cymbalsim

About

A plate or cymbal is described by a short MATLAB-syntax script (material, outline, thickness, an optional profile, the stand, and the decay times), and a drumstick strike on it is simulated in one of two ways. The linear model computes the modes of the plate once per design and synthesizes the sound from them in about a second, on the CPU. The full model steps the geometrically nonlinear (von Karman) plate equations on the GPU through WebGPU, which takes about a minute per second of sound but captures the pitch glide and the wash of a hard hit. Both use the same grid, so the linear sound is the small-amplitude limit of the full one. The model and the numerical method are described in THEORY.md in the repository, and the Tutorial button above opens a guided tour of the physics and the mathematics, with the application as the laboratory.

Design script

Modes