What's the best way to add vintage synthesizer waveforms?

[Joseph Stewart]

Would it be better to:

• create an additional *_lutset.h file for each?
• create PCM entries?

The first waveforms I'm thinking about are inspired from the Korg DW8000 and Ensoniq ESQ-1

(Korg's might be trickier, as there are different resolution waveforms per octave.)

[Dan Ellis]

I'm not familiar with those synths, but I just read about the DWGS on the DW8000's wikipedia page, and the lutset mechanism would be quite suitable, if you have some source for the original cycle waveforms. (The point of lutsets is to provide multiple lookup tables of a single waveform at different sampling rates, to avoid aliasing at higher pitches, but you could create these from a single, full-spectrum prototype by properly anti-aliased downsampling). There would need to be a new oscillator type that took the source lut (index) as an argument. It would look just like the triangle oscillator, though. How good/useful were these additional raw waveforms? There's a lot more to a piano than a single cycle of waveform! DAn.

…

On Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 1:56 PM Joseph Stewart ***@***.***> wrote: Would it be better to: - create an additional *_lutset.h file for each? - create PCM entries? The first waveforms I'm thinking about are inspired from the Korg DW8000 and Ensoniq ESQ-1 (Korg's might be trickier, as there are different resolutions waveforms per octave.) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#38>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAEGZUPV336SUI2RZMZWOFLW3TDFBANCNFSM6AAAAAAVXULS6A> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Joseph Stewart]

I looked at the lutset code a little closer and understand your point about the DW8000/DWGS approach. ESQ-1 waves to my knowledge are single sample. The ESQ-1 would let you split different patches across the keyboard, to avoid the dreaded chipmunk effect.

As for the utility of said waveforms, I agree that they're very sonic-ly simple, compared to say the FM algorithm, or managed partials.

The value they might bring would be akin to what y'all did with DX-7 patches. I'd like to resurrect old DW8000 and ESQ-1 patches. I was in a synth band in the 80's and those two were my faves.

I've been gloming lots of my own ideas onto AMY, perhaps at an obtuse angle from what you and Brian have in mind.

I've pitched a lightning talk at a software conference in a few months to showcase me bolting AMY together with a MIDI controller and the Elixir/Erlang environment.

"Gosh, really got some nice toys here." - Roy Batty / Bladerunner

[Joseph Stewart]

I've abused the PCM drivers for this purpose, so closing this for now.