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>The typical audio synthesizer has large number of parameters which are difficult to tweak. Really? If you know about synths then it isn’t really that difficul

>The typical audio synthesizer has large number of parameters which are difficult to tweak. Really? If you know about synths then it isn’t really that difficult. You have one or more sound generators, sine wave, saw tooth, etc. You have attack (how fast the sound reaches full potential), decay (how long that sound is played before it drops to sustain), sustain (how long the sound lingers), release (how long until the sound fades away to nothing). You have filters for the sound, low pass, high pass, distortion, etc. that process the audio into output audio. It’s basic sound engineering. However, using a neural net to find interesting combinations and be able to label them would be really fun to build a catalog of dreamscapes or tones.

quinnjh 1y ago
If you’re interested in doing the tweaking, sculpting your own set of tones traversable by one or a few sliders is doable with Rebecca Fiebrink’s “wekinator” , which gives you a GUI for “recording” that catalogue. Not sure if a similar M4L device has come out since. OPs project looks like a cool way for plugin devs to make a demo slider.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
butterknife 1y ago
Sustain is not time, but level. How long the sound lingers before hitting release portion of the envelope is determined by how long you "hold the key"
- reactordev 1y ago
  You just contradicted yourself, read that again. “How long the sound lingers” It’s definitely time… The envelope is a level but the knob’s use is time. “How long that the sound lingers before release”. Some synths may have this as a pedal or a key you can hold but the purpose is definitely to lengthen the tone prior to release which is always time.
  - butterknife 1y ago
    OK Sir. Glad your synths are working this way for you.
  - xibbie 1y ago
    Mate you're confidently incorrect here. Even the quote you use is intentionally incomplete. The crucial part of the parent quote is 'is determined by how long you "hold the key"'. Go play with a synth, or even look at an ADSR envelope tutorial, and you'll see you were wrong. And not just wrong, but condescending and wrong.
  - actsasbuffoon 1y ago
    No, the other commenter is correct. There’s a gate signal, typically activated by holding a key (though in a modular synth, there are many other potential gate sources). While the gate is open an ADSR envelope progresses from Attack -> Decay -> Sustain. It then remains on Sustain until the gate closes, at which point it enters the Release phase. So the amount of time it remains in Sustain is dictated by the gate signal. Notice there’s no G in ADSR, because the gate doesn’t come from the envelope. What you’re describing is Hold, which some envelopes (AHDSR is one popular flavor) can do. Many Elektron groove boxes have hold stages on their envelopes. In AHDSR, an open gate goes from Attack into Hold, where it retains its value for a set period of time after the attack, and then goes into the Decay phase and continues from there. There are plenty of other kinds of envelope, and things that live somewhere between LFOs and envelopes called a function generator, which is often an AR envelope that can be looped. Then there are complex many-stage envelopes that were especially popular when digital synths were first coming onto the scene. I’d also add that the description you gave of a synth architecture is generally considered East Coast synthesis. One or more oscillators going into a mixer/VCA, and then into a filter and possibly some effects is a very popular architecture made famous by Bob Moog. But there are other forms like West Coast synthesis where instead of having filters, you run gentler wave forms like a triangle through a wave folder, and/or a complex oscillator where you have a pair of oscillators that can cross modulate one another. So where East Coast synthesis takes harmonically rich waveforms and cuts harmonics away with filters, West Coast synthesis starts with harmonically tame waveforms and adds harmonics through various flavors of FM, wave shaping, etc. Then you’ve got samplers, granular synthesis, physical modeling, additive synthesis, and a bunch of other types as well. The East Coast architecture is popular, but there’s a lot more out there.
tgv 1y ago
There are enough synthesizers that work in a rather different way. E.g., FM is notable for being hard to grasp.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Nope, exactly the same. FM is Frequency Modulation which is what you can do with oscillators and the above mentioned envelope points. Whether it’s a sine wave, a waveform, a bass line, a kick sample, a sawtooth, a square wave, doesn’t matter. These things have been solved in the late 70s by Yamaha’s DX7 and Moog. What most people find confusing isn’t the ADSR but the fact that there are multiple oscillators each with their own volumes and patch bays, inputs and outputs. At the end of the day, they are all very much the same. Sound Gen/Sample -> ADSR -> Filter chain -> patch out -> in -> master out.
  - xibbie 1y ago
    Gonna have to go two-for-two on correcting replies here. > FM is Frequency Modulation which is what you can do with oscillators and the above mentioned envelope points. This isn't what FM is. FM involves using one oscillator output to modify (modulate) the frequency of another oscillator. ADSRs can be used to shape the degree of modulation over time, but the sound isn't shaped through the ADSR in this case; rather the ADSR controls the sound generation stage by modifying the frequency modulation effect in the time domain.
    - reactordev 1y ago
      >FM involves using one oscillator output to modify (modulate) the frequency of another oscillator. That’s not different than what I said. It’s an oscillator…
  - tgv 1y ago
    That's plain wrong, or hiding FM's complexity under a useless term. Plus it doesn't have filters in its original form.

quinnjh 1y ago

If you’re interested in doing the tweaking, sculpting your own set of tones traversable by one or a few sliders is doable with Rebecca Fiebrink’s “wekinator” , which gives you a GUI for “recording” that catalogue. Not sure if a similar M4L device has come out since. OPs project looks like a cool way for plugin devs to make a demo slider.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

butterknife 1y ago

Sustain is not time, but level. How long the sound lingers before hitting release portion of the envelope is determined by how long you "hold the key"

reactordev 1y ago
You just contradicted yourself, read that again. “How long the sound lingers” It’s definitely time… The envelope is a level but the knob’s use is time. “How long that the sound lingers before release”. Some synths may have this as a pedal or a key you can hold but the purpose is definitely to lengthen the tone prior to release which is always time.
- butterknife 1y ago
  OK Sir. Glad your synths are working this way for you.
- xibbie 1y ago
  Mate you're confidently incorrect here. Even the quote you use is intentionally incomplete. The crucial part of the parent quote is 'is determined by how long you "hold the key"'. Go play with a synth, or even look at an ADSR envelope tutorial, and you'll see you were wrong. And not just wrong, but condescending and wrong.
- actsasbuffoon 1y ago
  No, the other commenter is correct. There’s a gate signal, typically activated by holding a key (though in a modular synth, there are many other potential gate sources). While the gate is open an ADSR envelope progresses from Attack -> Decay -> Sustain. It then remains on Sustain until the gate closes, at which point it enters the Release phase. So the amount of time it remains in Sustain is dictated by the gate signal. Notice there’s no G in ADSR, because the gate doesn’t come from the envelope. What you’re describing is Hold, which some envelopes (AHDSR is one popular flavor) can do. Many Elektron groove boxes have hold stages on their envelopes. In AHDSR, an open gate goes from Attack into Hold, where it retains its value for a set period of time after the attack, and then goes into the Decay phase and continues from there. There are plenty of other kinds of envelope, and things that live somewhere between LFOs and envelopes called a function generator, which is often an AR envelope that can be looped. Then there are complex many-stage envelopes that were especially popular when digital synths were first coming onto the scene. I’d also add that the description you gave of a synth architecture is generally considered East Coast synthesis. One or more oscillators going into a mixer/VCA, and then into a filter and possibly some effects is a very popular architecture made famous by Bob Moog. But there are other forms like West Coast synthesis where instead of having filters, you run gentler wave forms like a triangle through a wave folder, and/or a complex oscillator where you have a pair of oscillators that can cross modulate one another. So where East Coast synthesis takes harmonically rich waveforms and cuts harmonics away with filters, West Coast synthesis starts with harmonically tame waveforms and adds harmonics through various flavors of FM, wave shaping, etc. Then you’ve got samplers, granular synthesis, physical modeling, additive synthesis, and a bunch of other types as well. The East Coast architecture is popular, but there’s a lot more out there.

tgv 1y ago

There are enough synthesizers that work in a rather different way. E.g., FM is notable for being hard to grasp.

reactordev 1y ago
Nope, exactly the same. FM is Frequency Modulation which is what you can do with oscillators and the above mentioned envelope points. Whether it’s a sine wave, a waveform, a bass line, a kick sample, a sawtooth, a square wave, doesn’t matter. These things have been solved in the late 70s by Yamaha’s DX7 and Moog. What most people find confusing isn’t the ADSR but the fact that there are multiple oscillators each with their own volumes and patch bays, inputs and outputs. At the end of the day, they are all very much the same. Sound Gen/Sample -> ADSR -> Filter chain -> patch out -> in -> master out.
- xibbie 1y ago
  Gonna have to go two-for-two on correcting replies here. > FM is Frequency Modulation which is what you can do with oscillators and the above mentioned envelope points. This isn't what FM is. FM involves using one oscillator output to modify (modulate) the frequency of another oscillator. ADSRs can be used to shape the degree of modulation over time, but the sound isn't shaped through the ADSR in this case; rather the ADSR controls the sound generation stage by modifying the frequency modulation effect in the time domain.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    >FM involves using one oscillator output to modify (modulate) the frequency of another oscillator. That’s not different than what I said. It’s an oscillator…
- tgv 1y ago
  That's plain wrong, or hiding FM's complexity under a useless term. Plus it doesn't have filters in its original form.