Originally Posted by seancostello ➡️

In my opinion, physical modeling took a hit from the following:

- decreasing cost of RAM and hard drive storage, which made it possible to store larger multisamples for more realistic emulation of acoustic instruments
- the invention of "Gigasampling" (my name for when I first saw the technology). Keeping the first short section of all relevant samples in RAM, and then streaming off of the hard drive once a sample started, allowed for sample sets to get far bigger than the amount of RAM in a system
- the playability of the physical model was often directly proportional to the playability of the acoustic instrument itself. A piano physical model is easy to play - just hit a key. A violin physical model, played by a novice, will sound like a weird electronic version of an acoustic violin that is also played by a novice. Lots of screeching.
- lots of patents around physical modeling, while other synthesis techniques were more open during the late 90s.
- analog synthesis came back into style

I worked for Staccato Systems at the turn of the millennium, which was a spinoff of some of the physical modeling work at CCRMA. At one point, we reviewed several hundred patents from Yamaha, that were related to physical modeling. There was a LOT more IP ownership and territoriality around physical modeling than there was around the early days of analog synthesis modeling.

At this point, a lot of the physical modeling patents are probably expired, or are close to expiring. This might open up the path for younger developers to try their hand at making cool sounds with physical modeling, without worrying about patent infringement lawsuits.