> Can there be defined general guidelines or rules-of-thumb to the
synthesis 
> of already known sounds?
> If I have a wav file of the sound I want to reach, I can use a
HETRO/adsyn 
> combination to recreate it in the context of a csound instr, but its sort
of 
> like cheating, if you know what I mean. Cant those utilities be used to 
> retrieve info from the soundwave itself, that would allow us to recreate
it 
> using just sound generation/shaping opcodes?
> 
> As a little parentesis, what really is the use of PVANAL/pvoc? Sure I get

> interesting sounds from it, but I have no control over results...


Recreating real-world recorded sounds by artificial shaping a
synthgenerated sound is
impossible.......Because the real world sounds are mostly so much
influenced by "neighbouring"
sounds, or at least contains extremely subtle and complex variations as
well on amplitude and pitch
level, that it would be a totally absurd task recreating them using
synthetic shaping......

hetro and pvoc are there to simplify the tasks, but it's kind of cheating
indeed....

David