source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 03:44:16 -0700 Subject: Synths From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> If one wants extreme accuracy and is willing to get out of the MIDI environment, the synthesizers made by David Rayna remain very interesting. I drive my double-precision Rayna synth-in-a-box through the parallel port of my old Atari ST, and get 20 voice polyphony in frequency units of .0000044139 Herz (the level of accuracy depends upon the number of voices). I happen only to use sine waves, which the Rayna produces beautifully (unlike any of the commercial products which are also so noisy that I am hesitant to describe what I hear as _in tune_ or not); for those interested in more complex waveforms, Rayna has a wave table send up so that relative amplitudes of 16 partials selected from the first 64 can be fixed. For the very nostalgic, Rayna has also made a modular synthesizer emulator program for his synthesizer, where patches can be drawn on the screen to simulate the cables we used in the good old days. I control the synth. either through software sequences or through assignment of computer keys which are played in realtime, but it would probably not be difficult at all to assign midi keyboard commands to the Rayna, although they are significantly slower than the Rayna. I do not know about the present availability of Rayna´s products, but the machines seem to appear for sale regularly among the new music community. If anyone is seriously interested, I have some possible contacts. Daniel Wolf Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 15:47 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02929; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 14:49:16 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA02928 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id GAA25036; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 06:49:07 -0700 Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 06:49:07 -0700 Message-Id: <199610071342.JAA06211@cerberus2.Ensoniq.Com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu