DIY samplers

[Richard Martin]

> 
> Hi folks - 
> 
> I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction for some good 
> books that would touch on the subject of sampler design. I'm really curious 
> about how samplers control the pitch (playback rate, I know). Does the 
> processor just send out clock messages at different rates - i.e., is it a 
> matter of the firmware "waiting" between clocks, or is there usually some kind 
> of dedicated hardware that the processor can just tell what playback speed to 
> use? 
> 
> - Thanks,
> Chris
> 

I think most samplers these days use fairly sophisticated ASICs to do the
sample playback.  I don't know of any books that cover sampler design per se,
but a good starting point would be Hal Chamberlin's excellent "Musical
Applications of Microprocessors".  While somewhat dated, it covers a lot of
ground with regards to digital audio, including digital filtering, sampling,
sample rate conversion, FFT's, etc. in fairly practical terms without using
much advanced math.  If it's not still in print, you can probably find it
at the library.

There's a decent electronic music bibliography on
http://www.ircam.fr/docs/comp-mus-biblio.html

Richard Martin