String simulation by means of digital waveguides
Julius O. Smith · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1988
Research in digital sound synthesis and reverberation at CCRMA has led to a new approach, called “waveguide synthesis,” in which acoustic traveling waves are explicitly simulated using digital delay lines. So far, the best success has been obtained for one-dimensional wave propagation, such as in woodwinds and strings. The ideal string is simulated using two delay lines, where one delay line carries the left-going traveling-wave component, and the other carries the right-going wave. Realistic strings are obtained by perturbing this lossless prototype using low-order digital filtering in cascade with the delay line. Because strings in musical instruments are close to lossless, it is highly efficient to simulate them as a weak perturbation of a lossless system. This paper reviews the fundamentals of string simulation using digital waveguides.