This is a wonderful debate, which I have participated in from both ends for
10 years.
Software synthesis has the promise of providing far more powerful,
incredibly flexible synthesis methods. In theory, user interfaces for soft
synthesis have more opportunities for innovation: excellent displays,
generalized mapping networks, "Global Editing", Timbre Spaces, Neural
Network training algorithms - you name it!
Databases of sounds with descriptive categories, indexing sounds and timbres
by example; research is going on in all of these areas.
Of course, soft synthesis to date has been hobbled by "the complexity
barrier" - that invisible wall that users and programmers hit, sometimes
without understanding what they hit, which then halts their productivity. A
whistle sometimes is the best instrument. There are no linker errors, no
blue screens, low latency (except for nice understandable oscillation build
ups), and no cables to hook up!
Soft synthesis will come of age when it finally becomes invisible; when
musicians make music that could not have been made by a fixed hardware
synthesizer, and nobody even mentions that it came from a software
synthesizer. They just mention how good the music is.
-dana
Dana C. Massie FluxNetwork, Inc.
Mobile: 831.234.0479 Main: 831.423.1695 Fax: 831.423.1638
Dana@FluxNetwork.com www.FluxNetwork.com
435 Front Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1205
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