Download Efficient Anti-aliasing of a Complex Polygonal Oscillator
Digital oscillators with discontinuities in their time domain signal derivative suffer from an increased noise floor due to the unbound spectrum generated by these discontinuities. Common antialiasing schemes that aim to suppress the unwanted fold-back of higher frequencies can become computationally expensive, as they often involve repeated sample rate manipulation and filtering. In this paper, the authors present an effective approach to applying the four-point polyBLAMP method to the continuous order polygonal oscillator by deriving a closed form expression for the derivative jumps which is only valid at the discontinuities. Compared to the traditional oversampling approach, the resulting SNR improvements of 20 dB correspond to 2–4× oversampling at 25× lower computational complexity, all while offering a higher suppression of aliasing artifacts in the audible range.
Download WDF Modeling of a Korg MS-50 Based Non-linear Diode Bridge VCF
The voltage-controlled low-pass filter of the Korg MS-50 synthesizer is built around a non-linear diode bridge as the cutoff frequency control element, which greatly contributes to the sound of this vintage synthesizer. In this paper, we introduce the overall filter circuitry and give an in-depth analysis of this diode bridge. It is further shown how to turn the small signal equivalence circuit of the bridge into the necessary two-resistor configuration to uncover the underlying Sallen-Key structure. In a second step, recent advances in the field of WDFs are used to turn a simplified version of the circuit into a virtual-analog model. This model is then examined both in the small-signal linear domain as well as in the non-linear region with inputs of different amplitudes and frequencies to characterize the behavior of such diode bridges as cutoff frequency control elements.
Download Generalizing Root Variable Choice in Wave Digital Filters with Grouped Nonlinearities
Previous grouped-nonlinearity formulations for Wave Digital Filter (WDF) modeling of nonlinear audio circuits assumed that nonlinear (NL) devices with memoryless voltage–current characteristics were modeled as voltage-controlled current sources (VCCSs). These formulations cannot accommodate nonlinear devices whose equations cannot be written as NL VCCSs, and they cannot accommodate circuits with cutsets composed entirely of current sources (including NL VCCSs). In this paper we generalize independent and dependent variable choice at the root of WDF trees to accommodate both these cases, and review two graph theorems for avoiding forbidden cutsets and loops in general.
Download Virtual Analog Buchla 259 Wavefolder
An antialiased digital model of the wavefolding circuit inside the Buchla 259 Complex Waveform Generator is presented. Wavefolding is a type of nonlinear waveshaping used to generate complex harmonically-rich sounds from simple periodic waveforms. Unlike other analog wavefolder designs, Buchla’s design features five op-amp-based folding stages arranged in parallel alongside a direct signal path. The nonlinear behavior of the system is accurately modeled in the digital domain using memoryless mappings of the input–output voltage relationships inside the circuit. We pay special attention to suppressing the aliasing introduced by the nonlinear frequency-expanding behavior of the wavefolder. For this, we propose using the bandlimited ramp (BLAMP) method with eight times oversampling. Results obtained are validated against SPICE simulations and a highly oversampled digital model. The proposed virtual analog wavefolder retains the salient features of the original circuit and is applicable to digital sound synthesis.