Question on synthesis fundamentals!

[chimp_spanner]

If anyone's gonna know...it's someone around here

So I've spent the day with various synths in Reason and an oscilloscope, in an effort to actually get a better idea of what I'm doing to the sound on a fundamental level, and it's been really helpful! I've got a whole new appreciation for the stock devices in Reason and how powerful they are (particularly Thor). However, at the end of it all one thing is still baffling me.

What *is* a single cycle of an oscillator? I mean what's it made of? I get that it's the oscillation between two values but what am I actually hearing, and how does Reason (or any synth for that matter) translate this into sound? Say I take a sawtooth osc and play the lowest note possible. I can hear the click of the onset of the cycle, but what's going on in the space between cycles?

Or should I think of it like a speaker cone. So a sawtooth moves it very quickly outward and then gradually back in. And as the frequency increases and the air vibration becomes audible, *that's* what I'm hearing/perceiving as a sawtooth? I hope the question makes sense! It's not really something I need to know...more like I just want to know!

[selig]

If anyone's gonna know...it's someone around here

So I've spent the day with various synths in Reason and an oscilloscope, in an effort to actually get a better idea of what I'm doing to the sound on a fundamental level, and it's been really helpful! I've got a whole new appreciation for the stock devices in Reason and how powerful they are (particularly Thor). However, at the end of it all one thing is still baffling me.

What *is* a single cycle of an oscillator? I mean what's it made of? I get that it's the oscillation between two values but what am I actually hearing, and how does Reason (or any synth for that matter) translate this into sound? Say I take a sawtooth osc and play the lowest note possible. I can hear the click of the onset of the cycle, but what's going on in the space between cycles?

Or should I think of it like a speaker cone. So a sawtooth moves it very quickly outward and then gradually back in. And as the frequency increases and the air vibration becomes audible, *that's* what I'm hearing/perceiving as a sawtooth? I hope the question makes sense! It's not really something I need to know...more like I just want to know!

Strictly speaking, Reason doesn't translate waveforms into sound. It's the speaker that does that, specially the cone (with help from the amp, naturally).

Simply put, the waveform represents the path the speaker cone attempts to take when you send a voltage representing the waveform to an amp and on to a magnet which moves the cone. It's bi-polar, meaning it resets in the center position, them moves back and forth to create compression/expansion of the air molecules. Just like with water, the air doesn't move, the compression wave is transmitted through the medium. Though with a sub woofer you may feels the air being pulled back and forth, it's moving the cone equal amounts in either direction (providing there's no DC offset) which is why the air is not shooting out like an air cannon or fan.

For example, a square wave sends the cone alternatively in and out (or out and in, depending on the polarity). The clicks you hear when you send a low frequency wave to a speaker is the poor cone doing it's best to follow that shape, specifically the point in the wave shape that move quickly from one extreme to another. Note that a perfect square wave is impossible to recreate with a speak because it would be required to move from one extreme to the other taking no time in between (which is of course impossible). Since everything we hear is bandwidth limited, it's not a problem that speakers cannot do this - we would not be able to hear it even if they could because we cannot hear infinite bandwidth.

When I was a kid I watched in awe as my older brother took an old woofer and sent a very strong low frequency square wave through it until it literally ripped itself from it's surround! Great lesson in why you really don't want to send slow frequencies to your speakers!

[chimp_spanner]

If anyone's gonna know...it's someone around here

So I've spent the day with various synths in Reason and an oscilloscope, in an effort to actually get a better idea of what I'm doing to the sound on a fundamental level, and it's been really helpful! I've got a whole new appreciation for the stock devices in Reason and how powerful they are (particularly Thor). However, at the end of it all one thing is still baffling me.

What *is* a single cycle of an oscillator? I mean what's it made of? I get that it's the oscillation between two values but what am I actually hearing, and how does Reason (or any synth for that matter) translate this into sound? Say I take a sawtooth osc and play the lowest note possible. I can hear the click of the onset of the cycle, but what's going on in the space between cycles?

Or should I think of it like a speaker cone. So a sawtooth moves it very quickly outward and then gradually back in. And as the frequency increases and the air vibration becomes audible, *that's* what I'm hearing/perceiving as a sawtooth? I hope the question makes sense! It's not really something I need to know...more like I just want to know!

Strictly speaking, Reason doesn't translate waveforms into sound. It's the speaker that does that, specially the cone (with help from the amp, naturally).

Simply put, the waveform represents the path the speaker cone attempts to take when you send a voltage representing the waveform to an amp and on to a magnet which moves the cone. It's bi-polar, meaning it resets in the center position, them moves back and forth to create compression/expansion of the air molecules. Just like with water, the air doesn't move, the compression wave is transmitted through the medium. Though with a sub woofer you may feels the air being pulled back and forth, it's moving the cone equal amounts in either direction (providing there's no DC offset) which is why the air is not shooting out like an air cannon or fan.

For example, a square wave sends the cone alternatively in and out (or out and in, depending on the polarity). The clicks you hear when you send a low frequency wave to a speaker is the poor cone doing it's best to follow that shape, specifically the point in the wave shape that move quickly from one extreme to another. Note that a perfect square wave is impossible to recreate with a speak because it would be required to move from one extreme to the other taking no time in between (which is of course impossible). Since everything we hear is bandwidth limited, it's not a problem that speakers cannot do this - we would not be able to hear it even if they could because we cannot hear infinite bandwidth.

When I was a kid I watched in awe as my older brother took an old woofer and sent a very strong low frequency square wave through it until it literally ripped itself from it's surround! Great lesson in why you really don't want to send slow frequencies to your speakers!

Best answer I could've hoped for, thank you! I'd kind of forgotten a lot of the super basic stuff about ya know, what sound is, and how speakers work. But now it all makes sense. And it really blows your mind when you think that Reason or any DAW can sum a bajillion synths and samplers and drum machines and basically manipulate the compression of air molecules to make all these insane sounds. Easy to take for granted just how amazing music is!

Again, thank you for the great response!