by westman last modified 03 April 2011 06:24 AM Author: Benjamin Schroeder - Ohio State University Introduction Physically based sound synthesis holds great promise for creating instruments that produce realistic sound but which can go beyond what is possible in the physical world. All sound in the real world is produced by the periodic vibration of physical objects. Physically based synthesis techniques model how real objects vibrate, then simulate the vibrations in order to produce real sound. Interactions between objects may be simulated as well, and this is where much of the power of the technique lies. The same guitar or piano can sound wildly different depending on how it is being played. It is difficult to reproduce variations in playing technique using recorded samples, either by recording large libraries of samples or by changing a single sample to reflect a different style. However, by modeling the way a player applies force to (say) a guitar's strings or a piano's keys, physically based techniques can reproduce the subtle realism and connectedness of actual performance. Similarly, physically based synthesis allows for instruments to be modeled in a modular fashion which matches well with real-world intuition. For example, a
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