Synthesizer fundamentals

Sound synthesis is the electronic production of sounds—starting from basic properties such as sine tones and other simple waves.

Synthesizers are so named because they can emulate, or synthesize, a wide variety of sounds—such as the sound of another instrument, a voice, a helicopter, a car, or a barking dog. Synthesizers can also produce sounds that don’t occur in the natural world. The ability to generate tones that cannot be created in any other way makes the synthesizer a unique musical tool.

The simplest form of synthesizer would be a basic sine wave generator that provided little or no control over pitch. Such a synthesizer would not be able to synthesize anything except a sine wave. Combining multiple sine generators with pitch control, however, can produce interesting and useful tones.

In a synthesizer, the task of tone generation falls to a component known as an oscillator. Most synthesizer oscillators generate harmonically rich waveforms such as sawtooth, triangle, square, and pulse waves, in addition to sine waves. These waveform names are based on the resemblance of their respective shapes to a tooth on the blade of a saw, to a triangle, to a square, and so on. For information about the most common synthesizer waveforms, see Oscillators.

Sculpting the fundamental tone and related harmonics into another sound is achieved by routing the signal from one component, also known as a module, to another in the synthesizer. Each module performs a different job that affects the source signal.

In a modular synthesizer, signal routing is achieved by physically cabling modules to each other. In most modern synthesizers the signal routing between modules is internally prewired and is typically changed using switches, knobs, and other controls.

For a discussion of synthesizer components and their interaction with each other to control and shape sound, see How subtractive synthesizers work.

Synthesizers have existed far longer than you might imagine. In the days that preceded the use of digital technology, all electronic synthesizers were analog. Prior to the use of electricity, synthesizers were mechanical. There are significant differences between analog and digital synthesizers:

Analog: An analog synthesizer combines voltage-controlled circuits—such as oscillators, filters, and amplifiers—to generate and shape sounds. The amount of voltage is typically related directly to the waveform pitch, with higher voltages equaling higher pitches.
Digital: In a digital synthesizer, the signal flow is digital. Binary descriptions of the signal—a string of zeros and ones—are fed from one algorithm to another.
Hybrid analog and digital synthesizers: Some synthesizer designs feature digital oscillators that generate signals—using binary descriptions of waveforms. The digital oscillator signal is then sent to analog filters and amplifiers. The main advantage of this approach is that digital oscillators don’t drift in pitch, which is a common problem in analog oscillators.
Virtual analog: A virtual analog synthesizer is a digital synthesizer that mimics the architecture, features, and peculiarities of an analog synthesizer. The behaviors and functions of the oscillators, filters, and other modules that you would find in an analog synthesizer are emulated by computer algorithms.

ES1 is a virtual analog synthesizer. Its virtual signal flow is that of a typical analog synthesizer, but all components and signal processing—the virtual oscillators, filters, and so on—are calculated by the central processing unit (CPU) of your computer.

ES1 emulates some of the idiosyncrasies of particular analog circuits—in cases where they tend to sound nice—such as high oscillator levels overdriving the filter. Other analog synthesizer phenomena, such as slowly drifting out of tune (as the instrument heats up), are not simulated. See ES1 overview.

Virtual analog synthesizers have other advantages over their analog counterparts as well. They are programmable, which means that you can save sound settings; they can be automated, so you can record and play back fader and knob movements; and they are often multi-timbral, which allows you to play different sounds at the same time, on different instrument channels. Aspects such as polyphony—the ability to play multiple notes—and velocity sensitivity are found in most virtual analog synthesizers but in very few analog instruments.

Download the guides:

MainStage User Guide: PDF

MainStage Instruments: PDF

MainStage Effects: PDF

Helpful?