Hi DSPers,
I would like to reflect a bit about creating (primarily music) synthesis
machines,
or possibly software, as sort of talking about a dream that has been of some
people
since let's say the first (mainly analog!) Moogs in the 60s. What is that idea
of
creating a nice piece of electronic equipment to create blips and mieaauuws,
thundering basses, imitation instruments, and as recently has "relived" all
kinds
of more or less exciting new sounds that maybe have never been used in music
before.
As for some it's like a designer's dream to create exactly the sound they have
in
mind for a piece of musique concrète, for others it's maybe to compensate for
their
lack of compositional skills or musical instrument training, so that somehow
through
the use of one of those cool synthetic sounds they may express something which
otherwise would be doomed to stay hidden, and unknown.
Digital computer programs for sound synthesis in some sense are thought to take
over from the analog devices and the digital sound synthesis machines like
"ROMplers"
and analog synthesizer simulations. It's not true this has become the decisive
reality
thus far: there's quite a renewed interest in those wonderful analog synthesis
sounds,
various manufacturers recreate old ones, and some advanced ones make new ones,
too.
Even though it is realistic that most folks at home will undoubtedly listen
most of the
time to digital music sources, at the same time there's a lot of effort still
in the
analog domain, and obviously a lot of attempts at processing digital sound in
order
to achieve a certain target quality or coolness of sound or something else ?
Recently there's been a number of interesting combinations of analog and
digital processing as well as specific digital simulation machines (of analogue
type of sound synthesis) like the Prophets (DSI), The Valkyrie (Waldorf "Kyrie"
IIRC)
based on FPGA high sampling frequency digital waveform synthesis and some
others.
Myself I've done a Open Source hard- AND software digital synthesizer design
based on
a DSP ( http://www.theover.org/Synth ) over a decade ago, before this all was
considered
the hip, and I have to say there's still good reason for hardware over software synthesis,
while I of course can understand it is likely computers will get better and
better at producing quality synthesis software. At the time I made my design, I
liked to
try out the limits I liked as a musician, such as extremely low, and very
stable latency
(one audio sample, with accurate timed Midi message reading in programmable
logic)
straight signal path (no "Xruns" ever, no missed samples or re-sampling ever,
no multi
processing quirks, etc). My experience is that a lot of people just want to
mess around
with audio synthesizers in a box! They like sounds and turning some knobs, and
if a
special chip gives better sound, for instance because of higher processing
potential
than a standard processor, they like that too, as well as absence of strange
software
sound- and control-interface latency.
I'm very sure there are a lot of corners being cut in many digital processing
based
synthesis products, even if the makers aren't too aware, for instance related
to sample
reconstruction reality compared with idealized design theories as well as a
hope for
congruency between the Z transform with a proper Hilbert transform, which is
unfortunately
a fairy tale. It is possible to create much better sounding synthesis in the
digital
domain, but it's still going to demand a lot of processing power, so people
interested in
FPGA acceleration, parallel software, supercomputing, etc, might well have a
hobby for
quite a while to come, in spite of all kinds of adds about music software
suggesting
perfection is in reach!
Theo V
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