Sound Synthesis and Sampling, 2nd Edition

5  Digital synthesis

Digital synthesis of sound is the name given to any method which uses predominantly digital techniques for creating, manipulating and reproducing the sounds. Often the only ‘analogue’ part of a ‘digital’ instrument will be the audio signal that is produced by the digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) chip at the output of the instrument.

As digital audio transmission formats like S/PDIF/AES/EBU and mLAN become more widely adopted as the outputs of synthesizers, and the inputs of mixers, fully digital instruments may eventually appear where there is no DAC at all. Software synthesizers which are used in computers are already purely digital.

Most digital synthesis techniques are based very strongly on mathematics: even methods ...