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| transformed into an analogue sound for your ears.Digital synths are often said to sound "cold" or "hard",which is why analogue instruments still survive.The great advantage of digital data is that,unlike analogue,it can be stored and copied with absolute precision.Imagine the process of using tracing paper to copy a diagram of a waveform:after a certain number of generations,the copy becomes inaccurate.But,if you have copied instead a column of numbers which described the coordinates of the |
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| digital - continuation |
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| points along the waveform,the hundredth copy would be just as accurate as the first.That's the difference between the analogue and digital processes:so a digital master tape can be duplicated without loss of sound quality,a digital sound sample can be stored on floppy disk and transferred to another sampler,and digital sound patches can be transmitted by MIDI from one synth to another. |
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| DIGITAL ACCESS EDITING |
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| Widely despised among synth programmers,and quite rightly too.Digital Access Editing is nonetheless the main reason polysynths are now cheap enough for almost any serious musician.The cost and reliability problems of equipping synths such as Prophet V with acres of knobs,switches,and sliders to control each sound parameter,kept costs prohibitively high.The solution was DAE:just supply one editing slider(or knob,or wheel),and let the programmer select the parameters to edit one at a time,using |
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| digital access editing - continuation |
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| a numeric keypad and LED display.The first mass market synth to feature DAE was the DX7,and it was downhill all the way from there.DAE is cheap it's efficient,but by God it's slow.Fortunately the advent of MIDI,home computers,and patch editing software reduced the problem a little,but it's still nice to have at least one synth with lots of knobs,switches and sliders to play with-as Roland recognised by bringing out optional hardware programming boxes for the JX synths,and now the D series. |
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| DIGITAL WAVEFORM SYNTHESIS |
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| A sound creation technique used on Korg's DW/EX8000 and DW6000 synths.Basically analogue synthesis,but using digital waveforms created using computer analysis of real sounds,DWS allows you to create clean digital sounds without losing the option of analogue richness and fullness. |
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