[sdiy] Reinventing the wheel? (or ring?)

[Glen]

I have this idea, but I don't know if it's original or not. Let's say we
take two different oscillators (probably nearly the same pitch, but not
quite) and we let a comparator look at the instantaneous values of both
waves. Whenever both waves have exactly the same instantaneous amplitude,
we toggle an analog switch that decides which waveform get passed to the
output. Since we trigger the switch when the amplitudes are the same (as
best as possible), there should hopefully be very little glitching at the
output (at least in theory.)

I suspect that the sound at the output would be something vaguely similar
to ring modulation, but not quite the same. I haven't breadboarded this
idea yet, so I can't say for sure at this time.

I have a second idea based on this one. If we could make the switch between
waveforms depend not only on amplitude matching, but also make sure that
both waveforms are going the same direction at the time of the switch, it
should result in a more mellow sound. However, the circuitry to keep track
of whether a waveform is moving in a positive or negative direction at any
particular instant, would certainly be an added complication. I doubt that
such circuitry would be totally foolproof, but maybe it doesn't have to be
foolproof to work in an interesting manner for this application.

So, does this sound familiar to anyone? Am I reinventing the wheel? Does
anyone think the results of such circuitry would be interesting?


later,
Glen Berry