Additive synthesis anyone??

briandc · Post by **briandc** » Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:33 am

Cool! I saw a demo once (don't remember where) with audio "interpreted" from an image. It wasn't particularly "musical" in the traditional sense, but interesting nonetheless. Definitely worth exploring! (and definitely not something I've ever seen a synthesizer do!)

brian

briandc · Post by **briandc** » Sat Feb 27, 2016 9:39 am

Speaking for Fouriers.... a song! (not mine) Fourier Song

(Found it here: FFTW )

stephen · Post by **stephen** » Sat Feb 27, 2016 11:30 am

Virtual ANS does weird things to images...

briandc · Post by **briandc** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 11:08 pm

stephen wrote:Virtual ANS does weird things to images...

Thanks for pointing that out! It just so happens today I've been looking at the Warmplace.ru website regarding Sunvox for linux, and low and behold.. Virtual ANS is another one of Alexander's projects!

Guess I've got my plate full for a bit now!....

brian

briandc · Post by **briandc** » Sun Feb 28, 2016 11:10 pm

And of course, there's ZynaddsubFX software synthesizer out there (multi-platform) that has a wonderful additive synthesis section in it, too. Yoshimi is a fork of Zyn, both projects quite active (at least for linux) right now, so there's bound to be more neat features up ahead.

brian

UnbalancedKarma · Post by **UnbalancedKarma** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:23 pm

I guess I'm the only one with a K5...

synthroom · Post by **synthroom** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 4:28 pm

I have a dead K5m that I never got into programming with...

My Fairlight does 32 partial additive synthesis. You can draw out the partial envelopes with the lightpen on the screen. It's pretty quick to program additive sounds with and easier to get nice sounds using additive than hand drawing sample waveforms with the pen.

Post by **meatballfulton** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 4:39 pm

I had a K5, traded an Odyssey for it (idiot!) and like I wrote above, trying to figure out how to convert the idea of a sound into partials was beyond me then as it is now.

urgetoplay · Post by **urgetoplay** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 4:48 pm

I still have a k5m; they go for under $100 these days. The K5000 was a better bet. Other hardware that does additive off the top of my head: Wersi EX-20, Kurzweil K150 ( always wanted one of these with the apple software ) K3m has two user slots to define a waveform.

UnbalancedKarma · Post by **UnbalancedKarma** » Wed Mar 02, 2016 2:39 pm

think of additive synthesis kind of like a morphing filter... the k5 has 128 partials per oscillator, but you only get 4 harmonic envelopes, so you have to group harmonics...

K3's user waveform is a simple fixed spectrum (single cicle waveform)... you have 2 memory slot only with a cartridge, and you can't use two different user waveforms...

briandc · Post by **briandc** » Thu Mar 03, 2016 9:12 am

UnbalancedKarma wrote:think of additive synthesis kind of like a morphing filter... the k5 has 128 partials per oscillator, but you only get 4 harmonic envelopes, so you have to group harmonics...

K3's user waveform is a simple fixed spectrum (single cicle waveform)... you have 2 memory slot only with a cartridge, and you can't use two different user waveforms...

Thanks for your post. Yes, looking at a K5000S manual, it seems that the set of harmonics can be changed in mostly "macro" ways: increase higher frequencies, or set a "saw" set of frequencies, or amplify just odd (or just even) frequencies, etc.

At any rate, it's quite fascinating. Maybe they could've done more with it..given more control options?

brian

Post by **meatballfulton** » Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:25 pm

If you've looked at softsynths that do allow modulation per partial it gets really hairy. That was my point, or maybe my question.

We know a saw is all harmonics at a decreasing amplitude and a square is all odd harmonics at a decreasing amplitude, but what do you get if you skip every other odd harmonic until you reach the nth harmonic and then skip every other even harmonic after that. What do you get if you change the amplitudes of particular harmonics like pick every nth harmonic increase the level by a factor of two. What do you get if you put an LFO on certain harmonics so the amplitude is constantly changing. What if the choice of which harmonics to change is random rather than cyclical. What if you modulate the frequency of the partials as well as the amplitude. Etc.

If I had a lot of time I suppose I could sit down and try experiments like that and see what sort of sounds pop out. Eventually I suppose I would develop strategies for designing sounds.

How do those of you who have spent time with machines like the Kawais approach additive sound design?

Bitexion · Post by **Bitexion** » Thu Mar 03, 2016 11:09 pm

The cheapest K5000 on ebay is $1000 (roughly). Not trying this one in a while then.

UnbalancedKarma · Post by **UnbalancedKarma** » Fri Apr 01, 2016 1:38 pm

briandc wrote:
UnbalancedKarma wrote:think of additive synthesis kind of like a morphing filter... the k5 has 128 partials per oscillator, but you only get 4 harmonic envelopes, so you have to group harmonics...

K3's user waveform is a simple fixed spectrum (single cicle waveform)... you have 2 memory slot only with a cartridge, and you can't use two different user waveforms...
Thanks for your post. Yes, looking at a K5000S manual, it seems that the set of harmonics can be changed in mostly "macro" ways: increase higher frequencies, or set a "saw" set of frequencies, or amplify just odd (or just even) frequencies, etc.

At any rate, it's quite fascinating. Maybe they could've done more with it..given more control options?

brian

with the k5000 you can use resynthesis I think! it has 128 envelopes!

the K5 only had 4 envelopes per oscillator so you're forced to group harmonics... obviously it is not accurate enough for an optimal resynthesis, but there are some programs around...

UnbalancedKarma · Post by **UnbalancedKarma** » Fri Apr 01, 2016 1:42 pm

meatballfulton wrote:If you've looked at softsynths that do allow modulation per partial it gets really hairy. That was my point, or maybe my question.

We know a saw is all harmonics at a decreasing amplitude and a square is all odd harmonics at a decreasing amplitude, but what do you get if you skip every other odd harmonic until you reach the nth harmonic and then skip every other even harmonic after that. What do you get if you change the amplitudes of particular harmonics like pick every nth harmonic increase the level by a factor of two. What do you get if you put an LFO on certain harmonics so the amplitude is constantly changing. What if the choice of which harmonics to change is random rather than cyclical. What if you modulate the frequency of the partials as well as the amplitude. Etc.

If I had a lot of time I suppose I could sit down and try experiments like that and see what sort of sounds pop out. Eventually I suppose I would develop strategies for designing sounds.

How do those of you who have spent time with machines like the Kawais approach additive sound design?

kawai k5/5000 are definitely limited if you're looking for all that modulation options!

Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??

Re: Additive synthesis anyone??