawtooth) and a sample. Keep in 
>mind that most of these very short samples are useless on its own, 
>only when you threat them as a complex wave form and synthesize them 
>using filters, envelopes and modulation etc

Tit-for-tat here: one of the notorious "cheats" that some VST/AU 
soft-synths use in order to keep CPU-usage down is to use a sampled 
sine/square/whatever wave as the source for the oscillators (as 
opposed to generating it in realtime using math; merely reading back 
a table is less CPU-intensive).

So, in many VST's you're using samples as the synth.  Is that 
sampling, or synthesis, or both?

>Wavetable synthesis is good example of applying sample technology in 
>synthesis. The PPG Wave from Germany was the first commercially 
>available wavetable synthesizer, should have been in the late 70's. 
>It took until 1985 before Roland released the first synth (D-50) 
>using rom-sampling technology in a way we still use it today in both 
>hard and soft synths.

And even Roland didn't promote that as "wavetable" synthesis, 
preferring instead to hang it on a psychoacoustic principle and 
terming it LA Synthesis.  Although you could get some wavetable 
effects (or at least I used to be able to on my old Kawai K1, which 
was a D-50 ripoff).  Equally close to the PPG would have been the 
Prophet VS, which allowed four-way mixing between wave sources (some 
of which were sampled).  But it wasn't until the Korg Wavestation 
(which, IIRC, was developed by SCI engineers/technology purchased 
when Sequential went belly-up) that a real wavetable synth was to 
pick up where the PPG left off.

Of course, then Waldorf came back and reintroduced the real thing [sic]....

        --m.
-- 
_____
"when you think your dreams are shattered, it's time to dream new dreams"