Monday, 25 June 2007

Digital equals Analogue

Emulate analogue synthesis in digital system:

Use filters with characteristics derived from analogue models
Pitch drift between each synthesiser (slow moving LFO for each sequencer)
Noisy circuits (very small amounts of noise-derived jitter applied to each sound parameter)
Squashed or stretched octaves (tuning transform map with cent deviation facility)
Pitch energy (pitch envelope applied in very small amount to every note on)
Variable envelope precision (a tiny amount of random scaling applied to overall time)

To do:
Non-linearity / distortion (subtle waveshaping on each output)
Overall sound character (mix in tightly delayed signal at low volumes, use of EQ)

5 comments:

jayjayevans said...
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Anonymous said...

maan i'm doing this kind of things on my synth lines since two years on digital synths, and this works actually, to get the feeling, but the sound.. i trust you but i'm not convinced at 100%

Anonymous said...

by the way, hello :)

cylob said...

hello! no it's never going to be 100%, but it's interesting to compile a list of the things that can be done to make digital synthesis a bit less sterile. i found that even adding low level hiss makes things sound nicer. do you have any ideas to add?

Anonymous said...

Now this blog is really inspiring to me. Recently, i've done loads of synths in Synthedit, both complex and simple ones, and this blog here gave me some ideas on how to make my FM synth abit more fleshier. I'd love to give you some more ideas, but all i can think of right now is "a samplehold function is cool on a synth" but that isn't really helpfull to you maybe.