| Analog devices wavetable synthesizer |
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With the dawn of the digital revolution and the computer technology improving almost daily, the need of manufacturers and providers to offer as much as possible to the consumer led to several good but also questionable attempts of stuffing simply too much into their products. On the other hand, sound thinking did inspire some of the inventions, for instance the inclusion of wavetable synthesis in several audio cards that were provided as computer interfaces. The idea was to provide a source of sound that would not require additional software, hardware or sample and sound library, but, for instance, that games could utilize the existing sounds. Fortunately for all games fans, this idea was overrun by technology and requirements of modern games. The wavetable synthesizer remained a part of any soundcard and MIDI files can be played back by the somewhat ringtone sounding integrated general MIDI sound engine. Analog Devices is a big American semiconductor company, located in Norwood, Massachusetts, which is specialized in production of integrated circuits of high performance that can be used in analog and digital signal processing applications. Customers of Analog Devices are found in many different industries, manufacturers of medical as well as industrial equipment, wireless
communications infrastructure, consumer electronics and automotive applications are equally listed in their portfolio. The ADI semiconductor company was founded by Matthew Lorber and Ray Stata in 1965, which makes ADI one of the oldest companies of this kind in the world. Lorber and Stata were MIT classmates and friends, whereby Stata remained with the ADI and is currently the Chairman of the Board of the now publicly traded company. ADI holds development centers all over the world and currently employs more than eight thousand five hundred employees. Wavetable synthesis is a term that was developed by Palm Products GmbH, also known as PPG, the founder and owner was Wolfgang Palm, who started making modular synthesizers for the electronica music group Tangerine Dream. While he was working on a synthesizer similar to Minimoog, he decided to use DCOs instead of VCOs and that was the base of a technology for digital synthesizers that would be picked up by Sequential Circuits and Ensoniq as well. The best known PPG synthesizer would be the PPG Wave, which is still considered a class for itself. There are even virtual instrument replicas made for computers that are available today. Palm was actively involved with Waldorf Music, which manufactured Microwave and Waldorf WAVE, which used the original design of wavetable synthesis by Palm. Palm also collaborated with Steinberg, releasing a software synthesizer called PLEX. |
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