Skip to Main Content
PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition
book

PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

by Robert Bruce Thompson, Barbara Fritchman Thompson
July 2003
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
874 pages
38h 13m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

MIDI Synthesis Methods

The process by which sounds cards produce audio output from MIDI input is called synthesis. There are three synthesis methods:

FM synthesis

FM synthesis combines multiple sine waves of differing frequency and amplitude to produce a composite wave that resembles the native waveform of the instrument being synthesized. How close that resemblance is depends on the instrument and the quality of the FM synthesizer circuitry, and may vary from reasonably close to only a distant approximation. Even the best FM synthesis sound cards produce artificial-sounding audio, particularly for “difficult” instruments. Until the mid-1990s, most consumer-grade sound cards used FM synthesis, but FM synthesis is now obsolete.

Wavetable synthesis

Wavetable synthesis uses stored waveform audio samples of actual instrument sounds to reproduce music. The sample may be used as is, or modified algorithmically to provide a sound for which no sample is stored. For example, the wavetable may contain a stored sample of an actual violin playing an A note at 1760 Hz. If the MIDI score calls for a violin playing that A note, the sample is used directly. If the MIDI score calls for a violin playing an A note one octave higher (3520 Hz) and that note is not available as a stored sample, the synthesizer creates the 3520 Hz A note based on the data it has stored for the 1760 Hz A note. The quality of wavetable synthesis depends on the number, quality, recording frequency, and compression ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Computer Busses

Computer Busses

William Buchanan
Hacker Techniques, Tools, and Incident Handling

Hacker Techniques, Tools, and Incident Handling

Sean-Philip Oriyano, Michael Gregg

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 059600513XErrata Page