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Wavetable synthesis. Wavetable synthesis is a sound synthesis technique that employs arbitrary periodic waveforms in the production of musical tones or notes.

Wavetable synthesis

The technique was developed by Wolfgang Palm of PPG in the late 1970s and published in 1979,[2] and has since been used as the primary synthesis method in synthesizers built by PPG and Waldorf Music and as an auxiliary synthesis method by Sequential Circuits, Ensoniq, Korg, Access and Dave Smith Instruments among others. It was also independently developed by Michael Mcnabb in a similar time frame, and used in his classic work, Dreamsong (1977) [1] and documented in "The Making of Dreamsong," published in Computer Music Journal Volume 5, Number 4.[2] Principle[edit] Comparison with other digital synthesis techniques[edit] Wavetable synthesis is an efficient realization of additive synthesis in the case where all overtones are virtually harmonic. Confusion with table-lookup oscillators[edit] Phoneme. A phoneme is a basic unit of a language's phonology, which is combined with other phonemes to form meaningful units such as words or morphemes.

Phoneme

The phoneme can be described as "The smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning". In this way the difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/. Two words that differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair. Notation[edit] The symbols used for particular phonemes are often taken from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the same set of symbols that are most commonly used for phones. Assignment of speech sounds to phonemes[edit] A simplified procedure for determining whether two sounds represent the same or different phonemes kit and. Diphthong. A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/;[1] Greek: δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones"), also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable.

Diphthong

Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. For most dialects of English, the phrase "no highway cowboys" contains five distinct diphthongs. Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech during a conversation. However, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single-vowel sounds (phonemes).[2] International Phonetic Alphabet[edit] In the International Phonetic Alphabet, monophthongs are transcribed with one symbol, as in English sun [sʌn].

Speech synthesis. Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous people using speech synthesis to communicate Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech.

Speech synthesis

A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech.[1] The quality of a speech synthesizer is judged by its similarity to the human voice and by its ability to be understood clearly. An intelligible text-to-speech program allows people with visual impairments or reading disabilities to listen to written works on a home computer. Overview of a typical TTS system History[edit] Long before electronic signal processing was invented, there were those who tried to build machines to create human speech. The Pattern playback was built by Dr. Allophone. Diagram of basic procedure to determine whether two sounds are allophones History of concept[edit] The term "allophone" was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s.

In doing so, he placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory.[4] The term was popularized by G. L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology[5] and went on to become part of standard usage within the American structuralist tradition.[6] Complementary and free-variant allophones[edit] Every time a speech sound is produced for a given phoneme, it will be slightly different from other utterances, even for the same speaker. In other cases, the speaker is able to select freely from free variant allophones, based on personal habit or preference.