[PD] oscillators (osc~ / cycle~) not working well in FM?

Christof Ressi christof.ressi at gmx.at
Sat Nov 21 18:47:35 CET 2015


Hey Alexander, that's very interesting! What's funny: when using [metro] + [vline~] instead of [phasor~], the drift is clearly slower. As you noted, PM seems to be stable (It is noteworthy that DX7 actually uses PM for better stability).
 
My guess it, it has something to do with rounding errors. And I can somehow intuitively see how this will affect FM but not PM:
 
Let's imagine a huge truck on a highway. On the truck is another car which can move forwards and backwards. And then there's a motercycle going at a fixed speed.
 
FM -> The car would remain fixed on the truck and someone would press and release the gas pedal of the truck periodically (starting from the same speed as the motercycle). If the amount of pressure/relief is not 100% precise, you can't really tell where exactly the car+truck will be after a couple of miles, even if the timing of manipulating the gas pedal is 100% exact, because small errors in speed will immediately result in small but lasting errors in location. So there will probably be a slow drift over time between the truck+car and the motercycle.
 
PM -> The truck moves at a fixed speed (same as the motorcycle) while the car on the truck goes forwards and backwards at a fixed intervall. The car is guaranteed to be in the middle of truck every N seconds. So even if the movement of the car might not be perfect, the location is 100% predictable at least every N*k seconds and this means that it will stay in phase with the motorcycle.
 
Does this make sense? :-D
 
Can anyone explain why this kind doesn't in SC or Max??? (I didn't test it myself) Larger look-up tables? More precision?
 
 

Gesendet: Samstag, 21. November 2015 um 17:06 Uhr
Von: "Alexandre Torres Porres" <porres at gmail.com>
An: "Roman Haefeli" <reduzent at gmail.com>
Cc: "pd-list at lists.iem.at" <pd-list at lists.iem.at>
Betreff: Re: [PD] oscillators (osc~ / cycle~) not working well in FM?

By the way, I was wondering and thinking if this was a particularity of the "0Hz carrier FM", that is: a FM patch with no carrier frequency. But I tried other regular FM patches with a carrier signal and could see that it didn't keep static as well.
 
On the other hand, the same patch implemented as Phase Modulation (PM) maintains a static waveform in Pd.
 
In my last example, the patch I had as "waveshaping" could be thought of as a "0hz PM" patch.
 
Now, I tested the PM stability with the [phasor~] + [cos~] architecture and also with [cycle~]. 
 
The FM instability happened with both [osc~] and [cycle~].
 
In Max, a FM patch with [cycle~] is stable.
 
In short, there's something fishy with FM in Pd...
 
cheers
 
2015-11-21 13:25 GMT-02:00 Alexandre Torres Porres <porres at gmail.com>:
> Can you elaborate?
 
Not easily I'm afraid, so I'll try to keep it simple: it's a demonstration on the relationship between FM and waveshaping, compare now both patches in my new example. The waveshaping does not change through time.
 
But let me attempt to reason why it should keep static - it's like any other FM patch, once you have set the parameters, the waveform must be static and not change in time. My tests with supercollider and Max had a good result (waveform kept static). I also tried in Pd with cycle~ and in the newest vanilla.
 
cheers
 

2015-11-21 11:26 GMT-02:00 Roman Haefeli <reduzent at gmail.com>:

On Sat, 2015-11-21 at 02:59 -0200, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
> howdy, attached there's a patch where I was experimenting with FM
>
>
> the waveform shouldn't change with time, but it does. Give it a while
> though, 30 seconds is enough to hear a change in tone quality, then
> resseting the oscillator phase brings it back to where it was
>
>
> don't know why it does come out of phase, an equivalent patch in SC
> and Max does not get out of phase...

I hear and see what you mean. Interesting question. Frankly, I don't
quite understand why it is expected to stay in phase. Can you elaborate?

Roman

 _______________________________________________
Pd-list at lists.iem.at mailing list
UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list[http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list]
 _______________________________________________ Pd-list at lists.iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list[http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list]



More information about the Pd-list mailing list