Synthesizer

:The term "synthesizer" is also used to mean frequency synthesizer, an electronic system found in communications. This article is about the musical instrument.

The physical modelling synthesizer

Physical modelling synthesis is the synthesis of sound by using a set of equations and algorithms to simulate a physical source of sound. When an initial set of parameters is run through the physical simulation, the simulated sound is generated.

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Although physical modelling was not a new concept in acoustics and synthesis, it wasn't until the development of the Karplus-Strong algorithm, the subsequent refinement and generalization of the algorithm into digital waveguide synthesis by Julius O. Smith III and others, and the increase in DSP power in the late 1980s that commercial implementations became feasible.

Related Topics:
Karplus-Strong algorithm - Digital waveguide synthesis

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Following the success of Yamaha's licensing of Stanford's FM synthesis patent, Yamaha signed a contract with Stanford University in 1989 to jointly develop digital waveguide synthesis. As such, most patents related to the technology are owned by Stanford or Yamaha. A physical modeling synthesizer was first realized commercially with Yamaha's VL-1, which was released in 1994.

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