Wavetable Synthesis Strategies for Mobile Devices*

Table look-up (or fixed-wavetable) music synthesis has recently received new interest in the context of mobile applications such as personalized ring tones and pager notification signals: the market for consumers purchasing polyphonic ring tones exceeded US $4 billion worldwide in 2004. Table look-up (or fixed-wavetable) synthesis methods have been widely used for many years in music synthesizers. The limited amount of storage and transmission bandwidth available in such mobile devices makes the use of compressed synthesizer data desirable. The important considerations for implementing a wavetable music synthesizer in a small portable device are described. In particular, an efficient compression/decompression method for the synthesizer data is used in order to reduce the size of the synthesizer data bank with good fidelity while still maintaining the loop continuity constraints necessary for looped wavetable synthesis.