Alright, came upon this through a very complicated method of trying to modify the osc~ object in one of the modulation samples with the output of an array. Then I accidentally connected the recorded array of a siren sound directly into the right input of the *~ of the ring modulation and it actually worked, but is really fuzzy. Has anyone done this where it is more clear so that you get a sound file modifying the adc~ information?

adc~ readsf~(or tabread~)
| /
*~
dac~

It is either really simple...completely impossible...or just a really bad idea, I think.

Ring modulation is kind of an "on and off" thing; there isn't really a depth control to it. And since you're probably dealing with a lot of partials in the [adc~] (and probably the [readsf~] or [tabread~]), it's going to be nasty because each partial will produce sidebands. You can try crossfading between the original sound and the modulated one to tone down the effect. Or try slowing down the modulation audio to reduce the spread of the sidebands.

I had thought of slowing down. If I smoothed out the waves in a sound file using something like sound forge so that they had a basic shape would that work? I'll try that as well...weekend project.

Is there a better way to go about something like this? I was thinking that it would be cool to get the hint of like a power tool recorded sound when running an instrument into pd. I see the crossfading possibility, but I wanted something that kind of works like the modulation so that I could easily transform it to a weird vocal patch without adjusting all of the settings all of the time.

@kalignos said:

I had thought of slowing down. If I smoothed out the waves in a sound file using something like sound forge so that they had a basic shape would that work? I'll try that as well...weekend project.

A lowpass filter should be able to do this. And, yeah, since you'll basically be getting rid of frequencies, it should make it less "fuzzy." The higher frequencies probably are the ones that do the most damage, anyway, because they result in sidebands that are spread farther out. Some of those are likely to get aliased as well.

Is there a better way to go about something like this? I was thinking that it would be cool to get the hint of like a power tool recorded sound when running an instrument into pd. I see the crossfading possibility, but I wanted something that kind of works like the modulation so that I could easily transform it to a weird vocal patch without adjusting all of the settings all of the time.

Hmm...I'm not sure I entirely now what you mean.

I'm not we'll versed in AM synthesis, but if you're still trying to maintain some semblance of the carrier sound, you could try it. AM is similar to ring modulation in that it produces the same sidebands. But with AM, you also keep the original carrier's frequencies, whereas with ring mod they disappear. All you have to do is take the modulator and make it unipolar positive (i.e., in the range of 0-1 instead of -1 - 1):

[adc~] [tabread~] (or whatever)
| |
| [+~ 1]
| |
| [*~ .5]
| /
| /
| /
[*~ ]

Crossfading between the original and this will should sound like a wet/dry mix of the sidebands.

Of course, now that I think about, just independently mixing the ring mod with the original instead of crossfading might work just as well.