[
Date Prev][
Date Next] [
Thread Prev][
Thread Next]
[
Date Index][
Thread Index][
Author Index]
Re: a moronic question
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"