Equipment

Synthesizers : software only synthesis

Mainframes & early software synthesis

The earliest digital synthesis was performed by software synthesizers on mainframe computers using methods exactly like those described in digital synthesis, above. Music was coded using punch cards to describe the type of instrument, note and duration. The formants of each timbre were generated as a series of sine waves, converted to fixed-point binary suitable for digital-to-analog converters, and mixed by adding and averaging. The data was written slowly to computer tape and then played back in real time to generate the music.

Modern day software synthesis

Today, a variety of software is available to run on modern high-speed personal computers. DSP algorithms are commonplace, and permit the creation of fairly accurate simulations of physical acoustic sources or electronic sound generators (oscillators, filters, VCAs, etc). Some commercial programs offer quite lavish and complex models of classic analog synthesizers--everything from the Yamaha DX-7 to the original Moog modular. Other programs allow the user complete control of all aspects of digital music synthesis, at the cost of greater complexity and difficulty of use.

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