On 2012-01-09, at 8:58 AM, Scott Nordlund wrote: > The thing that bugs me about the RMI Harmonic Synthesizer part is that I've > seen the schematic. It doesn't do that (though the Keyboard Computer models > probably do). The Harmonic Synthesizer uses Walsh functions. Resistor > networks mix the individual Walsh components for each of the harmonic sliders. > It may just muddy the issue further, but Ralph Deutsch is an important name > in this field. > Oh god, there are so many things wrong... >
Ain't that the truth. There is ton of stuff that is misleading in the synth section. For instance, the Alles machine... the Bell Lab work was on digital telephone exchanges and some bright spark at Bell figured it could be used as a synth engine. The controls run in realtime and it should be considered "Additive synthesis with time-varying terms" but that section only deals with voice synthesis, which is where the Synergy was born from. The Synergy was also an FM machine and could do everything the DX-7 could do just it wasn't packaged or priced that way. It should probably be added that most realistic sounding synthesized instruments do not use harmonic partials but have harmonics that tend to be sharper at the start of a note. This reflects the physics of sound generation in instruments. Thus, the math of non-harmonic synthesis is perhaps more pertinent. At which point, where does one draw the line with FM synthesis. My feel is that to make it right, it probably needs more than a bit of adjustment. -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
