additive

[Andrew Schrock]

On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Martin Czech wrote:
> mmh, let put it this way, many people do only substractive synthesis,
> you know, if you are used to a mini-moog likle structure...  I think
> the expression "subtractive synthesis" is not very helpfull nor good.
> Ok, you can read it in the books. But really, if you take a saw wave
> and mix it with two bandpass filtered versions of this very saw wave,
> can this be described as "subtractive"? I hear the saw wave with two
> formant peaks ADDED, nothing substracted. This was a very simple patch,
> nothing sophisticated.  Or take a ringmodulator, or a waveshaper, etc.
> etc.  etc. This is not substractive at all. I don't know how this
> expression came up in the public, but I gues it was in the mid 70's,
> when polyphony led to synthis which where basically substractive, like 
> a Prophet 5.

I think the term is just used as a generic rule of thumb.. as a 
comparison, the k5000 is additive, but has subtractive filters. In the
example you gave, what was subtracted was everything not inside of the BP
filters you used. You are correct, many modules are in fact not
subtractive, but in terms of a _general_ description it fits. (And as a
description goes, it fits much better than "analog" synthesis IMO) 

> Ok, but what happens after loading the wave? Is there any chance to do 
> resynthesis ? I've never heard about this, but this could be very
> interesting. After a while the K5000 was really sold out, for ridicolous
> prizes.
  ^^^^^^ prices? 

A k500 should do the job fine, too, from what I understand. Yes, the k5000
is pretty cheap right now. I had to pay a little more for mine, but hey,
I'm quite happy with it. You can resynthesize and twiddle individual
envelopes / harmonics to your hearts content. 

Andrew

| Andrew Schrock							|
| Network Programmer, Synthesizer and electronic music enthusiast	|
| aschrock at cs.brandeis.edu						|