[sdiy] Timbral musings

[Ian Fritz]

Martin --

Thanks for the thoughts.  I'll have to think about these some more and try 
out some more experiments.

One thing I definitely noticed playing with my new waveshaper this weekend 
is that sudden (stepped) changes in timbre are more noticable to me than 
continuous (swept) changes.

   Ian


At 03:01 AM 2/17/2003, Czech Martin wrote:
>Ian, just
>some ideas, not at all thought to the end:
>
>-Wave shapers work in time domain, do not necessarily
>have strong and interesting effect in the frequency domain.
>What looks interesting on 'skope is perhaps dull in
>the speaker. This can be frustrating.
>-at some setting there may be partial cancellation effects.
>If this is true, it is clear that the parameters are critical.
>-after all, a wave shaper does convert a static signal
>into another static signal, some harmonics will change,
>but one should not expect wonders.
>-I think that the ear/brain looks for shifting patterns.
>The quality of vocoder speech is poor (from a signal
>analysis point of view). But since the characteristic
>movement of patterns is preserved, it is still
>intelligible.
>-interesting sounds have interesting movement of patterns.
>Wave shapers will not introduce non-harmonic partials
>(single input, try multiple input). A clipper circuit
>that will clip a saw wave will only shift the harmonics
>content to some degree, they are already there.
>So perhaps using a sine as input is more interesting,
>we know this from fixed carrier "FM".
>-wave shapers that introduce new partials that weren't
>there before are perhaps more interesting,
>this will certainly happen if a sine wave is used.
>-the wave shaper should have a parameter setting
>that allows unaltered signal fed through.
>-masking will make little changes in partial amplitude
>inaudible, another hint not to start with too rich
>input
>
>
>Just a few ideas from my many hours listening experiments
>I did with DIY wave tables, hand-drawn waves and
>distortion functions etc.
>It's like digging in a heap of crap, but sometimes
>you find a little piece of gold in it.
>
>m.c.