On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 5:27 PM, John Lato <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Evan Laforge <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> I should have mentioned Pianoteq back there as an exception to "no
>> interesting physical models since the '90s" thing.  But it's pretty
>> specialized, and since it's proprietary who knows what they're doing
>> in there anyway.
>
> I always assumed it was a very well-tuned waveguide model.  But I haven't
> actually used it myself.

Yeah, they have some other stuff going on too, with sympathetic
resonance.  It might be a separate technique because when they changed
algorithms, pitch bend affects the string but not the resonance, which
sounds quite strange.  I believe they have mentioned that they have
more accurate models but don't use them for fear of no longer being
realtime.

> My results are better than that.  The most complex systems I've run so far
> are about 3:1 with my code, although Matlab is slower than that by orders of
> magnitude.  Simpler stuff is generally closer to 1:2.

Of course real-time is always more convenient, but 3:1 sounds pretty
good already.

>> It seems like it should be possible to get speedups with parallelism as
>> well.
>
> Not as easily as you might expect, unfortunately.  More precisely, the most
> interesting systems are those in which options for parallelism are most
> limited due to non-linear effects.

Well, how about multiple strings, coupled through a soundpost and the
air?  Would it be naive to run each string on its own processor?  I
suppose if it gets the sympathy through a sample stream then you've
got at least a one sample delay which might be enough to mess things
up...

>> I've seen lots of percussion and woodwind models, but bowed strings
>> are conspicuously absent.  Is there something particularly hard about
>> it?
>
> Yes and no.  Bowed strings are easily modeled with waveguides driven by
> sawtooth waves.  In fact, many plucked string models will work pretty well
> if you just change the driver from an impulse to a sawtooth.  I think that's
> why bowed strings are mostly absent, intellectually they aren't as
> interesting as other problems.  Of course generating a true-to-life sound
> requires a significant investment of time tweaking your model (and driving
> signal) precisely.

Indeed.  One of the things I'm trying to do is make it easier to drive
instruments in complex ways, which could wind up being something like
"bow synthesis".  I think most of the promise in physical modeling is
not imitating specific instruments, but making something interesting
and organic sounding, like it *could* be a real instrument.  A lot of
the burden of that is on giving it interesting control data.

> I have some hope that I'll be able to release it relatively soon.

Looking forward to it!
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