Understanding FM #2 - The magic of sidebands and the origin of all those cool sounds

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  • čas přidán 24. 06. 2024
  • If you want to start at the beginning of the series, there's a playlist you can follow: • Understanding Frequenc...
    Now we get to the meat of FM, where all those lovely rich sounds come from...and also those clangorous, in harmonic sounds. It all starts with the generation of sideband frequencies coming out of the modulation of frequency.
    A lot of what we're going to talk about from here on is going to involve understanding how harmonics come together to create more interesting sounds. If that's new ground for you, check out this video first: • Oscillators, harmonics...
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Komentáře • 38

  • @jonathanyoung6397
    @jonathanyoung6397 Před dnem +2

    Ermmm… well this was pretty great. Am I actually, finally going to understand how FM works by the end of this series? Fantastic work here, thank you so much, I’m devouring these episodes!

  • @lorddulort
    @lorddulort Před 3 dny +2

    THANKS A LOT! there's so much misinformation at youtube than i feel i need a fresh start to actually understand whats fm

  • @stogoshuffle
    @stogoshuffle Před 6 dny +10

    I've known for a while that FM sounds 'nicer' when you use integer divisions of the carrier frequency for the modulating frequency, but that makes a lot more sense now that I know about the sidebands.

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 6 dny

      @stogoshuffle - Exactly! Not the next video but the one after, I'll be digging into those ratios, there's some neat stuff going on in there.

  • @tychoclavius4818
    @tychoclavius4818 Před 6 dny +13

    I'm not a fan of videos with spoken tekst and different written text at the same time, but I was a brave little boy and managed it. Thanks for the excellent visuals and explanation!

  • @potaxpotax
    @potaxpotax Před 3 dny +4

    By far the best FM video i've seen in ages. High five.

  • @rockrobertson5776
    @rockrobertson5776 Před 4 dny +1

    +10 for the shot of the CX5M, my first FM synth. Still have it with the big keyboard.

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 4 dny

      @rockrobertson5776 - That keyboard was surprisingly decent! Cool that you still have yours. It deserves a video all it's own, I wonder if I can find one locally...

  • @dillipphunbar7924
    @dillipphunbar7924 Před 6 dny +4

    Really enjoying these. I've been testing these examples using a VCO2600 as carrier (utilizing it's fm inputs) and the two independent outputs of a cre8audio chipz.

  • @shey87
    @shey87 Před 6 dny +6

    Mind blown! Please keep them coming!

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 6 dny +1

      @shey87 - IKR? Video #3 should be out within 48 hours I think.

  • @danielfernandes1010
    @danielfernandes1010 Před 2 dny +1

    Such a valuable explanation!

  • @stephankreidl1999
    @stephankreidl1999 Před 4 dny

    Great series! The minimalist design works really well here and the pace is just right.
    Agree with tychoclavius, that when what is written is different to the spoken, my brain goes brrrr.
    Another thing that came to mind, perhaps you could additionally display the oscillation below the frequency analyzer or on another "slide".

  • @modalmixture
    @modalmixture Před 4 dny +2

    Looking at how the sidebands are symmetric, it just occurred to me that the ones to the left of the carrier are actually undertones, and that this must be one (just one) of the reasons FM timbres often sound inharmonic.

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 4 dny +1

      @modalmixture - Ah! We're going to get there! You're right, they are undertones, but in video #4 I think, you'll see something cool where actually the undertone becomes the fundamental for a new 'virtual tone'. But that only works when the carrier & modulator frequency are in a nice ratio to each other. When they aren't? Inharmonic city.
      Glad you're enjoying the series. #3 should be out on Friday morning I think.

  • @GillamtheGreatest
    @GillamtheGreatest Před 5 dny +1

    really enjoying this so far. good call on breaking it into shorter videos. even short videos you have high information density with this topic so it gives people who are following along food break points to kinda onboard each set of concepts

  • @ZeroesandOnes
    @ZeroesandOnes Před 4 dny +4

    This is the best explanation I've ever seen. Great job

  • @Perceptes
    @Perceptes Před 6 dny +4

    These are so valuable! I'm learning a lot. You really can't overstate the value of an oscilloscope. Seeing what's happening visually makes all the difference.
    I do agree with the other commenter about text on the screen that doesn't match what you're saying. Some great advice I heard a while back about presentations is not to make the audience read and listen at the same time, cause they can't do both. What I do now is make each slide either a picture or a single word, or at least as few words as possible, specifically avoiding sentences.

  • @sunflr-music7697
    @sunflr-music7697 Před 5 dny +2

    You are one of the best teachers on CZcams. Thanks!!

  • @ValirAmaril
    @ValirAmaril Před 4 dny +1

    clangorous ❤

  • @zebarzebra
    @zebarzebra Před 5 dny +1

    WTF... mate this gold - thank you soo much - instant subscribe.
    By the way the opsix is a great cheap tool to show FM and so on.

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 4 dny

      @zebarzebra - Thank you so much! I think I need to check out the Opsix.

  • @argumentchannel
    @argumentchannel Před 4 dny +1

    you mentioned "DX", they are actually PM synthesis not having any sidebands below the route and the same go's for most digital FM synths. they all should be called PM synths.

  • @Act1v1st
    @Act1v1st Před 3 dny +1

    Very nice series, thank you for your effort! I'm very curious though, what's the story with the carrier frequency dropping & disappearing? Is there another video perhaps about this? Alternatively I'd appreciate if you could share any relevant reading material about that. Thanks again!

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 3 dny +1

      @Act1v1st - Yes! That is really interesting. I will be digging into this, but it's a couple videos out still. In the mean time, you can check out Bessel functions -- they basically describe how the sideband levels evolve over time. Also, there's an element of destructive interference that happens when those sidebands go down below zero and "reflect" back over sidebands that are already there. I'll start discussing that last one just briefly in the video that should be out tomorrow morning. The details get involved though, so it's going to take just a bit to get everything lined up for it.

  • @Bent6
    @Bent6 Před 3 dny +1

    First of all, beautiful video! This may well be the clearest explanation of FM creating sidebands I’ve seen. I tried to work through Bristow’s text back in the 80s but didn’t have the math depth to really get the Bessel functions. It took a broadcasting tech class in college for me to really get it.
    What are you using to display the sidebands? Looks great!

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 3 dny +1

      @Bent6 - Thank you so much! Actually, the sideband spectrum display - along with a lot of the waveform displays, etc. - are all animations that I've done myself, in Python and Javascript.

    • @Bent6
      @Bent6 Před 3 dny +1

      @@SoundVoltageI’m even more impressed knowing you have programming/graphics chops too! Nice work!

  • @honeysucklecat
    @honeysucklecat Před 2 dny

    Why does CZcams always always always push pt2 instead of pt1?

  • @nilskozstum8256
    @nilskozstum8256 Před 2 dny

    Great video, this cleared things up a lot for me. Just out of curiosity, is that spectrum display reacting to the audio from your modular or is it an animation? I noticed that none of my analog modules are capable of producing a sine wave as pure as shown in the graph, even the self-oscillating filters have a few higher harmonics at around -60 db, which makes it a bit more difficult to see what's going on with the side bands.

    • @SoundVoltage
      @SoundVoltage  Před 2 dny +1

      @nilskozstum8256 - It is being generated by the audio coming out of the modular rig, but since I wrote the code, I get to make decisions about how big frequency spikes have to be before I include them in the animation. Generally speaking though, I'm not intentionally cutting anything out. The only sine wave I've really a real extra frequency component in is the Nonlinear Circuits CEM 3340, and in that case you can distinctly see a little sharp peak right at the apex of the waveform. I'll have to check things again though.

    • @nilskozstum8256
      @nilskozstum8256 Před 2 dny

      @@SoundVoltage thanks for clearing that up! I guess it's down to how the sine is generated, my main oscillator that I use for FM is the Instruo Cs-L, where one of the oscillators is a triangle core and the other a saw core, which then get filtered/sent through comparators to generate the other waveforms. You can clearly see on the spectrum that the same harmonics that you get in the core waveform are still present, just much more toned down. I don't mind this at all, I love the sound of these oscillators. I was expecting the filters to be cleaner then they are though. Cleanest sine I could get from MI Plaits, unsurprisingly digital will get you the most mathematically pure sine.

  • @inevitablecraftslab
    @inevitablecraftslab Před 4 dny

    tbh i don't think I would have understand it if I didn't already before I saw the video.
    The text to speech and different information on the screen makes it very confusing even when you know what's going on.