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Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer
The Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer, better known as the Alles Machine or Alice, was an experimental additive synthesizer designed by Hal Alles at Bell Labs during the 1970s. The Alles Machine used computer-controlled 16 bit digital synthesizer operating at 30k samples/sec with 32 FM sinewave oscillators. The Alles Machine has been called the first true digital additive synthesizer, following on earlier Bell experiments that were partially or wholly implemented as software on large computers. Only one full-length composition was recorded for the machine, before it was disassembled and donated to Oberlin Conservatory's TIMARA department in 1981. Several commercial synthesizers based on the Alles design were released during the 1980s, including the Atari AMY sound chip. Description The Alles Machine consisted of three main parts; an LSI-11 microcomputer, the programmable sound generators, and a number of different input devices. The system was packaged into a large single unit, and wei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tron (soundtrack)
''Tron: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack'' is the soundtrack album for the 1982 film of the same name, composed by Wendy Carlos with two additional musical tracks which were provided by the band Journey. The album was released on July 9, 1982, the day of release of the film. Background The soundtrack for ''TRON'' was written by pioneer electronic musician Wendy Carlos, who is best known for her album ''Switched-On Bach'' and for the soundtracks to many films, including ''A Clockwork Orange'' and '' The Shining''. The music, which was the first collaboration between Carlos and her partner Annemarie Franklin, featured a mix of an analog Moog synthesizer and a Crumar General Development System (GDS) digital synthesizer. The GDS was one of only ten made. The non-electronic pieces were performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (hired at the insistence of Disney, which was concerned that Carlos might not be able to complete her score on time). Two additional musical tracks w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Additive Synthesis
Additive synthesis is a sound synthesis technique that creates timbre by adding sine waves together. The timbre of musical instruments can be considered in the light of Fourier series, Fourier theory to consist of multiple harmonic or inharmonic ''Harmonic series (music)#Partial, partials'' or overtones. Each partial is a sine wave of different frequency and amplitude that swells and decays over time due to modulation from an ADSR envelope or low frequency oscillator. Additive synthesis most directly generates sound by adding the output of multiple sine wave generators. Alternative implementations may use pre-computed Wavetable synthesis, wavetables or the inverse fast Fourier transform. Explanation The sounds that are heard in everyday life are not characterized by a single frequency. Instead, they consist of a sum of pure sine frequencies, each one at a different amplitude. When humans hear these frequencies simultaneously, we can recognize the sound. This is true for both ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FIFO (computing And Electronics)
Representation of a FIFO queue In computing and in systems theory, FIFO is an acronym for first in, first out (the first in is the first out), a method for organizing the manipulation of a data structure (often, specifically a data buffer) where the oldest (first) entry, or "head" of the queue, is processed first. Such processing is analogous to servicing people in a queue area on a first-come, first-served (FCFS) basis, i.e. in the same sequence in which they arrive at the queue's tail. FCFS is also the jargon term for the FIFO operating system scheduling algorithm, which gives every process central processing unit (CPU) time in the order in which it is demanded. FIFO's opposite is LIFO, last-in-first-out, where the youngest entry or "top of the stack" is processed first. A priority queue is neither FIFO or LIFO but may adopt similar behaviour temporarily or by default. Queueing theory encompasses these methods for processing data structures, as well as interactions between s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari Sierra
Sierra was the code name for a 16-bit/32-bit personal computer designed by the Sunnyvale Research Lab (SRL) of Atari, Inc. starting around 1983. The design was one of several new 16-bit computer systems proposing to use a new chipset from Atari Corporate Research. The graphics portion consisted of a two chip system called "Silver and Gold", Gold generated the video output while Silver was a sprite processor that fed data to Gold. The chipset was collectively known as Rainbow, and the system is sometimes referred to by this name. The audio portion of the chipset consisted of a powerful sound synthesizer known as AMY. The CPU had not been chosen, but the Motorola 68000, National Semiconductor 32016 and Intel 286 were being considered. Several proposed operating systems were considered including VisiCorps Visi On and Atari's own internal OS code-named "Snowcap". Sierra was bogged down since its inception through a committee process that never could come to a consensus on the desig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles and home computers. The company's products, such as ''Pong'' and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. In 1984, as a result of the video game crash of 1983, the home console and computer divisions of the original Atari Inc. were sold off, and the company was renamed Atari Games, Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as the derivative coin-operated arcade rights to the original 1972–1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Powell (musician)
Roger Powell (born March 14, 1949) is a musician, programmer, and magazine columnist best known for his membership with the rock band Utopia. Career Musician Powell's musical career started in the late 1960s, programming analog synthesizers for commercials. Powell was the protégé of Robert Moog (who created the Moog synthesizer), as well as Moog's competitor ARP, contributing designs and demonstrating systems. Powell played keyboards and synthesizers with the rock band Utopia, led by Todd Rundgren and featuring players Kasim Sulton and Willie Wilcox, among others, from 1974 until its disbanding in 1985, playing, writing, and singing on ten of the band's eleven albums. For Utopia's live shows, Powell created the ''Powell Probe''; the first remote, hand-held polyphonic synthesizer controller, which featured a custom-made shell used to access a complex stack of sequencers and other peripherals offstage, a device also used in a modified form by Jan Hammer. His first solo album ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music. The specification originates in the paper ''Universal Synthesizer Interface'' published by Dave Smith and Chet Wood of Sequential Circuits at the 1981 Audio Engineering Society conference in New York City. A single MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of MIDI data, each of which can be routed to a separate device. Each interaction with a key, button, knob or slider is converted into a MIDI event, which specifies musical instructions, such as a note's pitch, timing and loudness. One common MIDI application is to play a MIDI keyboard or other controller and use it to trigger a digital sound module (which contains synthesized musical sounds) to generate sounds, which t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yamaha DX7
The Yamaha DX7 is a synthesizer manufactured by the Yamaha Corporation from 1983 to 1989. It was the first successful digital synthesizer and is one of the best-selling synthesizers in history, selling more than 200,000 units. In the early 1980s, the synthesizer market was dominated by analog synthesizers. Frequency modulation synthesis, FM synthesis, a means of generating sounds via frequency modulation, was developed by John Chowning at Stanford University, California. FM synthesis created brighter, "glassier" sounds, and could better imitate acoustic sounds such as brass. Yamaha licensed the technology to create the DX7, combining it with very-large-scale integration chips to lower manufacturing costs. With its complex menus and lack of conventional controls, few learned to program the DX7 in depth. However, its preset sounds became staples of 1980s pop music, used by artists including A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Kool & the Gang, Whitney Houston, Chicago (band), Chicago, Phil Collin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Keyboards Synergy
Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital images ***Digital versus film photography **Digital computer, a computer that handles information represented by discrete values **Digital recording, information recorded using a digital signal Socioeconomic phenomena *Digital culture, the anthropological dimension of the digital social changes *Digital divide, a form of economic and social inequality in access to or use of information and communication technologies *Digital economy, an economy based on computing and telecommunications resources Other uses in technology and computing *Digital data, discrete data, usually represented using binary numbers *Digital marketing, search engine & social media presence booster, usually represented using online visibility. *Digital media, media sto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
