About The Sy99: Afm And Awm Voices - Yamaha SY99 Owner's Manual

About the SY99: AFM and AWM voices

The SY99 produces sound using two proprietary Yamaha technologies; Advanced Frequency Modulation
(AFM) synthesis and Advanced Wave Memory 2 (AWM2). A special Drum Voice assigns a different AWM
percussion sound to each note of the keyboard.
AFM — Advanced
Frequency Modulation
AWM2 — Advanced
Wave Memory 2
A voice consists of one,
two, or four Elements
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Frequency Modulation (FM) is a patented Yamaha technology for producing
complex and controllable musical sounds, and was first made famous by the DX7
synthesizer. The SY99's Advanced FM (AFM) takes FM synthesis to new
levels of realism, expression, and programmability.
Each of the six FM operators in the SY99 can use one of 16 different wave-
forms, and be connected to each other in 45 basic algorithms (patterns). In addi-
tion, each operator has two inputs which can be modulated by feedback from any
other operator, from a noise generator, or from an AWM sample. Compared to
previous FM instruments, many parameters have a wider range of control, and
the SY99 envelope generators have six segments with looping.
AFM can produce sounds that change dramatically in response to your
playing, allowing a wide range of expressiveness.
Advanced Wave Memory 2 (AWM2) is a patented Yamaha technology for
storing and reproducing digital sound. The SY99 contains 4 Mwords (8 Mbytes)
of AWM samples in Read Only Memory (ROM), including piano, strings, choir,
and percussive sounds among many others. Optional cards can be inserted into
the front panel WAVEFORM slot to make additional sounds available. The sounds
are sampled in 16-bit linear format with a maximum sampling frequency
of 48 kHz.
In addition to the AWM samples in ROM and in optional WAVEFORM cards,
you can load samples into the SY99 from any sampler that supports the MIDI
sample dump standard, or from a disk created by the Yamaha TX16W sampler.
These samples can be assigned across the keyboard to create a waveform,
which can then be used in the same way as preset or card waveform data.
AWM sounds are high-quality digital recordings of actual instruments.
Each sound that you have been playing from the SY99's keyboard is defined as
a voice, and consists of one, two, or four elements. (The drum voice explained
below is a special case.) Each of these elements is actually the equivalent of an
independent synthesizer; either AFM or AWM.
An element can be set to produce sound for only a specific range of the key-
board, or for a specific range of velocities. This allows you to create a voice
which produces different sounds for different ranges of the keyboard, or for loudly
or softly played notes.