Digital synthesizer
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A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing (DSP) techniques to make musical sounds. Electronic keyboards make music through sound waves. The very earliest digital synthesis experiments were made with general-purpose computers, as part of academic research into sound generation.
Early commercial digital synthesizers used simple hard-wired digital circuitry to implement techniques such as additive synthesis and FM synthesis, becoming commercially available in the early 1980s.
Other techniques, such as wavetable synthesis and physical modeling, only became possible with the advent of high-speed microprocessor and digital signal processing technology. One of the earliest commercial digital synthesizers was the Synclavier.
The Yamaha DX7 was the first commercial all-digital synthesizer.[1] It became indispensable to many music artists of the 1980s.[2]
Some digital synthesizers now exist in the form of "softsynth" software that synthesizes sound using conventional PC hardware, though they require careful programming and a fast CPU to get the same latency response as their dedicated equivalents. In order to reduce latency, some professional sound card manufacturers have developed specialized digital signal processing hardware. Dedicated digital synthesizers frequently have the advantage of onboard accessibility, with switchable front panel controls to peruse their functions, whereas software synthesizers trump their dedicated counterparts with their additional functionality, against the handicap of a mouse-driven control system.
[edit] References
- ^ Le Heron, Richard B.; Harrington, James W. (2005), New Economic Spaces: New Economic Geographies, Ashgate Publishing, p. 41, ISBN 0754644502
- ^ Three Yamaha products that reshaped the industry mark 20th anniversary, Music Trades, February 2004, pp. 70–74, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5264/is_200402/ai_n20430721
[edit] External links
- Psycle a freely downloadable modular software synthesizer and sequencer/tracker (open source and totally free)
- Buzz, a freely downloadable modular software synthesizer (gratis but proprietary)
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