Doh.. Yeah.. That is truemfb wrote:Actually if you put square waves into this chain, you'd just get square waves out with no PWM, but on *sawtooth* waves you'd get the asymmetrical clipping resulting in PWM.Sendy wrote:True... I think I know what you're talking about, though DC offset doesn't have phase. I think it was the JV-1080 that let you add varying DC offset to samples before they went through a clipper, so a sort of moving asymmetrical distortion, causing a constantly changing distortion which produced PWM on square waves. But I think my idea of phase distorting the wavecycle would be more expressive and produce a better range of sounds on more subtle waveform material (i.e. with delicate overtones) - the distortion method works best on material that resembles a square wave.EvilDragon wrote:You can add DC offset then modulate the phase of it, the result is the same as PWM. Kurzweil does it like that.
I was on the squarewave tip because the waves you get out will be very squared off. And I prefer the sound of phase distortion PWM because waves retain their character. But it's still a cool technique to know.Actually, the way the JV-1080 and similar units do the saw+DC+distortion to make pulses is similar to how in analog synths they have the saw going into a comparator which outputs high or low based on if the signal's above or below some imaginary line.
I guess my proposal lives and dies by the quality and speed of whatever pitch detection we are capable of nowadays. But I should imagine on monophonic instruments a reasonable pitch follow should be possible... maybe :>
On the other hand, surely we should know what pitch we're producing because we can take it from the sample's root note? Then all that's left to do is find a way of making the sync cycles fall at the same phase each time they're triggered, which again makes me think of zerocrossing detectors.