Sound Concept : Yamaha Synthesizer Virtually Re-Creates Music

Yamaha Corp. of America plans to introduce two new product lines today that it says highlight its growing expertise in blending music and computer wizardry.

The more innovative product to be introduced by the company is a synthesizer for music aficionados that uses virtual acoustics, or complex mathematical computer models, to simulate and reproduce sound.

The technology, the company says, brings electronic sound one step closer to the company’s ultimate goal: creating computer-generated audio that cannot be distinguished from acoustic sounds.

The VL1 synthesizer can re-create the acoustics of woodwind instruments far more accurately than previous methods for electronically generating sound, company officials said. It can reproduce sounds ranging from the sour notes of a Scottish bagpipe to the screeching feedback of a rock star playing a guitar next to an amplifier.

“It’s a great leap forward compared to what is used now,” said Scott Plunkett, a keyboardist for pop star Don Henley. “It is wonderfully expressive, strangely acoustic for a synthesizer.”

The VL1 synthesizer is the first product of many that will use the patented technology, said Ron Raup, senior vice president of Yamaha of America. By year’s end, the VL1 will be sold in musical instruments stores for about $7,000, the company said.

Development of the virtual acoustics technology started in 1987, when Yamaha engineers began to apply the science of computer modeling--the use of complex mathematics to simulate realistic situations such as the flight characteristics of aircraft--to the characteristics of sound.

By detailing each nuance of a wind instrument from its shape to the pressure applied when someone blows into it, the Yamaha developers were able to construct a complex computer program to simulate the performance of a wide variety of instruments. This technique of generating sound offers a leap over previous technologies, such as the 1950s-era technology known as sampling.

In sampling, a raw sound bite from an instrument is captured and encoded in a computer chip’s memory and reproduced.

Together with frequency modulation, or FM, sampling techniques form the core of conventional electronic sound in everything from doorbells to synthesizers. Sound nuances such as staccato (short, sharp tones) or legato (smooth, blended sounds) often can’t be distinguished with such technology.

But the VL1 is more like capturing a motion picture of sound, something that changes depending on how it’s played, Raup said. Yamaha’s advances in computer modeling and computer processing power are responsible for its creation, he said.

“It’s like the difference from paging through a photo album and watching a full motion video reproduction,” said Charles Feilding, manager of Yamaha’s sound design office, a laboratory in Buena Park. “The technology was mature before this opened up. Now I can go home at night and dream up something never heard before.”

Feilding said that since mathematics governs the machine, it can be used to create theoretical sounds that can’t be produced with ordinary instruments. For instance, it can produce sound from the combination of the reed of a flute with the body of an oboe.

The virtual acoustic synthesizer, harder to play than a conventional synthesizer, is aimed at music professionals, such as producers of movie scores, who will be better able to appreciate its nuances.

Yamaha of America is a subsidiary of Japan-based Yamaha Corp., which was best known in the past as a maker of motorcycles and pianos, keyboards and other musical equipment. But blending computer wizardry with music is becoming a hallmark of the firm.

“If you look at our business, we’re not just in musical instruments,” Raup said. “We’re in the creation and re-creation of sound. We’re positioned to be the voice of the computer industry.”

The second new product represents Yamaha’s move into one of the computer industry’s fastest growing markets. The company is preparing to introduce its first add-on circuit board, known as a sound card, that delivers high-quality sound for personal computers. The company already supplies millions of chips to companies that make such cards.

Raup said the company is considering launching a Yamaha-brand sound card business next April, but he said the company will target the market’s high end to avoid directly competing with its sound chip customers.

Though he is eagerly awaiting the day when electronic sound can perfectly duplicate acoustic or natural sounds, Feilding acknowledges that electronic sound won’t replace acoustic anytime soon.

“Acoustic instruments have been developed over thousands of years, and we’ve been developing electronic sound for 30 years,” he said. “I finally feel like we’re catching up.”