Sound Reproduction and Wavetable Synthesis
Earliest synthesizers used audio oscillators and were not realistic
Newer synthesizers use wavetable synthesis and are far more realistic
Wavetable synthesis takes sample of musical instrument sound, eg violin, digitizes the sound and stores it in a memory chip.
Samples capture the attack, decay and envelope shape of each instrument and incorporate “looping” (repetition) to maintain long notes. Can even hear bow striking string on some string patches!
Samples from Steinway and Bosendorfer grand pianos can be obtained on CD
Each sample is called a “patch”
Sound can be quite realistic, fair quality, but not Boston Symphony! Some patches better than others, some rather “electric organ-ish”
The “General Midi” standard consists of 128 different patches; attempt by musical instrument manufacturers to standardize performance