Talk:Linear arithmetic synthesis

Partials and Tones

"Two Partials grouped together created a Tone. Tones could be modified using up to three Low Frequency Oscillators, a pitch envelope, a programmable equalizer, and on-board effects such as reverb and chorus. Two Tones grouped together created a patch."

Everything before this seems accurate, yet these descriptions (2 partials to a tone, 2 tones to a patch) are true about the D-50, but not the MT-32, where the number of partials per patch can vary.

Q885 (talk) 21:32, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Similar concepts

The entire "similar concepts" section appears to be WP:OR. I'm moving the text to talk (below) until WP:RS can be found to WP:V the claims.----mikeu ^talk 18:36, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Yamaha's SY77, its rack-mount equivalent TG77, and successor SY99 introduced Advanced Wave Memory 2 (AWM2), enabling playback and digital filtering of samples. Notably, these also let AWM2 samples be used as transients to Advanced FM (AFM) synth sounds, as looped oscillators in their own right, or even as modulators of AFM carriers. This, like LA, enabled more realistic modeling of physical instruments, and in combination with FM, new possibilities for synthesis. The SY99 seemed to be the last FM workstation by Yamaha, and the later FM synth FS1R did not feature AWM — so SY99 was seemingly the last synthesizer to combine AWM with fully-fledged FM. This was until the Montage in 2016, which combines a later version of AWM2 with FM-X (an offshoot of the FM engine from FS1R, without the latter's Formant Synthesis) - though without letting samples be used as modulators, as the 77/99 series did. In any case, AWM sampling on its own has become a mainstay of subsequent flagship Yamaha products, such as the Yamaha EX5, Motif, and Montage lines — which still use the umbrella term AWM2, though the engine's details have changed many times.

Casio has also developed a similar synthesis system known as Advanced and High Quality Large Waveform, better known as AHL, for use on their portable keyboard line. Earlier Casio keyboard models instead use ZPI, a similar but more advanced system. AHL was originally a simplified version of the previous ZPI, in which both are mostly optimized for acoustic instrument samples.

Ensoniq with the SQ-80 called the same technique Cross Wave Synthesis. Kawai with the K4 called the same technique Digital Multi Spectrum.

Korg's Modwave engine was designed to do both the morphing wavetable and sample synthesis, along with the usage of MS-20 filters due to its slope, which makes it closer to Roland's D-50 / D-550 / D-05 LA synthesizers. Some features are limited to layers instead of individual oscillators (e.g. filters).