subtractive synthesis


subtractive synthesis

[səb‚trak·tiv ′sin·thə·səs] (engineering acoustics) A method of synthesizing musical tones, in which an electronic circuit produces a standard waveform (such as a sawtooth wave), which contains a very large number of harmonics at known relative amplitudes, and this circuit is followed by a variety of electric or electronic filters to convert the basic tone signals into the desired musical waveforms.