Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Patent
1996-03-25
1997-11-18
Witkowski, Stanley J.
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
84621, G10H 702
Patent
active
056890800
ABSTRACT:
A computer system and method for performing wavetable music synthesis which uses system memory to store wavetable data and minimizes audio infidelity introduced by wavetable data access latency. The system comprises a system memory which stores wavetable data, an I/O bus coupled to the system memory, and a system audio device. The system audio device comprises an I/O bus interface coupled to the I/O bus, a synthesizer which generates sounds in response to the wavetable data, a plurality of buffers coupled to the I/O bus interface and to the synthesizer for buffering the wavetable data from the system memory, and a buffer manager coupled to the I/O bus interface, the synthesizer, and the plurality of buffers. The buffer manager manages transfers of the wavetable data from the system memory to the buffers and from the buffers to the synthesizer. The synthesizer generates a request to the buffer manager for wavetable data samples. If the samples do not reside in the buffers and the buffer manager is unable to retrieve the samples from the system memory within a desired frame time, the synthesizer outputs surrogate values until the samples become available. The synthesizer calculates the surrogate values so as to avoid producing audible artifacts in the sound generated by the synthesizer. The synthesizer calculates the surrogate values according to one of two methods. The first method is to simply output the last valid value calculated by the synthesizer. The second method is to ramp the value toward zero at a rate defined as the fastest rate which does not produce audible artifacts.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5486644 (1996-01-01), Kudo et al.
patent: 5539145 (1996-07-01), Kuribayashi et al.
patent: 5553011 (1996-09-01), Fujita
Tom R. Halfhill, "The New PC," BYTE Magazine Cover Story, Oct. 1995, 6 pages.
The MIDI Manufacturers Association, Los Angeles, California, "Tutorial on MIDI and Music Synthesis," The Complete MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification, Incorporating all Recommended Practices, document version 95.1, 1995, 24 pages.
Advanced Micro Devices , Inc.
Davis E. Alan
Hood Jeffrey C.
Witkowski Stanley J.
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