Abstract:
McIntyre et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (1983)] suggested the idea of constructing electrical musical instruments based on physical models of natural musical instruments. The first product employing such an approach has been developed, the VL1, and the synthesis technique is called ``virtual acoustic synthesis.'' Differences and comparisons between conventional music synthesizers and the virtual acoustic synthesizer will be shown. Also, problems arising in the approximation of natural musical instruments and the realization of approximated models will be described to some extent. The VL1 synthesizer also contains a sound effects section and other common features found in commercial digital musical instruments. The system is realized using specialized DSP chips. The current VL/virtual acoustic synthesizer is expensive, so reducing the cost was the next goal. A low-cost version, the VL70-m, was also released this year. There will be a small demonstration to exhibit the sound of the instrument.