Sound Synthesisppt.pptVIP

Sound Synthesis Sound Synthesis CE 476 Music Computers Additive Synthesis We add together different soundwaves sample-by-sample to create a new sound, see Applet 4.3. We can add spectral envelopes to a number of partials. By this way, we can impose a different amplitude trajectory for each harmonic, independently making each harmonic louder and softer over time, see Applet 4.4. sin(4*x) + sin(x)+cos(x/2), x=0..2*Pi sin(5*x) + sin(x), x=0..2*Pi Changing Sound Parameters The quality of a synthesized sound can be improved by varying its parameters (partial frequencies (harmonics), amplitudes, and envelope) over time. These soundfiles are examples of sentences reconstructed with sine waves. Soundfile 4.2 is the sine wave version of the sentence spoken in Soundfile 4.3, and Soundfile 4.4 is the sine wave version of the sentence spoken in Soundfile 4.5. Amplitude envelope shape Attacks, Decays, and Time Evolution in Sounds Additive synthesis has some drawbacks. One serious problem is that while it’s good for periodic sounds, it doesn’t do as well with noisy or chaotic ones. For instance, creating the steady-state part (the sustain) of a flute note is simple with additive synthesis (just a couple of sine waves), but creating the attack portion of the note, where there is a lot of breath noise, is nearly impossible. Therefore, we have to synthesize a lot of different kinds of information: noise, attack transients, and so on. The ear and brain are much more interested in things like attacks, decays, and changes over time in a sound. That’s bad news for all that additive synthesis software, which doesn’t handle such things very well. Subtractive Synthesis: Filters A filter is a function that takes in a signal and gives back some sort of transformed signal. Usually, what comes out is less than what goes in. In additive synthesis, we start with simple sounds and add them together to form more complex ones. In subtractive synthesis, we start with a complex sound (lik