do analog waveshapers exist

as in, the type where you either draw the waveshape or use some kind of math equation, or is this only digitally possible like I expect? Because it'd be interesting to hear the effect without all the upsampling nonsense. Same thing with FM synths

edit: erm ALIASING I mean

drawing the wave, you mean like a wavetable / single-cycle sample?

http://www.meldaproduction.com/plugins/product.php?id=MWaveShaper

like this

Something like this? http://www.doepfer.de/a136.htm

this looks pretty hot

the ultimate analogue waveshaper is a pencil

I'm envisioning something where you draw with a little stylus or something? To clarify I meant I don't think waveshapers that you DRAW exist outside of digital

how could analog electronics interpret a drawn line as a wave? Unless you like drew a line in graphite on paper, and then feed it through some matrix which could use the position of the line to act as a variable resistor. :p

basically no.

as i said, a pencil.

Could be done with some bézier-like things as well, you'd just need something digital to actually display the shaping function. Or a crt, lol.

i guess the fact that stuff like this would be quite elaborate & expensive & hard to debug in the analog electronic domain is one of the reasons we have interactive digital computers.

A bank of oscillators with soft sync, and a mixer with lots of inputs, could sort of do additive synthesis, which would achieve the effect you're after, but without anything like the convenience of drawing on the waveform. For anything with such a nice GUI, you really need to go digital. To be honest, you'd probably be better off implementing additive synthesis digitally too.

It's probably not what you're after, but as an interesting diversion, you may want to check out Daphne Oram's Oramics machine. Yeah, when she wasn't founding the Radiophonic Workshop, she was designing equipment like this, long before we were all born. I was lucky enough to see it at the science museum in London. It's really impressive what she did with the technology of the era, not that anyone's made anything like it since.

Oh! You could carve your chosen waveform out of a metal disc and spin it in front of a pickup at the appropriate speed, which I gather is what electric organs do. But then it's a static waveform.

But that would be just a waveform generator, not a waveshaper?

my modular has a wave shaper

it's just a vca that's not biased to class A, so it distorts the signal

there's a knob to change the biasing so you can use it as a normal vca, cant remember if it's voltage controlled

put an osc through it and the distortion changes the wave shape

guess there are different types of modules with the same name 'waveshaper'

  On 7/19/2013 at 1:10 AM, ZoeB said:

you may want to check out Daphne Oram's Oramics machine.

Analogue waveshapers do exist. Here's what the Fenix II manual says about its one:

Are these waveshaper modules essentially distortion, or something a bit more interesting?

my first thought was hard sync. Not exactly direct control visually of a waveform though

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Nov02/articles/synthsecrets1102.asp

"When two oscillators are hard-synchronised, then if the master frequency is lower than the slave frequency, changing the pitch of the slave changes the timbre of the output.

These changes are not subtle. The output is a ramp wave whenever the slave frequency is a whole number multiple of the master frequency, but at any point in between, strange-sounding variations on the slave waveform are created, and the harmonic structure of the slave is similarly affected. So if you sweep the slave frequency up or down, the output of the sync'ed oscillators changes constantly, from ramp waves through many exotic variants"

Im thinking it could be done with a sample and hold module that interprets a drawing at a high sampling rate. Im no physicist tho.

  On 7/18/2013 at 8:08 PM, mokz said:

Something like this? http://www.doepfer.de/a136.htm

I have one of these, and yes, it's basically a distortion with a little bit more control over the character of the distortion and works especially well on running pure waveforms through it. I'm not blown away by it, it's probably one of my least used modules on my doepfer setup.

record to tape, scissors.

put an osc through it then check on a scope, should be quite good on sines and triangle, basically things with fewer harmonics will get more harmonics and they wont be in the usual saw or square type of order .waveshaper... as in different wave shapes than saw or pw/square. so simple. dont think it works the same way as guitar distortion, that's more about saturating a signal, this is more about messing with the biasing. for example the positive peaks would be fine and the negative peaks would saturate. could be wrong about that part. someone want to correct this?

In theory it seems quite doable to build an actual analog waveshaper. I'll see if I can work out something, hard to explain without pics :P

  On 7/22/2013 at 3:25 PM, th555 said:

In theory it seems quite doable to build an actual analog waveshaper. I'll see if I can work out something, hard to explain without pics :P

Yeah, I was thinking about how I would go about doing this. Maybe a motor spinning a wheel and some optoelectronics. Something similar to optical sound track in movies but with a looped tape.

Or maybe a series of potentiometers that get scanned really fast to create the waveform that is then low-pass filtered to smooth it.