For a solo violin, for instance, how many notes are actually sampled into Synful Orchestra?
EL: For the current violin database there are 750 notes. Now, one of the interesting by-products of the additive synthesis representation is that it is much smaller than the equivalent recorded PCM phrases—like less than one one-hundredth or even one one-thousandth the size. That’s why my entire orchestra fits inside of 32 megabytes of RAM. RA: Thirty-two megs? That’s amazing. EL: Especially when you consider that many sampled orchestral collections these days are on the order of 300 gigabytes and even into the terabyte range. But it’s not just one-to-one that additive is smaller than PCM; it’s also that I’m able to reuse a piece of a note over a much wider pitch range. So it’s additive synthesis and the way I use this additive synth engine that allows me to transpose over a larger range, and reuse, and recombine materials in a much more flexible way. RA: All this technology is impressive, but at some point haven’t you just thought about giving up and simply investing your time in taki
