Karplus-Strong Guitar Synthesizer

Creative

music synthesizer

SHOW HN2015

171points
32comments
#111of 2,565 in 2015
Top 5%of 2015 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

8 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 2 critical, out of 14 comments about the project. Thread score +0.45.

Execution: 2 for, 0 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 againstIdea: 1 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Sounds good and is impressive, including hand-written asm.js

    From 3 comments
    • Hand-written asm.js? That's impressive! https://github.com/mrahtz/javascript-karplus-strong/blob/master/karplus-strong/guitarstring_asm.js
      mmastrac on HN
    • Nice! The setting that sounded best to my ear was: Character variation 0.7 String damping 0.7 String damping variation 0.15 Pluck damping 0.5 Pluck damping variation 0.40 String…
      kyle_martin1 on HN
    • freakin' amazing! thank you so much for sharing! :D
      sova on HN
  • Interesting algorithm to experiment with

    From 1 comment
    • KS is one of the most interesting algorithms to experiment with. You can modify, multiply and recombine it with itself in a huge variety of ways, and always get new and weird…
      pierrec on HN

Objections

  • Guitar sound is far from a real acoustic or electric guitar

    From 2 comments
    • It's strange that it's so very far away from a real acoustic or electric guitar sound. Seems something like a piano is a lot easier to simulate with a few damped sine waves?
      Gravityloss on HN
    • Yeah that's what I meant. The piano there sounds rather good. Yet guitar simulations sound absolutely horrible. Or maybe it's because I don't actually play the piano... Edit:…
      Gravityloss on HN

Requests

  • Professional VST version or port

    From 2 comments
    • Is there a professional VST version of this? Or something similar? Sounds beautiful and love that it isn't sample based.
      stephenhess on HN
    • There are lots of VSTs that do about the same thing. In the xoxos VST link posted above, check out Pling. If you want the exact same algorithm in a VST plugin, you could port it…
      pierrec on HN

Questions

  • What license applies, given it is based on André Michelle's code

    From 1 comment
    • What's the license on this? I'm guessing since it's just a decompiled version of André Michelle's code, the copyright still belongs to him?
      FigBug on HN
  • Is asm.js required for Firefox performance

    From 1 comment
    • > Karplus-Strong guitar synthesizer implemented in JavaScript using asm.js and Web Audio. Are the asm.js annotations required for this to work in Firefox? I thought the primary…
      timothya on HN

Alternatives named

  • xoxos VST plugins

    From 2 comments
    • KS is one of the most interesting algorithms to experiment with. You can modify, multiply and recombine it with itself in a huge variety of ways, and always get new and weird…
      pierrec on HN
    • Dang, nearly every single DSP effect I've ever dreamed up and intended to create is right there as a free VST download. Thanks for the link to xoxos!
      nitrogen on HN
  • Pling VST

    From 1 comment
    • There are lots of VSTs that do about the same thing. In the xoxos VST link posted above, check out Pling. If you want the exact same algorithm in a VST plugin, you could port it…
      pierrec on HN
  • Pianoteq

    From 1 comment
    • I think the main advantage of Karplus-Strong is that it is (or at least was) cheaper and more simple to implement, than to for example an algorithm generating a similar sound…
      boomlinde on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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