Based on physical models of musical instruments and of the human voice
, a new generation of sound synthesizers is born: virtual instruments.
The models used for wind instruments are simple feedback loops in whi
ch a nonlinear sound source drives a linear filter representing the pi
pe of the instrument. While very rewarding musical sounds have been ob
tained with these models, it has become obvious that some essential ph
enomena escape such a description. In particular the brightness of the
sound generated by trombones is expected to be due to the essential n
onlinearity of the wave propagation in the pipe. At fortissimo levels
this leads to shock wave formation observed in our experiments both fr
om pressure measurements and flow visualization. A modest modification
of the physical model could already take this phenomenon into account
. The key idea is that the nonlinear effect is essential for the trans
fer of sound from the source toward the listener, but can be ignored i
n a model of the generation of the pipe oscillations. (C) 1996 Acousti
cal Society of America.