1. First steps in Reaktor Core - Native Instruments

left which we cannot see from the outside:
Another reason for keeping the Solid property on is that with it off, in some
cases the macro’s internal operation could change once it’s put in the feedback
path. So please do yourself a favor and turn the property off only if you build
macros which are meant to resolve feedback. There won’t be many.
Now let’s return to the Z^-1 module. Because the Solid property is turned
off for this macro, the boundary of this macro is completely transparent for
feedback resolution. Thus the Z^-1 macro is not really treated as a built-in
module and is capable of resolving feedback in the way described earlier in
this text.
5.5. Denormal values
The signal values in the structures that we have been building in the previous
sections are represented inside the computer by a binary data type called
floating point numbers or floats for short. Floats are an efficient representation
for a wide range of values.
The term floating point numbers does not exactly specify how the numbers
are represented. It just describes the approach taken to represent them, still
leaving lots of freedom for implementation details.
The CPUs of today’s personal computer use the IEEE floating point standard.
This standard defines exactly how the floating point numbers should
be represented and what should be the results of operations on them (for
example, how to handle limited precision issues, and so on.) In particular,
this standard says that, for a group of particularly small floating point values,
which because of limited floating point precision cannot be represented in
the normal way, a special representation form is to be used. This other form
is called “denormal” representation.
Denormal representation for 32 bit float values is used roughly in the
range from 10 -38 to 10 -45 and from -10 -38 to -10 -45 . Values less than 10 -45
in absolute magnitude cannot be represented at all and are considered
to be zero.
Because their representation is somewhat different from that of normal numbers,
some CPUs have certain problems with handling these numbers. In
particular, operations on these numbers can be performed much much more
slowly (as much as 10 times or more) on some processors.
REAKTOR CORE – 97