It’s common to refer to partial manipulation in this fashion as operating in the frequency domain. But before that happens, characteristics of individual partials can be manipulated on a per-partial basis, and this is the way in which additive synthesis offers unique possibilities. Once the audio stream is thus created (i.e., all the partials summed into a single audio signal) and passed along for further processing, such as to an effects section, there’s no longer anything special about the additive nature of the process. As the partial frequencies drift further from integer-multiple frequencies, the sound becomes dissonant and/or metallic.Īdditive synthesis is the creation of sound by adding sine wave partials to create a resultant audio stream. If however the partials are not integer multiples, then the each individual cycle is different from the one before and the one after. When partial pitch and phase is constant and all partial frequencies are integer multiples of that of the fundamental, the associated sound is that of a single-cycle waveform repeating. Those partials that are present alternate between exactly in phase and exactly 180⁰ out of phase. Standard subtractive waveforms like sawtooth and square have partials that are completely aligned phase-wise. The sine wave cycles of the partials do not have to start in sync, although there’s no rule that they cannot.
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Each partial also has a phase relative to the fundamental. So for low bass notes, you might require 200 or more partials, but that number diminishes the as the frequency of the sound gets higher.īut pitch is only part of the story. In practical terms, you only don’t need any partial with a frequency above the Nyquist frequency (or one-half the sample-rate) to produce a credible result. There are theoretically an infinite number of such sine waves, known as partials.
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Those with a good knowledge in this area may wish to just skip the next section.Īny single-cycle waveform can be broken down into discreet component sine waves, one at the fundamental frequency, and others at integer multiples. We’ll start with a review of additive synthesis for those not especially grounded in the subject. Some capabilities found in other additive instruments are sacrificed in the process, but the result is quite viable, as we’ll see. It does this with a unique user interface that’s unlike anything I’ve yet encountered. But you don’t just sit down and start manually defining the minutia of additive sound parameters and expect to get anywhere quickly.īut there’s a new additive synth in town that gives us a motivation to actually build sounds from the ground up. They also both offer a fascinating sound-from-image capability. Alchemy and Harmor both offer a resynthesis capability that will allow one to analyze an audio clip and create an additive mapping from it.
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Also not least of which is the fact that additive sound design from scratch is a dark art. The instruments on that list have several things in common, not least of which is that they produce some really exciting sounds. These include Alchemy (let’s please have a moment of silence in sympathy for all Alchemy fans who use PCs), NI’s Razor, and not just one but three instruments from Image-Line: Morphine, Harmless and its big brother Harmor. We take a close look here.Īdditive synths have been around for a few years, and there are some notably cool instruments in this category. Or is it? Now there’s Loom and that storyline is changing. Additive synthesis is a fascinating method of producing sound, but additive sound design is a considerable challenge.