Does ring modulation occur naturally in the real world?

Lodger

Lodger

Certified Funk Master
hey, all-

i was just wondering if any of you knew whether or not ring modulation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. as im getting more into sound synthesis, im noticing in emulating instruments like the conga that RM seems to be the magic ingredient. at any rate, thanks.

-lodger
 
I'm not exactly sure. But it seems that many metallic drum sounds and mechanical sounds made by synthesizers require ringmodulation to sound as they would if they were made by the actual device they were emulating. If you look at it, it really does occur naturally in the natural world. Different people may have other opinions though.
 
I think I have to agree with that explanation.
There are also very bizarre oddities in nature. Did you know that the "quaaaack" sound of a duck NEVER gives delay in nature ? Only a sampled sound with artificial delay will give a delayed duck sound !!
 
the duck thing is true, i saw something about it on TV once
 
ring modulation does occur, like if you had a drummer in a huge metal tube, a good deal of the harmonics would cancel out, and you would get a few that "ring" like that. as far as RM with the frequency of the "ring" itself modulating, I've never heard that. And, It would be hard to think of an analogue of RM where the ring is below about 50 hz.

Comb filtering (delay under ~15ms, with a high feedback) is an essential part of programming fake guitars! that's one that just slays me. in essence, you make a tone where you envelope all except the very beginning, and then make a crazy set of feedback loops! you actually don't even need a signal generator, just the envelope to create a "click"
 
well, to my understanding, ring modulation is simply the phrase used to discribe the multiplication of 2 soundwaves. perhaps a metal tube with a soundsource inside would cause the waves to multiply
 
It strikes me as odd that actual multiplication could occur at all in the physical world -- When you multiply any measurable physical quantity by another measurable physical quantity, the result has an entirely new set of units (ie. Force * Distance, as measured in newtons * meters, produces measurements in units of newton-meters).
 
Danny: so then if you multiplied sound waves, you'd get a unit of Hz^2 or (1/s)^2...
what would that be? anything specific? or just Hz^2?

or wait... would it be some kind of acceleration?

a is m/(s^2) then divide by m and you'd get 1/(s^2) which is equal to (1/s)^2

so if you take the length of a sound wave and X by the frequency... I guess you'd get the speed it's traveling at. which I suppose would be the constant speed of sound... so that would make the length of a sound wave indirectly perportional to the frequency.

then you if you multiply sound waves, would they create an accelleration? hmmm... it seems that way from the units
man, I'm such a geek
 
actually, there is something thing that occurs naturally with bell like sounds.

If you play two tones at once, another lower tone (which is equal to the high frequency minus the low frequency) occurs.

At first when I heard this I thought it might be some sort of naturally occurring frequency modulation... like real natural FM synthesis. But I asked one of my professors and it's what is known as a Tartini tone. It occurs more often with bell like sounds, but from what I understand it can occur with any type of waveform.
and it happens most often when there's an interval of a 4th. You can look up more info about it in yahoo (type in "Tartini tone").
I once tried to emulate this digitally, but had no luck.
 
That's addition/subtraction -- The units would stay the same. I'll look up that bit about the Tartini tone, though.

Don't try to think about the specifics of it... I was just thinking along the lines of the general principle in physics that the only time measurements with dimension multiply are with regards to measurements with different dimensions.
 
DannyGantastic said:
Don't try to think about the specifics of it...
Click to expand...

you're talking to the wrong man... I'm all about specifics.
Especially with this kind of stuff
 
hey that about tartini tone isnt it just what you get when you add the vector tangents of the to waves...so you get a something that looks like the higher frequency wave riding on the lower freq wave....and they are enveloped by a third wave what looks like a standing wave at the freuquency of the difference ......isnt it almost the same as the pulsing of out of tune guitar strings.......
 
duck_santa_hat_med.jpg
 
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