[sdiy] Drum sample playback

[Richie Burnett]

I totally agree with Brian and Tom's comments.  And, would also add that:

1. A frequency response plot spat out by a quick simulation is likely to be 
more immediately useful to you than knowing what the s-domain transfer 
function of a circuit is!
2. The frequency response plot from the simulation should more accurately 
match the behaviour of the real circuit, than deriving a theoretical 
transfer function that won't take into account actual device properties.

Nobody should let mediocre maths skills deter them from getting into 
electronics or engineering.  Believe me engineering can get as deeply 
mathematical as you want to go, but I work as a professional electronics 
engineer / DSP consultant and I certainly wouldn't class my maths skills as 
anything special.  I use Fourier analysis, transfer functions, control 
loops, etc. daily, but I have a decent PC with the right software packages 
on it that do the difficult number crunching for me.  I've only ever had to 
calculate a Fourier series manually once, and that was for an Engineering 
exam 25 years ago!

What matters most is a basic knowledge of the tools available and some 
intuition to know which tool to reach for to solve a particular problem. 
It's also useful to some extent being able to spot if that tool doesn't spit 
out the results that you expected it to!  If you really want to learn the 
gory details of the maths & theory behind something (which I would 
encourage) then you can always hit the textbooks and/or ask someone more 
skilled in the theory for help.

-Richie,



-----Original Message----- 
From: Tom Wiltshire
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 8:52 PM
To: Mike HEQX
Cc: synth-diy at synth-diy.org
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Drum sample playback

Speaking from the position of a non-master, simulations are what I do when I 
can't "get down to transfer functions", as you so nicely put it. The sims 
are a good way of getting the computer to do the hard sums and just tell me 
the answers. I can plug bits together in a simulator (LTSpice in my case - 
free!) just the same as in a breadboard and it can do the tough stuff of 
working out frequency responses and gain values and whathaveyou.

Tom