Sound Synthesis and Sampling, 2nd Edition

9  The future of synthesis

In some ways, the development of sound synthesis is nearly complete. The technology has now reached the point where the quality of the sounds that can be produced is close to the physical limits of the human ear. Improvements still need to be made to the details of the synthesis techniques, particularly to the parameters that are used to control synthesis: the same problem mentioned in the context of resynthesis. Finding viable alternatives to the widely accepted source-modifier model could be one area where there is scope for innovation, but producing intuitive and appropriate control parameters for synthesis techniques like frequency modulation (FM) or granular synthesis is not a simple challenge.

But the major area ...