Time stretching applied to rotary speaker sound

[voodoo]

I would like to bring the attention to a new article in the blog of PJ:

  http://sandsoftwaresound.net/yamaha-patent-rotary-speaker/

This is really very interesting. Instead of modeling a rotary speaker as a DSP program, they throw in all their knowledge of super articulation and sample real time processing (SA, XA, AEM technology), and try to do a realistic sampling of a real tone wheel organ.

This reminds me of the Kemper profiling amp, that does not model the electronics of a virtual guitar amp, but takes the approach of analysing and imitating any real amp that is attached to the device. So this is an interesting approach, that can bring technology a step further.

Uli

[pjd]

Hi Uli --

Thanks for posting the link!

Yamaha really does an amazing amount of research. Like other companies, I'm sure they face challenges transferring the results into product. The method in the patent depends on hardware-level time-stretching that can be performed on-the-fly in real-time. It makes me wonder if the SWP70 tone generator has native time stretching?

I was thinking about the new method while taking exercise yesterday. The number of individual waveforms and the amount of detail to keep track of is staggering, especially the "synchronization" of sample playback in order get all of the samples aligned in the same sonic direction as the rotor and horn. Yikes!

Also, I was wondering if they sample with a moving or non-moving (stationary) horn/rotor? If the rotor/horn are moving, then the sample would capture the Doppler effect of the horn/rotor moving toward and away. Still think about how they would accomplish that...

All the best -- pj

[andyg]

Been there, tried it, failed! But it did help one of my music tech students get a first for his degree!

Bottom line is that however good rotary DSP effects get, or however you sample a leslie, NOTHING comes close to the real thing, as it simply isn't shifting air, and there are no room effects producing multiple conflicting doppler shifts, as well as the accompanying volume and tonal shifts.

You can get close to the sound of a miked up leslie, which is what gizmos like The Vent do, but there's nothing that will let you close your eyes and imagine yourself standing in a room or studio, six feet away from a 147 or 122.