11 PCM Sample Playback Oscillators
Early sampler instruments were capable of recording sounds – single musical tones (note-events) from acoustic instruments, short audio clips, or sound effects – and playing them back with the ability to speed up or slow down the playback so as to generate proper musical pitches when desired. This idea led to sample playback synthesizers, which played banks of pre-recorded musical instrument sounds or sound effects. Due to confusion regarding the terms “sample” and “wave” and “wave file,” I use the term “PCM sample” to specifically refer to a recorded event that is not a wavetable. PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation, the technique of encoding voltage levels as numbers. In contrast to the early samplers, ...
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