SynthMaker

Harmonizer

Archive · 2010 6 old posts

From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.

mwvdlee ·

I was reminded of this while reading (or rather; watching) up on trigonometry (check khanacademy.org, it's excellent!). You can create any waveform simply by superimposing sine waves. So here's a simple schematic that lets you do exactly that and nothing much more. There's 20 sliders, each one controling a harmonic frequency of the base frequency played through midi. There's nothing revolutionary or particularly useful in here, but it's fun nonetheless.

p.s. You can modify it to include "fractional" harmonics to make the amplitude oscilate, but since these aren't what I was after, I left them out.

Large ·

[quote="mwvdlee"] You can create any waveform simply by superimposing sine waves. So here's a simple schematic that lets you do exactly that and nothing much more. There's 20 sliders, each one controling a harmonic frequency of the base frequency played through midi. quote]

Hate to burst your bubble here 🙂 But you can't "create any waveform simply by superimposing sine waves" (resynthesis) without also getting the phase as well as the amplitude. It is only then that you can recreate any waveform. The more harmonics you use, the longer the wave can be.

20 harmonics will not get you very far, if it's resynthesis you're after. In Sytrus for example, for a clean single-cycle waveform, it uses 256 harmonics, and a wave of 512 samples to load into it.

There's a thread on this, where we attempt to create resynthesis in SM. Search under the key words "harmonic phase".

mwvdlee ·

Large wrote: But you can't "create any waveform simply by superimposing sine waves" (resynthesis) without also getting the phase as well as the amplitude. It is only then that you can recreate any waveform. The more harmonics you use, the longer the wave can be.

I've experimented with phase, but it made no audible difference. Visibly there is a difference, but you can't hear it.

Large ·

I wish you were right 🙂

But try randomizing the phases of a kick drum type of waveform, (where the sinewave drops from high to low).

The phases make all the difference 🙂

Have a listen to the difference:

infuzion ·

Nice sluthing large!

Large ·

Thanks (?)

I just am spreading the word that harmonics' phases DO make a difference in the sounds of resynthesized waveforms.

I had to deal with that in the other thread also.

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