I am a musician myself (voc, perc), but I am not a synthesizer specialist. Howerver, AFAIK, in the early days of sound synthesis, all sounds were derived from simple waveforms (like sine, square, triange, chainsaw (like triangle but with a steep upward/downward flank), and so called envelopes (you could call them amplitude operators), which were "imposed" on those waveforms. This envelope was described by four parameters: attack, decay, sustain, and release (or short ASDR).
- A (time to reach maximum amplitude from keypress)
- D (time to drop to sustain amplitude after reaching max amplitude)
- S (amplitude to keep as long as the key is pressed)
- R (time to reach zero amplitude from S amplitude after key release)
AFAIK, A and S were linear, and the D and R parts of the envelope where parabolic.
A D S R
o
o o
o o
o o
o oooooooo
o o
o o
o o
Later 6 or more parameters where usual. Most of the modern soundcards still have ADSR/FM synthesizers build in. A famous specimen of these was the Yamaha OPL-3 chip all SoundBlaster cards had on them.
I hope this is somewhat interesting, ;)
so long,
Flexx | [reply] |
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