KVR Audio

doctornash · Post by **doctornash** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:54 pm

Finished the proof of concept of "Synth Of Sorts", which features a sound generation engine based on a process not traditionally associated with music - sorting algorithms. Have uploaded a video of it in action as the second instalment in my 'Innovations In Sound Synthesis' series. It creates a wavetable from the actual process of the sort while it's working, which can then be played as a regular sweep-able wavetable with the graphical sort progress display synced together with the audio playback:

Acid Mitch · Post by **Acid Mitch** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 8:08 pm

Interesting idea.

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 9:59 pm

I was expecting this at first:

But your application of sorting is more relevant to synthesis.

cron · Post by **cron** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:17 pm

Many thanks for sharing your work. I always look forward to hearing the madness you come up with. Blowfly is like late Xenakis in code form.

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:21 pm

Really cool idea, looking forward to seeing it develope.

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought of analyzing a wave form, and then arranging all the cycles in order of sinilarity.. If that makes sense. In other words, so that each single cycle would be sandwich in between the two two cycles most similar to it. Then you would create a wavetable out of it.

Is this a thing?

synzh · Post by **synzh** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:40 pm

Haven't watched the video (my DAW has the audio exclusively ATM) but I'm curious, which sorting algorithm(s)?

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:14 pm

This is really cool. It would be great if it could output wavetables to be used in other popular synths. I've made wavetables out of lots of simple mathematical principles, but I've never seen this approach, and some of the results are very quirky, which is always a good thing in my books!

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:46 pm

Really digging your webpage and the sound programs. It's just a shame we can't get these in VST format, but I think some synths might allow loading the raw recorded wave files to be used and cut up into a wavetable, given the right frequency.

I can't program, but I am really interested in the process of creating sounds from ideas that are nothing to do with sound. Almost like "process music" but on a sound design level.

Here's a rather botched attempt you might enjoy: I got a program to draw a long evolution of a 2D cellular automata, joined the images together to create a long "map" of the process, flipped it on it's side, then used a paint to sound conversion program to make it into a soundscape.

https://soundcloud.com/sendy/sierpinskis-beats

You can hear lots of interesting rhythms in there. I don't know, it might give you an idea

I like the idea of using cellular automata but in the time domain, rather than mapping them to spectra. For example, you could read each line of the evolution of the automata as one cycle of a polypulse, with black pixels being the "mark", and white being the "space". If only I didn't suck at coding

EDIT: The bit twiddler synth is AWESOME. I LOVE these kinds of sounds. I've been experimenting with bit toggling and inversion on simple waveforms using effects chains and really would love to see a fully fleshed out distortion based synthesizer in VST land, something where you can take very simple sine, triangle and parabola waves and distort their phase, then run them through complicated bit pattern modifiers, then maybe a waveshaper. Add lots of modulation and boom! Finish up with a low pass filter for taming and sculpting the highs; but no resonance - resonant filters are played out

xoxos · Post by **xoxos** » Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:44 pm

very creative! one of the more novel approaches i've seen for some time. implement some of the sorting algorithms you eschewed.. as the other video demonstrates, one would expect that they would lead to less fluid transformations from beginning to final states, and create gristly textures?

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Wed Mar 02, 2016 7:37 pm

I also wonder about sorting algorithms that are also competing with other iterative functions one often finds in wavetable synths, to keep the motion going. For instance, phase-shifting in either direction, or stretchy "PWM" / sync / etc. Depending on the sorting algorithm and the rate of shift, it seems like there could be some very interesting results.

Pytchblend · Post by **Pytchblend** » Thu Mar 03, 2016 10:01 am

Fascinating stuff. Do you plan to release it as VST? Your back catalog is also intriguing and would be useful as plugins too.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Fri Mar 04, 2016 10:03 pm

Doctornash, I do hope you return to the forum and discuss more ideas with us. It's always great to hear from synthesists more on the left-field, and I think you could bring much to the discussion.

Frantz · Post by **Frantz** » Sat Mar 05, 2016 12:39 am

Very interesting!

I guess the simple and humble Bubble Sort didn't make the grade sonically.

doctornash · Post by **doctornash** » Sun Mar 06, 2016 8:27 pm

I was expecting this at first:

Yes about that '15 sorting algorithms in 6 minutes' video - when I searched on 'sound of sorting', that and a few videos like it were the first to come up and I thought 'as cool as this is, it is the sound of sorting triggering a bunch of sound effects, not what a progressively sorted waveform would actually sound like'. So I saw the opportunity and starting experimenting.

I guess the simple and humble Bubble Sort didn't make the grade sonically

Sorting a waveform of random samples didn't amount to much, but sorting sinewaves turned out to be much more promising. Which was fine as in my 'synthesis for developers' blog I'm trying to present as many ways as possible of processing a sine into something harmonically rich, so this qualified as yet another way. As for the sorting algorithms themselves, I tried a good many. The most obvious 'comparison sorts' like bubble sort, produced harsh/noisy/crackly results (not in a nice way) but more esoteric distribution sorts which operate on blocks of samples at a time (including shifting whole blocks around) like bucket, circle and pancake sounded both smooth and interesting

sorting algorithms that are also competing with other iterative functions one often finds in wavetable synths, to keep the motion going

Yes, there's plenty of uncharted territory when it comes to harnassing sorting for synthesis - like as a modifier - another kind of dynamic LFO for example for PWM, pitch etc.

long evolution of a 2D cellular automata

analyzing a wave form, and then arranging all the cycles in order of sinilarity

As it happens, on the back burner at the moment (slowly progressing) is a project which uses genetic algorithms to evolve waveforms from any starting shape to a target shape. Every generation of waveforms that gets produced this way would share certain 'characteristics'. And there's plenty of parameters to play around with to vary the population results - crossover, mutation etc. Again, something I haven't seen done so far

About VSTs: As of now, the whole 'left field' thing has extended even to using general purpose programming languages to roll out standalone apps...well, for no other reason than to avoid dedicated synthesis SDKs, protocols and app dev environments - VST, csound, synthedit etc. (yes...I know

)

But I recognize the benefit of plug-ins and will likely eventually succumb. In the meantime, I make the source and algo's of everything freely available to whoever wants them to evolve futher and/or incorporate in their own apps/plugs

Synth Of Sorts - the TRUE sound of sorting