|
Vintage Electronics
A synthesizer (or synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument designed to produce electronically generated sound, using techniques such as additive, subtractive, FM, physical modelling synthesis, or phase distortion. more...
 Home
Amplifiers
Audio Accessories & Cables
Cable TV
DVD Players & Recorders
Digital Video Recorders, PVR
Gadgets & Other Electronics
Home Audio
Home Theater Projectors
Home Theater in a Box
Radios: CB, Ham & Shortwave
Satellite Radio
Satellite TV
Telephones & Pagers
Televisions
VCRs
Vintage Electronics
 8-Track Players
Amplifiers, Tube Amps
Books, Manuals, Magazines
Capacitors
Cassette Decks
Drivers & Horns
Other Vintage
Preamplifiers, Tube Preamps
Radios
Receivers
Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders
Speakers
Telephones
Televisions
Transformers
Tubes
Tuners, Tube Tuners
Turntables
Synthesizers create sounds through direct manipulation of electrical voltages (as in analog synthesizers), mathematical manipulation of discrete values using computers (as in software synthesizers), or by a combination of both methods. In the final stage of the synthesizer, electrical voltages generated by the synthesizer cause vibrations in the diaphragms of loudspeakers, headphones, etc. This synthesized sound is contrasted with recording of natural sound, where the mechanical energy of a sound wave is transformed into a signal which will then be converted back to mechanical energy on playback (though sampling synthesizers significantly blur this distinction).
Synthesizers typically have a keyboard which provides the human interface to the instrument and are often thought of as keyboard instruments. However, a synthesizer's human interface does not necessarily have to be a keyboard, nor does a synthesizer strictly need to be playable by a human. Different fingerboard synthesizer or ribbon controlled synthesizers have also been developed. (See sound module.)
The term "speech synthesizer" is also used in electronic speech processing, often in connection with vocoders.
Sound basics
When natural tonal instruments' sounds are analyzed in the frequency domain, the spectra of tonal instruments exhibit amplitude peaks at the harmonics. These harmonics' frequencies are primarily located close to the integer multiples of the tone's fundamental frequency.
Percussives and rasps usually lack harmonics, and exhibit spectra that are comprised mainly of noise shaped by the resonant frequencies of the structures that produce the sounds. The resonant properties of the instruments (the spectral peaks of which are also referred to as formants) also shape the spectra of string, wind, voice and other natural instruments.
In most conventional synthesizers, for purposes of resynthesis, recordings of real instruments can be thought to be composed of several components.
These component sounds represent the acoustic responses of different parts of the instrument, the sounds produced by the instrument during different parts of a performance, or the behaviour of the instrument under different playing conditions (pitch, intensity of playing, fingering, etc.) The distinctive timbre, intonation and attack of a real instrument can therefore be created by mixing together these components in such a way as resembles the natural behaviour of the real instrument. Nomenclature varies by synthesizer methodology and manufacturer, but the components are often referred to as oscillators or partials. A higher fidelity reproduction of a natural instrument can typically be achieved using more oscillators, but increased computational power and human programming is required, and most synthesizers use between one and four oscillators by default.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
|
|
