An FM tone generator is a synthesizer that allows flexible sound programming through the configuration of FM voice parameters. An FM tone generator, which enables the production of variations using a small amount of FM voice parameter, is the most suitable for hand-held portable devices with restricted data capacity.
The MA series sound chips provides a high quality FM tone generator, as such it is capable of producing unlimited variety of sounds, from acoustic instruments to synthetic tones and sound effects.

Fine-tuning to each song is the key to produce high-quality sound. It is one of advantages of FM tone generation compared to PCM tone generation, which simply reproduce pre-recorded sounds that cannot be fine-tuned or adjusted.

Since hand-held portable devices are normally carried in a bag or pocket, the sounds such as ring tones should be well noticeable and clearly audible. It becomes meaningless if the ring tone is not noticeable enough for a user to recogniz incoming calls.

FM tone generator is the most suitable for ring tone or alarm, because it is capable of generating clear, noticeable , harmonically rich sounds with high-frequency.
A lower-power amplifier and a small speaker are normally equipped with a hand-held portable device. They are not good at reproducing mid- to low-range frequency sounds, and easily overloaded to cause distortion at this frequency range. The FM tone generator with capability to synthesize waveforms enable experienced sound programmers to control the range of generated harmonics. This results in well-balanced sound-volume and tone quality optimized for each playback system.

Since FM tone generator synthesizes waveforms in real time, it can produce dynamic, expressive sounds with small data.
Sample tunes Sound Demo011, Sound Demo012, and Sound Demo013 feature a low-range synthesizer sound changing over two bars, and a sequence that is being repeated and varying in brightness. The particular synthesizer sounds widely used in retro techno-type music are used.
FM tone generator is also good at simulating the basic instruments of pop music. Sample tunes Sound Demo014 and Sound Demo015 feature the bright instrument sounds that are a specialty of FM tone generator. You would be surprised to those FM favorites such as electric piano, bass, marimba (with a realistic attack), and synth-lead coming froma tiny speaker of small hand-held portable device.

Not only using existing timbres, but also creating FM timbres shall make sound quality so much superior. You may not recognize sound coming from tiny cellular phone. In the next chapter in this series, let us introduce various techniques to achieve even higher quality.