Wavetable music synthesis for multimedia and beyond

Abstract

Music production is a key element of any complete multimedia system and therefore an important component of multimedia chip set solution. Wavetable synthesis is a set of techniques which allow real time music production with high polyphony on current DSPs while exceeding the quality of simple FM synthesis. However it is important to allow other synthesis techniques to further enhance the musical product. Some of these techniques, such as spectral modeling synthesis and physical modeling of musical instruments can produce higher quality than wavetable but are more expensive computationally. Thus even when real-time performance is possible, there exists a trade-off between polyphony and quality. In order to provide superior quality as well as flexibility and scaleability, we have created an overall structure that can utilize various synthesis techniques in different situations with minimum overhead. Synthesis techniques such as FM, wavetable, spectral and physical modeling and so on will thus be used together to create a more compelling musical output. This is achieved with a control structure that dynamically chooses and controls the different synthesis techniques. The first set of synthesis methods incorporated in this system is a combination of wavetable and sampling techniques.