Digital synthesizer

A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing (DSP) techniques to make musical sounds. This in contrast to older analog synthesizers, which produce music using analog electronics, and samplers, which play back digital recordings of acoustic, electric, or electronic instruments. Some digital synthesizers emulate analog synthesizers others include sampling capability in addition to digital synthesis.

The very earliest digital synthesis experiments were made with general-purpose computers, as part of academic research into sound generation. In 1975, the Japanese company Yamaha licensed the algorithms for frequency modulation synthesis (FM synthesis) from John Chowning, who had experimented with it at Stanford University since 1971. Yamaha's engineers began adapting Chowning's algorithm for use in a commercial digital synthesizer, adding improvements such as the "key scaling" method to avoid the introduction of distortion that normally occurred in analog systems during frequency modulation, though it would take several years before Yamaha were to release their FM digital synthesizers.

Early commercial digital synthesizers used simple hard-wired digital circuitry to implement techniques such as additive synthesis and FM synthesis, becoming commercially available in the late 1970s. Other techniques, such as wavetable synthesis and physical modeling, only became possible with the advent of high-speed microprocessor and digital signal processing technology. Two of the earliest commercial digital synthesizers were the Fairlight CMI, introduced in 1979, and the New England Digital Synclavier II. The Fairlight CMI was the first sampling synthesizer, while the Synclavier was originally an FM synthesizer, not adding sampling synthesis until the 1980s. The Fairlight CMI and the Synclavier were both expensive systems, retailing for more than $20,000, in the early 1980s.

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