Music and Computers
Oscillators - Band-limited and NOT Band-limited
Sine waves, sawtooth waves, triangle waves and square waves are commonly
used in audio synthesis. This Applet lets you listen to each one. The oscillators
with "BL" after the name are band-limited. This means that they
do not contains partials over the Nyquist limit which can cause nasty grungy
sounds, particularly at high frequencies.
To Do:
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Click on each radio box below to hear each sound.
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Click "SawBL" and sweep the frequency. Notice how the sound is smooth from
low to high frequencies.
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Click "Usage" button to see what percentage of the CPU is required to generate
that sound.
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Click on "Saw" and sweep the frequency slowly from the extreme left to
the extreme right. Notice the grungy tones at high frequency.
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Click "Usage" button to see what percentage of the CPU is required to generate
that sound. You get what you pay for.