based on coil invented by Tesla this synth makes all modern synths look like a bounch of plastic toys. This IS the hardware synth. It needs no amplifier, loudspeakers nor any DSP processing
enjoy
"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception"
Albert Einstein, speaking about his theory of relativity
ansolas
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 15, 2007 13:31
hehe, actually its not the tesla coil that is the synth. What happens here is that the coil is being brought to its resonance frequency due to an oscillator. This results in a carrier frequency of several kHz. the carrier frequency is then amplitude modulated with the sound. Thus one could say the Tesla coil is the speaker (and it is, as plasma speaker systems actually work quite similar). The cool thing about this speaker is that it has 0 mass in its "driver" (the driver is just hot air being expanded super fast by the plasma of the lightning)thus having no inertia and reproducing even the steepest of all transients. This is one of the reasons why plasma speakers are being used for really high frequency content most of the time. But they are also quite esoteric, as the ionized air results into a huge ozone output, too .
The signal itsself can be anything ... any synth, cd player, C64...
I believe that such toys are still hand made. Actually I know a bit about electronics (from high school) and Tesla coil is very simple to construct (compared with oscillator based synthesizer). Beside tesla coil you need zero crossing detector for calculating input sound to frequency and some form of ultra fast switch that will use signal from zero crossing detector to switch coil on and off. In fact coil has a stable resonance and tones are defined by switching coil on and off. Almost like a hybrid between granular synthesis and thunderstorm "It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception"
Albert Einstein, speaking about his theory of relativity
thats psychedelic 
