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Posted by fr0st on Jul-21-2004 04:05:

Books on synthesis

I did a search couldnt find anything... COuld anyone point to some good sound design books are some ways of going about learning complex sound design?
thanks,
john

Posted by CynepMeH on Jul-21-2004 06:00:

Depending on the desired level of complexity, you'd wanna check out these two:

1. Sound Synthesis and sampling - not for the faint of heart. Dives very deep into all topics, on a IC/Transistor/Circuit design level. Provides crapload of information, more than you'd ever need to know and can be a bit tedious for a non-engineer type. My 2 years of E.E. major only helped me understand about 40% of the book. The narative is your average "chilton-manual/sleep inducer" type. Great source for insomnia cure and will force most of average bathroom readers to switch to reading something more exciting, for instance - the label in the back of the airfreshener can.

2. Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming - a complete contrast from title #1. I'd consider it more of a generic user's manual. Has some bits and pieces here and there but overall has varrying levels of coverage. In some areas it gets pretty deep (without any merit), in another section the guy just blatantly states "Well, I don't know enough about this subject to discuss it here and besides, it's outside the scope of this book" (or something along those lines) - I cracked up when I read that. It's an OK book if you need to start somewhere but overall does not provide enough information for me to call it "complete".

BTW, both books have CD Rom available, only for the first book, CD is sold separately and costs $90!!! The other book has CD included.

Here's a tip - I found Alesis A6 Andromeda and Nord Lead 2x manuals to be rather informative (and they are free to download from respective mfr. websites). Nord Lead 2x has a section towards the end of the manual called "Synthesizer basics", which does a good job of covering major aspects of synthesis. The same goes for A6 manual.

Good luck!