5 Core Groups of CDP Sound Transformation Software

The CDP Release 4 System has at its core 5 groups of functions which focus on shaping sonic material in every conceivable way, with great attention to detail, flexibility in parameter options, and great scope for time-varying changes. Release 4 Win 9x & above is pre-requisite for the new PC graphic software options.

1. CDP-FOCUS – focusing (highlighting spectral features) and defocusing (blurring) of sonic material – great for ambient effects. This package also contains powerful and highly configurable resonant filter banks, with time-varying 'Q' (filter frequency width) and frequency along with a wide range of eq and 'brick-wall filters'.



2. CDP-MORPH – not only morphs, but also transitions between analysis windows selected from the same or different files, as well as transitions between two analysis files. Also contains formant (spectral envelope) extraction and placement.



3. CDP-PITCH – pitch manipulation which includes time-varying transposition, tuning spectra to chords, and shifting frequency bands inharmonically, i.e., many ways to work with pitch so as to be able to integrate pitched and complex sonic material.



4. CDP-TEXTURE – for creating textures as sparse or as dense as you want, with the ability to place the sound events securely on defined harmonic lattices. Each function has 20+ parameters, most of which are time-varying – original and powerful.



5. CDP-X – for those wild flights of imagination, those sounds on the border of respectability. Features a large set of distortion functions based on the manipulation of 'pseudo-wavecycles': Trevor Wishart's unique waveset distortion techniques. Also contains a powerful set of tools for reorganising the 'grains' in grainy sounds and otherwise jumbling sounds by various segmentation techniques.

The 90+ routines for manipulating spectral analysis data are exclusive to CDP, developed by Trevor Wishart from work initiated at IRCAM and available on all the computer platforms we support. They are based on analysis files created by the phase vocoder, which converts a soundfile into a series of analysis 'frames' containing amplitude and frequency data, which can then be manipulated independently. Most parameters can be time-varying.

In the listing of the various functions, watch for the following features: time-stretching ... pitch shifting (with formant preservation) ... pitch tracking and modulation ... spectral enhancement and filtering ... cross-synthesis and timbral interpolation ... spectral stretching and shifting - especially effective on vocal sounds.

Last updated: 9 September 2002