On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:59:11 +0100 fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote: In the hardware world these are usually simply sine/triangle/square wave generators, but the posh ones also do frequency sweeps, and the very posh ones let you set up a range of mathematical functions that will produce a repeating waveshape and/or sweep of your choice. Theoretically this aught to be far easier to do entirely in software (and no, I don't have sufficient programming skill). I'm actually quite surprised that we aren't knee deep in the things :) -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:18:50PM +0000, Folderol wrote: Yep, I know these boxes ! Any of the synthesis packages (from Csound to AMS) would be able to do this. They all have oscillators for sine, square, triangle, sawtooth, etc. and the complexity of combining them and making them sweep etc. is limited only by your imagination. You probably want anti-aliased oscillators in this case. It all depends on what the OP expects of this. With the exception of a sine, all the 'classical' waveforms have infinite bandwidth. Analog generators usually will go up to a few MHz (in bandwidth, not frequency) Any software version is bandlimited to half the sample rate, and unless you go to high sample rates and corresponding hardware that can make a big difference to an analog one. For example a square wave above 1/6 of the sample rate will look like a sine wave, as will a sawtooth above 1/4 the sample rate. And at lower frequencies, a perfectly bandlimited waveform with discontinuities (sawtooth, square) will show significant ringing at the edges. This is not an error, and trying to remove the ringing will actually make the result less accurate. But try and explain that to someone who doesn't grasp the theory (been there, failed). Same but to a lesser extent for waveforms that have a discontinuous first derivative (e.g. triangle). Ciao, -- FA O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !

Hi, Maybe this is a little late for your user, but just to add to the record... Pure Data: http://puredata.info/ It /is /an audio programming language /but/ it's visual, so might id well suited for that and it can go from simple oscillators to funky maths. I would take a look at it. Bests, Lorenzo