Dimension's Synthesis Methods

Introductory information about Dimension's synthesis methods.

Dimension has several methods of making sound: Sample Playback, Wavetable Oscillator, and Waveguide Synthesis. Each element in can make sound in one of those three different ways, however each method does require a sample to manipulate which might seem confusing at first glance. Let's break it down.

Sample Playback

First up is the most obvious and well known of the three methods: Sample Playback. Dimension will load a wav/ogg/aif/aiff sample file or a .sfz SFZ file when dropped on an element user interface. The most control is gained when using directives within a .sfz file, however.

Wavetable Oscillator

Think about the analog subtractive synthesizers that allow the user to select a particular type of waveform (like a sine wave, square wave, sawtooth wave, etc). Each of those waveforms are a graphical/mathematical representation of a single cycle of the synthesizer's oscillator. The oscillator repeats the single cycle to produce a basic tone. The type of waveform determins the different harmonic content (ie partials) within the tone. The oscillator in the synthesizer produces the requested waveform with all of its harmonics which is then passed through the filters and amplifiers for processing and making the final sound.

As a digital software instrument, Dimension Pro allows you to use pre-defined waveforms, or you may define your own single-cycle waveform digitally as a .wav/.ogg/.aif sample file. But this is not the same as a sample loop or a one shot sound. These are real single-cycle waveforms. Dimension Pro allows you to load these into Dimension which will apply a process called bandlimiting and will use these "custom waveforms" to power its oscillators which then emit a basic tone to be further processed by the remaining stages in the instrument. Going a step further, you can force Dimension Pro to manipulate any wave file as an oscillator wave form for truly wild and unique capability!

There are two ways for Dimension to treat a wave sample as an oscillator:

• Direct-loading: Any wave file that contains less than 3000 samples will automatically be treated as an oscillator waveform.
• SFZ Directives: An sfz text file can have a wave file specified with the oscillator=on directive enabled which forces Dimension Pro to treat the wave sample as an oscillator waveform. This is the required method if the wave file has more than 3000 samples, otherwise it will be treated as regular sample playback instead of as an oscillator waveform.

Waveguide Synthesis

In this synthesis method Dimension loads a waveform sample to use as an initial burst or impulse to trigger resonation. It is common with physical modeling synthesizers.

Using an .sfz file directive waveguide=on will force Dimension to apply the waveguide synthesis method.