abstraction

The term "mapping" refers to making a map of correspondences between a source domain and some other "target" range. (Think of the game where you are given words in one category and are challenged to try to find an appropriate correspondence in another category, as in "Kitten is to cat as puppy is to ...".) The simplest kind of numerical mapping is called "linear mapping". That's when a one-to-one correspondence is drawn from every value in a source range X to a value that holds an exactly comparable position in a target range Y.

This patch enables you to pan a sound to any azimuth angle in a quadraphonic sound system. The abstraction assumes a square configuration of four equidistant speakers: 1 = front left, 2 = front right, 3 = rear left, 4 = rear right. The sound signal comes in the left inlet, and the azimuth angle comes in the right inlet, either as a number or as a signal.

To mix two sounds together equally, you just add them together. If you know that both sounds will frequently be at or near full amplitude (peak amplitude at or near 1) then you probably want to multiply each sound by 0.5 after you add them together, to avoid clipping. However, if you want to mix two sounds unequally, with one sound having a higher gain than the other, a good way to accomplish that is to give one sound a gain between 0 and 1 and give the other sound a gain that's equal to 1 minus that amount.

This shows an implementation of phase distortion synthesis in MSP—using the phasor~, kink~, and cycle~ objects—in a patch that is designed to be used inside the poly~ object. For an explanation of this sort of phase distortion synthesis, see “A demonstration of phase distortion synthesis.” The main point of this example, though, is to show how a synthesis patch can be designed to respond directly to MIDI input.

This pan~ subpatch takes one signal in the left inlet, and sends it out each of two outlets. The amplitude gain for each outlet is determined by a panning value supplied in the right inlet. This value can be supplied as a typed-in argument in the main patch, as a float value, or as a control signal.

There are several standard speaker configurations for 2-dimensional surround sound panning, such as quadraphonic (four speakers in a square or rectangular placement) and the 5.1 or 7.1 THX cinema surround specifications.

If we want to use the delay crossfading technique shown in "Abstraction for crossfading between delay times" for multiple different delays of the same sound, the simplest solution is just to make multiple copies of that abstraction and send the same audio signal to each one. However, that's a bit inefficient in terms of memory usage because each subpatch would have its own tapin~ object, each of which would be containing the same audio data.

This patch demonstrates how one might make an audio patch that can serve as a voice in a polyphonic synthesizer. It's quite similar to the FMtone~ patch shown in “Generating a simple 2-operator FM tone”, but with some modifications that make it suitable for use with the poly~ object so that it can be used polyphonically.

In order to enable and disable portions of an audio program easily, and to be able to reuse them multiple times, you will probably want to encapsulate an entire audio-generating or audio-processing procedure inside a single patch with inlets and outlets so that it can be used as a subpatch object in some other patch. This patch shows an example of a simple 2-oscillator frequency modulation tone generator that could easily be used as a subpatch in some other patch.

This example shows my preferred method for changing between different fixed delay times. It's an abstraction that I regularly use when I want a simple delay, and want the ability to change the delay time with no clicks or pitch changes. It's designed as an abstraction so that it can be used as an object (a subpatch) within any other patch.