Julius O. Smith III
Physical Audio Signal Processing: for Virtual Musical Instruments and Digital Audio Effects
(2010)
About
Virtual musical instruments are fast, computational models that implement the "audible essence" of a musical instrument and associated effects in real time. The model should not only sound like the real thing, it should also play like the real thing (from the perspective of a human performer interfaced to the model via specialized controllers and sensors). Of course, a virtual instrument is allowed to surpass the quality and playability of its real-world counterpart, when possible, and this has already occurred in a number of instances. The emphasis in this book is on signal processing models and methods that are used in constructing virtual musical instruments and audio effects. Specific topics considered include delay effects such as phasing, flanging, the Leslie effect, and artificial reverberation; virtual acoustic musical instruments such as guitars, pianos, bowed strings, woodwinds, and brasses; and various component technologies such as digital waveguide modeling, wave digital modeling, commuted synthesis, resonator factoring, feedback delay networks, digital interpolation, Doppler simulation, nonlinear elements, finite difference schemes, passive signal processing, and associated software.