[OSC_dev] OSC replacement for MIDI

[Jeff Glatt]

> not every sound is periodic,  and even many pitched tones are not periodic
> (bells are a good example).

I'm not talking about "periodic". I'm talking about a frequency or period. 
It's
what electronic circuits such as an oscillator need to know in order to 
produce
sound, or what some circuitry feeding a DAC digital audio samples needs to
know in order to play the waveform at the correct rate.

It doesn't matter whether the frequency changes, for example controlled by 
an
LFO (at its own, typically much lower freq). It doesn't matter if you have
a whole bunch of oscillators, each running at a different frequency, summed
together (ie, to produce harmonics, or even white noise) or whatever. Every
sound generator requires at least one frequency (or period. Most hardware is
designed to use the period). Maybe there is some place in the universe were
sound occurs without frequencies. But not here on earth.

> And even if you consider only the lowest sinusoidal
> component, it may not have the same frequency as the fundamental of
> another sound with the same perceived pitch.

Synths don't "perceive pitch". They say "what frequency (or period) do you
want me to run this oscillator at, or interpolate and feed digital audio 
samples
to this DAC at?". They can't produce _any_ sound until you give them that
frequency or period. Nothing. Nada. No sound. <Chirp, chirp -- crickets>

We're not talking about humans. We're talking about machines. Perceptions
don't matter. Just the frequencies (or periods).