Oscillators generating filters effect

Benjamin Poddig's middle name should be 'AntiAlias'.

 

Yes, interleave is just my word for it... coz that's what is happening...
Here's a quick example of some of the more extreme sounds that are possible with full access to individual vector nodes... This is from the project in the pictures earlier in the thread. It is possible to get more musically useful sounds, but this demonstrates some of the filter/resonance effects that are possible. With more adequate envelopes, some aliasing reduction, and a more complete GUI interface with better automation, this could be quite a flexible synthesis approach. For now, my implementation is a bit hacky - it's also six years old... damn!

 

Please explain how you see the 'interleave thing'? I see both waves in there, and I do know they are alternating.
Is it in the raf 0..1 macro? It's boundaries change, of course, with the Drive and LFO parameters.
But it's the same output plugged into both Drive inputs, so how could it?
I.e... my eyeball analytical tools aren't good enough to really catch it.
Everything between the 2 oscillators seems identical notwithstanding naming terms.
Nonetheless I confirmed what you say in ACEW (the best not-so-little analytical tool in the User Library):

Sample 1 Wave1 0.2507 Never mind this pass, as it catches ACEW 'unawares', but follow the next 3 entries.
Sample 106 Wave2 0.4997
Sample 532 Wave1 -0.499 426 samples later
Sample 957 Wave2 -0.4984 425 samples later

So at about every 425 samples based on the LFO rate (?) (~.01 seconds at 44.1khz sampling rate) they appear to be swapping their outputs in and out as they hit the boundaries of the ramp.
Thanks for any help!

 

Look for <0 vs >0 comparisons in 'divide' and in the two 'clip' macros.

 

Thanks! Egad, going blind fast.
Min applies to one, Max to the other -- sheesh.

 

Nice.
You seem to have so much knowledge about pretty much everything related to sound generation...i am surprised you don't have more stuff in the library "or a site selling your stuff"...i feel you could create a lot of high quality instruments for Reaktor.
Maybe you prefer exploring,testing stuff rather than creating a finished product?

 

Thanks!

I guess I have quite broad knowledge - I wish it was deeper though . Like really fully intuitively understanding transfer functions and transforms. I kinda get that stuff, but not fully. As far as projects, I have some stuff in development. Need to get it all finished up, and decide how to try and sell it.

Stuff like this PD thing though is really just the result of reading papers and trying out the ideas they present, then maybe sometimes adding a few tweaks... There are lots of papers on PD synthesis, but what made it come alive was the Casio trick of two different waveforms, and windowing them to mask the transitions. Really effective and simple. (Also using a high pass filter to reduce aliasing artefacts...)
I go back to it every once in a while to try and come up with a solution to the interface design roadblock - still haven't solved it though.

I think if you stay interested in this stuff for some years, then over time, you keep seeing the same stuff over again, and each time you understand it a little better than last time. I just keep dabbling.

It's a bit like hoarding I suppose :-/. Discover something new because someone mentions something on a forum, go and try to learn how it works. Reaktor is great for that process. You can implement basic sketches quickly to see if you do understand or not. Like the ILO idea from Efflam LeBivic - super cool idea, took a while to work out how to use it... Or, more recently for me, diving into granular. I've tried in the past and failed. This time around, I worked it out reasonably well. Still developing that though

 

A few days ago i was trying to find something different for bringing variations on an oscillator other than the traditional phase distortion or waveshapers and stumbled upon this thread,tested the files there and very interesting results when you throw that right after an oscillator...a bit different than usual.
https://www.native-instruments.com/...tortion-like-this-open-source-plug-in.325835/

 

Good recherched KoaN

 

That an interesting idea. Not sure what for though?
I read the abstract for the paper, and it seem that it's about producing distortion like you would get from tanh or arcsinh, but without the associated compression effect - no amplitude reduction. This might be useful in some very specific context (maybe like processing an oversampled signal where you don't want to clip peaks generated by gibbs phenomenon ??), but I'm not sure if it would give a noticeable different effect than just using a waveshaper. I'm probably missing something though.

I think that for improving oscillator 'quality', there's maybe more mileage in understanding and controlling changes and distortions from one cycle to the next rather than changes within a single cycle. Using saturation type distortion is problematic. It's ok with a mono synth, but for polysynths, it starts to introduce intermodulation distortion on higher notes that just sounds nasty.

EDIT: I think maybe it's important for us to remember that in academia, the crucial thing is to come up with novel ideas for papers. The idea may or may not be useful, but it must be new, or at least 'framed' in a new way. ... A new way to achieve the same old result is just fine

EDIT2: hmm, thinking about it some more, maybe there is something new about using phase distortion for saturation... One problem with some techniques for 'warming' or generally treating oscillators to make them sound more analogue is that they don't do anything much to square and pulse waves. Maybe this approach will?? I guess it really depends on if the thing they do sounds good or not

 

This idea comes from this phase distortion VST called "Temper" which is really nice and different...you get a different type of distortion.
I used the files in the thread and tried the follow the conversation a little,i just put them right after an oscillator to shape them...i have a wavetable dual oscillator and it ads nice variation in harmonics and sometimes a bit of growling,chaos...which is probably from the feedback loop in it.
To my ears it sounds different than the typical waveshaper.
Also sounds different depending on what you feed into it.
Maybe i can try to make an audio clip.

 

Sounds interesting. I wonder if it models something that happens in analogue hardware or if it's just a nice option for a digital alternative.

EDIT: Unfortunately, it really doesn't seem to play well with blep based oscillators, which is a significant number of blocks and synths in Reaktor and elsewhere. Maybe the 'Temper' plugin has some sort of solution to that.. or not... but the general concept seems limited as a result. Could be good in specific use cases... like manipulating the output of Blit based oscs or something...

 

How did you test exactly?
I think this phase distortion effect is meant for more dynamic audio material than just the output of an oscillator but i wanted to try.
The Temper VST is open source and free,they also did another one called Tantrum,more flexible,better.
https://www.creativeintent.co/product/temper

I tweaked the algorythm a little,messing around...i added a delay+filter in the feedback loop and intensified the effect by putting 2 in serial...i get interesting tones,works better with a low harmonics sound source like tri or sine...sawtooth or square gets nasty quickly with this effect.
I did a little clip...just cranked the effect up on 2 sines and some other additive waveform,creates interesting timbre,high frequencies.

 

I built the basic modulated all pass from the paper, then tried various waveforms through it. I think that because of the way it works, it defeats blep style anti-aliasing, although maybe it's just anything with a sharp discontinuity. Whatever, as soon as I found that it doesn't play well with those kinds of inputs, it became very much less interesting to me.
There may be ways to counteract that problem, but I didn't like the sound I was getting enough to spend time on it. No accounting for taste

Nice demo BTW! with two in series, its starting to sound a bit like a wavefolder. I guess that's kinda what it's doing - at least that's the result in some situations.

 

It does sound like a wavefolder yes,and like wavefolders it's better to use sine like tones.
From what i see with the Temper VST the advantage of phase distortion is that it preserves the high frequencies that are usually squashed with normal distortions. Our little tests here are probably far from the VST though...it's open source but i am no coder! Hehe.

 

If anyone is interested, I added a U/L entry of Poddig's oscillator, in legacy Block form, here:
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/14077/