Hi, I'm Glenn! Nice to meet you. I have a CZ-101 I love, and I've used your Digits plug-in for fun for years, and I love it too, so this is a treat to stumble into you on the UA-cam :) A PD explanation demo from an expert such as yourself is UA-cam Gold, for sure; thanks for making and thanks for sharing. Cheers!
This is amazing stuff. I slightly understand the concepts from experience with synth sound design but a little over my head with mathematical descriptions. But such as anything new. Subscribed!
any tips on how to get phase distortion-like results from a 2 or 4 op fm synth? seems like this could be somewhat achievable with 0 ratio operators and such? any help or info would be great. thanks for the interesting vid!
Hi! The closest thing I can think of is two operators at 1:1, with moderately high feedback on the modulating operator. That will bend the sine into a saw and back in a somewhat similar way. 2:1 gets you a square. In general, though, I think it's a lot beefier sounding to use a real phase modulation synth for those tones.
Is the Roland D-110 a Phase Distortion Synthesis too? I mean, it has a filter that works in a strange way, like a part of a distorted sine is added to the saw (when cutoff is active) ... and on the spectrum it does not work quite like a filter, there are additional harmonics above the cutoff frequency ... sounds lo-fi
It's similar, if the MUNT source code is correct: It takes a sinewave and plays the corners fast or slow to round or un-round them to act as the "filter". Up all the way, it's a squarewave. That is then put through a waveshaper to produce the saw. I believe the resonance is something similar to the CZ's. You can fake resonance a few different ways though (one other way is cross-fading between a couple sinewaves, going up the harmonic frequencies)
@@groovydsp1716 Roland's D50 manual says that the SAW is formed from a ring modulation of a SIN and a square .... interestingly, is it the same in the D110? Nothing is said about this in the manual ... but waveform, it also resembles a quarter of a sine. Or maybe it's just sampled?
@@groovydsp1716 and maybe You know ... how implemented PWM in D-110 or D-50 ? Algorithmically? Or just sampled the cycle table for each percentage value?
oh btw! bitwig studio has phase distortion synthesis capabilities in both its modular device and somewhat inside its phase modulation device, I thought you might be interested
Thank you for this explanation on graph paper - awesome! I love both algebra and synthesis so this is right up my alley, especially with renewed interest in my CZ-5000. Also lol, you said “super saw” did you catch that ;)
Amazing stuff! Congrats for your hard and inspiring work :) Since you mentioned that we could request videos, I’d like to ask whether you could make a very basic tutorial for us noobs on how to make a simple VST plugin. I would be interested to know what’s wrapped around this simple C program that you made, to make an actual Audacity-loadable VST plugin. I, particularly, am familiar with writhing C for audio applications but only on iOS apps - I’d love to expand this skill on making VSTs as well. Thanks a lot for this and your other videos :)
Great video! Thanks a lot, I was able to do a neat pd patch. Around 14:04, you mention this knee problem, but I didn't find anything about it in the rest of the video, or perhaps I didn't understand. How do you adress that problem please? The result I got from my patch sounds and looks almost exactly like the saw wave in audacity, but I can hear a very slight undesired overtone that I'm guessing is to do with that sharp transition from one half to the other.
what about resolution? how the CZs deals with different reading rates in both parts of the waveform? does it works so fast that the difference is not noticeable?
Tried to download Digits for 64-bits, but my AV considers it a threat (it apparently tries to modify a .ico file in an Ableton project (which seems weird to me)).
Huh, yeah it's definitely not doing that (maybe Ableton itself does this under some conditions?). The fact that there's no digital signature on it can also throw warnings.
From what I gather, the synthesis approximates it's waveshapes through the mathematical formulas he presented. So they don't appear exactly like the normal shapes. It's more of an abstraction. I think that is why the starting and ending points of the squares appear as more of a sloped shape.
it's look like a square wave passed in a high pass filter with cutoff frequency lower than the note. 🙂 Several analog synths have square wave like this, with a slope. It is a question of phase rate ,the core of PD. With a nominal phase rate of 1 all along the phase, you have a sine or cosine wave , and you have only one frequency. The part that have a strong impact on the spectrum , the harmonics content are parts with higher phase rate , >= 1 , while lower phase rate have less impact or no impact on the spectrum . This is why the flat part of the square wave can be changed in a slow slope without impacting the spectrum, while it keep the symmetry.
Hi, stumbled upon your video while reseaching on phase distortion. Btw, huge props on making it open source!
Very interesting. I was wondering how Phase Distortion works because of Digits and I'm glad I stumbled upon a video made by its creator. Cheers!
Hi, I'm Glenn! Nice to meet you. I have a CZ-101 I love, and I've used your Digits plug-in for fun for years, and I love it too, so this is a treat to stumble into you on the UA-cam :) A PD explanation demo from an expert such as yourself is UA-cam Gold, for sure; thanks for making and thanks for sharing. Cheers!
Wait... You're the one who made Digits??
Great thing I stumbled upon this video. I was just trying to figure out how Digits work.
OMG, I love Digits! You’re the MFing man!! 💯🎯💐❤️🎶
wow, I actually got interested in this style after finding digits, I didn't expect to find an explanation made by the creator of it haha
This is amazing stuff. I slightly understand the concepts from experience with synth sound design but a little over my head with mathematical descriptions. But such as anything new. Subscribed!
Yeah man Much appreciated. we are in Head Melt territory, Nice to know someone can navigate it
This is a very constructive video, I'm really surprised this hasn't gotten any attention!
Thanks for your hard work :)
any tips on how to get phase distortion-like results from a 2 or 4 op fm synth? seems like this could be somewhat achievable with 0 ratio operators and such? any help or info would be great. thanks for the interesting vid!
Hi! The closest thing I can think of is two operators at 1:1, with moderately high feedback on the modulating operator. That will bend the sine into a saw and back in a somewhat similar way. 2:1 gets you a square. In general, though, I think it's a lot beefier sounding to use a real phase modulation synth for those tones.
Is the Roland D-110 a Phase Distortion Synthesis too? I mean, it has a filter that works in a strange way, like a part of a distorted sine is added to the saw (when cutoff is active) ... and on the spectrum it does not work quite like a filter, there are additional harmonics above the cutoff frequency ... sounds lo-fi
It's similar, if the MUNT source code is correct: It takes a sinewave and plays the corners fast or slow to round or un-round them to act as the "filter". Up all the way, it's a squarewave. That is then put through a waveshaper to produce the saw. I believe the resonance is something similar to the CZ's. You can fake resonance a few different ways though (one other way is cross-fading between a couple sinewaves, going up the harmonic frequencies)
@@groovydsp1716 ok, Thnx :)
@@groovydsp1716 Roland's D50 manual says that the SAW is formed from a ring modulation of a SIN and a square .... interestingly, is it the same in the D110? Nothing is said about this in the manual ... but waveform, it also resembles a quarter of a sine. Or maybe it's just sampled?
@@groovydsp1716 and maybe You know ... how implemented PWM in D-110 or D-50 ? Algorithmically? Or just sampled the cycle table for each percentage value?
oh btw! bitwig studio has phase distortion synthesis capabilities in both its modular device and somewhat inside its phase modulation device, I thought you might be interested
Thank you for this explanation on graph paper - awesome! I love both algebra and synthesis so this is right up my alley, especially with renewed interest in my CZ-5000. Also lol, you said “super saw” did you catch that ;)
Amazing stuff! Congrats for your hard and inspiring work :)
Since you mentioned that we could request videos, I’d like to ask whether you could make a very basic tutorial for us noobs on how to make a simple VST plugin. I would be interested to know what’s wrapped around this simple C program that you made, to make an actual Audacity-loadable VST plugin. I, particularly, am familiar with writhing C for audio applications but only on iOS apps - I’d love to expand this skill on making VSTs as well.
Thanks a lot for this and your other videos :)
Great video! Thanks a lot, I was able to do a neat pd patch. Around 14:04, you mention this knee problem, but I didn't find anything about it in the rest of the video, or perhaps I didn't understand. How do you adress that problem please? The result I got from my patch sounds and looks almost exactly like the saw wave in audacity, but I can hear a very slight undesired overtone that I'm guessing is to do with that sharp transition from one half to the other.
how exactly did you get that saw wave you showed on the oscilloscope in the first half of the video? that's exactly the waveform i'm looking for.
What hard numbers are you using for delta, x1, etc? (save viewers an hour of playing with numbers to figure it out)
Hey man i got a question does phase distortion synthesis sound more warm then fm synthesis compared to a dx7?
what about resolution? how the CZs deals with different reading rates in both parts of the waveform? does it works so fast that the difference is not noticeable?
Is there an analog pedal one can buy to hear/synthesise these sounds?
Interesting video!
Great stuff!
Are the notes of your sound synthesis class online?
Love this synth, really want to get or build one someday :)
Tried to download Digits for 64-bits, but my AV considers it a threat (it apparently tries to modify a .ico file in an Ableton project (which seems weird to me)).
Huh, yeah it's definitely not doing that (maybe Ableton itself does this under some conditions?). The fact that there's no digital signature on it can also throw warnings.
im a bit confused 2:15 that sound dope
Ok, but to me it looks like just moving the cutoff frequency from a low-pass over the time ... same effect 🤔 . eg. ADSR -> cutoff
i thought the thumbnail was an ECG-
ooh a leftie!
The square wave isn't square at all.
From what I gather, the synthesis approximates it's waveshapes through the mathematical formulas he presented. So they don't appear exactly like the normal shapes. It's more of an abstraction. I think that is why the starting and ending points of the squares appear as more of a sloped shape.
it's look like a square wave passed in a high pass filter with cutoff frequency lower than the note. 🙂
Several analog synths have square wave like this, with a slope.
It is a question of phase rate ,the core of PD. With a nominal phase rate of 1 all along the phase, you have a sine or cosine wave , and you have only one frequency.
The part that have a strong impact on the spectrum , the harmonics content are parts with higher phase rate , >= 1 , while lower phase rate have less impact or no impact on the spectrum . This is why the flat part of the square wave can be changed in a slow slope without impacting the spectrum, while it keep the symmetry.