Ryan wrote:
I'm looking to find out more about writing some software that will use
traditional classical instruments to emulate "natural" or "non musical
sounds." The software will perform some type of analyses on an audio
file, I imagine FFT would be used at some point, but the problem with
FFT is that it only tells you what "perfect" or pure sine wave based
frequencies are present in a sound.

No. ANY arbitrary waveform can be decomposed down to sine waves. When you
put the sines back together, you can reconstitute the original wave. This is
the WHOLE POINT of the Fourier series. The time domain and frequency domain
representations of the waveform are equivalent and you can convert from one
to the other and back with impunity.

Besides the flute, not much else
in an orchestra has anything close to a sine wave output. After this
analysis is done, the software will look through a library of sounds
made by traditional instruments. These sounds will include every
noise and playing style every traditional instrument can produce. The
software will then juggle the sounds around at various dynamic levels
in various rhythms and etc until it comes up with the closest
combination to the original sound.

Why use a computer for this anyway? George Gershwin did a perfectly good
job of this by ear.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."