Re: Love-Hounds Digest #7.313

[Dances With Voles <jondr@sco.COM>]

Yo! jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.EDU (Jeffrey C. Burka) raps:
>(while I'm here, thanks
>to Chris for the explanation of how the Fairlight analyzes a sound and
>then resynthesizes it).

I missed the original explanation, it seems, but I should point out that
there is generally no "resynthesis" involved in sampling.  You just take a
digital picture of the input and play it back at different speeds.  Some
really advanced programs like Alchemy for the Macintosh can resynthesise a
sound so that it maintains the same pitch against a different amount of
time.  (For sampling beginners - when you play the note higher up the
keyboard, it gets shorter because it's being played faster.  There isn't any
quick and dirty way to change the duration without changing the pitch, so no
sampler I know of does this on the fly.  You need to load the sound, run it
through an intense number crunch and then stick it back on the sampler at a
different position on the keyboard).

Interesting historical note - the original Fairlight was intended to be a
synthesiser with a small tacked-on sampling section.  We know what happened
to that initial idea... :)

-- 
Jon Drukman (now an explosive new movie)        uunet!sco!jondr   jondr@sco.com
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With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.