MUST 1220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Sound, Wavetable Synthesis, Synthesizer
30 Jan 2017
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Waves in nature, including soundwaves (amplitude as function of time) are continuous = between any 2 points in time, an infinite number of amplitude points can be identified. Analog audio (vinyl, tape, analog synthesizers, etc. ) involves the creation or imitation of a continuous wave. They can only deal with discrete values. Digital technology is based on converting continuous values to discrete values. To digitize a continuous wave, it is measured (sampled) regularly. The discrete measurement values, samples, may be stereo in a digital system. Instantaneous amplitude measurements are stored and sampled regularly: ex: movies are just a series of still pictures. Reading through (cid:449)a(cid:448)eta(cid:271)le at diffe(cid:396)e(cid:374)t (cid:396)ates (cid:894)skippi(cid:374)g e(cid:448)e(cid:396)(cid:455) (cid:862)(cid:374)(cid:863) sa(cid:373)ples, the sa(cid:373)ple i(cid:374)(cid:272)(cid:396)e(cid:373)e(cid:374)t(cid:895) allo(cid:449)s different pitches to be created. Audio is produced by audifying the samples by sending them through a digital to audio converter (dac). Contemporary computer sound cards usually have a set of wavetable sounds.
