Additive Synthesis Caveat

• Drawback: it often requires many oscillators to produce good quality sounds, and can be very computationally demanding.

• Also, many functions are useful only for a limited range of pitch and loudness. For example,
  • the timbre of a piano played at A4 is different from one played at A2;
  • the timbre of a trumpet played loudly is quite different from one played softly at the same pitch.

• It is possible however, to use some knowledge of acoustics to determine functions:
  • e.g., in specifying amplitude envelopes for each oscillator, it is useful to know that in many acoustic instruments the higher harmonics attack last and decay first.