additive synthesis

Image: Ricardipus

This is another fantastic shot of the Harmonic Synthesizer:

In the lobby of the McLennan physics building, University of Toronto. The pitches are actually labeled on the wooden blocks – Mi5, Re5, and so on.

This marvelous machine was used to dress the output of the large fork and resonator with a controlled set of overtones. Each fork is mounted in front of the appropriate resonator and driven by coils connected in series using the electronome interrupter tuned to the fundamental. A small keyboard opens the resonators.

It appears that the components of this apparatus have been redeployed, as the present set-up does not agree with the illustration in the 1889 catalogue and several pieces have been mounted with screws through the maker’s ark – an unlikely occurrence in the original mounting. This was probably done to allow operation of the keyboard from the back.

I really like that this has something called an “electronome interrupter”.

If you know anything more about the history of harmonic synthesizers, please leave a comment!

via the Synthtopia Flickr Group

This is a demo, by RetroSound, of the Kawai K5000 Advanced Additive Synthesizer.

The Kawai K5000 = Additive Synthesis + special PCM samples; the demo shows some typical K5000 sounds.

Kawai K5000R Specs:

• Polyphony: 32 voices
• Oscillators: Digital Additive Synthesis plus PCM samples; Harmonics: 64 per source;
• Effects: 4 effects algorithms with 32 different effects
• Filter: 128-band formant filter, 24dB/oct low-pass and high-pass; LFO : 2 (one for formant filter, one can be freely routed to other destinations); 1 ASDR per part, with key scale and velocity; Arpeggiator: 40 patterns, 8 user;
• Memory: 200 patches, 64 performances ;
• Date: 1996

Dave Cornutt has posted a great blog post over at Sequence 15 about moving in his Hammond organ:

About the organ: It’s an A100, one of the spinet styles that Hammond produced mainly for the home market. Despite that, it’s a full-up tonewheel organ, with exactly the same layout, sound generation, and controls as the venerable B3. In fact, if you are looking for that B3 sound but find the price tag daunting, you can pick up an A100 and get that exact same sound for $500-1000 less. I don’t know why it is that the A100 should sell for that much less than the B3 when they both use the same components. The only difference is that the A100 contains a built-in power amp (two, actually) and speakers, so you don’t have to have an external tone cabinet to play it. (Despite that, it does have a socket for connecting a Hammond tone cabinet, or with the proper adaptor, a Leslie.)

The A100 weighs about 350 lbs., and this one has a magnetic attraction for my toes. I actually dropped it on my toes once! So, of course, as we were moving it in, my shoe got stuck in a gap in the floor between the hallway and the room, and it nearly ended up on my toes again. 

Dave’s right – you can fairly regularly see A100’s going for a few hundred dollars. I think his second paragraph explains why – they weigh 350 lbs, but they don’t have the caché of a B3. 

His post also has some interesting A100 secrets and lots of extreme close up organ gear porn.

Image Line Software, creators of Fruity Loops and Deckadance, has released its latest synthesizer, Ogun.

Named after the god of iron*, Ogun is a powerful synthesizer for creating metallic sounds, although it’s not limited to this genre. Ogun’s synthesis engine can generate more than 32,000 harmonics, modulated by ‘harmonic mapping’ functions.

The ‘Additive synthesis’ engine that lies is in the heart of Ogun creates complex waveforms by combining sine-waves of harmonic multiples of the fundamental frequency and generates 32,767 harmonics.

Audio demos of Ogun are available at the Image Line site. Read more…

VirSyn has released a new version of their resynthesizer, Cube 2.2.

Cube 2.2 comes with a vastly improved resynthesis for complex and inharmonic sounds. Also included is a free soundbank and some bugfixes.

You can preview the sound of VirSyn with the Vivaldi demo below.

Demo versions for Win/Mac are available, along with more sound demos.
Read more…

 

 VirSyn Cube Does Vivaldi [2:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download