Show HN: Oscillator Bank / Spectral Synthesizer | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Oscillator Bank / Spectral Synthesizer

github.com

36 pointsonirom9 comments

This idea seems to strike many different people at different times. One my favorites is the ANS synthesizer [0], made with optical tone wheels. There's an android app simulating it [1] (my only relation with it is "user"). The synth presented in this github page really goes a step beyond.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org /wiki/ANS_synthesizer

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nightradio.vir...

The “[0]” link looks broken, should be: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer

Although I've toyed with various synthesis and I have working experience with Faust, I must admit most of project description is way over my head.

To hijack the thread a bit, I'm interested in synthesizing sound samples from scratch. Things like footsteps, squeaking doors, wind, birds, percussions and collision sounds. I'd like to have a synth of sorts that can be configured through ~30 parameters to produce wide range of such effects. People often use SFXR and clones [0] for such purpose. Is there a model that would produce more convincing results while keeping such low number of parameters?

[0] https://raylibtech.itch.io/rfxgen

A VSTi i have used several times for birds & animals is "sounds of nature" by Xoxos, maybe you could take a look at how it is done, my guess is some fast FM modulations.

To stay in topic i have synthesized some nature sounds (birds, waters) myself using this synthesizer and a simple two oscillators FM setup with massive pitch modulations for each oscillators, you can hear it on :

https://youtu.be/25o4Ru8kbpE?t=1111

And FM squeaking doors : https://youtu.be/25o4Ru8kbpE?t=1404

So my guess is that some FM with pitch modulation and many oscillators may be the way to go.

Percussion can be synthesized with convincing results through resonant models (simple resonant filters with initial noise), this is called modal synthesis, you can find filters parameters for some real instruments here : http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/MiscModalFreq.html

Wow, this is really neat. I was wondering whether this is GPU optimized and not to be disappointed:

"Fragment is a collaborative cross-platform audiovisual live coding environment with pixels based real-time image-synth approach to sound synthesis, the sound synthesis is powered by pixels data produced on the graphics card by live GLSL code, everything is based on pixels!"

Now, if only there was some way to transpile existing VST/AU plugins into this platform. I've been dreaming of GPU accelerated legacy instruments and FX for a while!

The sound server itself (the link) is 100% CPU and does not use the GPU at all. One of the client application however (your description) output RGBA data generated by the GPU.

Hmmm, seems very cool, but I'd need a tutorial for this.

Gotta say, the docs alone are impressive

very impressive work!

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