Shephard-generator -

[Barry Klein]

 Ar> Csound is cool - but you wait 5sec to 5hours to hear results of your 
 Ar> work, whereas tweaking a synth is immediate. 

Not any more!  I went to the AES show in LA last weekend and for me, that
was the neatest thing there - Analog Devices had Csound running in 
realtime on a plug-in card for the pc (using their SHARK DSP).  The
guys that originated Csound were there as was a Berkely professor
demonstrating it with his and a female singer's voice.  It could harmonize
as well as CORRECT pitch in realtime.  The ultimate Karioke machine if
you are into that....  It made some of the same kinds of vocoding sounds I
heard from the Kyma down the isles.  They intend to come up with a develope-
ment platform for students and OEM's next year.

Another neat thing was a 5 channel VCA chip from Analog Devices that
is optimised for a surround system.  It's all under a serial digital
control interface.

THAT was there with VCA chips etc. for mixers and compressor/limiters
etc. but they have a 100 piece minimum order.

I sat with the Kyma for over an hour Sunday.  Fun to experiment but
a little tedious to program.  With a little more work on the 
user interface I think it would do better in the marketplace.  It
was kinda funny when they had some vocoder patch set up and I suggested
holding the microphone up to the speaker while they talked.....  They
immediately said "oh no, it will feedback and squeal.... but they tried
it and it sounded really cool.  It added some life to something that
was supposed to be "mathematically correct".  Thing is guys, people
buy that box ($5K+) to make new sounds.  Be wierd with your patches and
add the unexpected and get same or better results for less.

Roland had a DSP-based voice translator box that was fun.  One slidepot
for pitch, one for resonance, one for mix, and one for reverb.  Boy, the
kids could have fun with that all nite!  I wanted one just to make messages
for my answering machine. ($399)

That show was fun.  I've been investigating I/O cards for digital audio
and SPDIF etc. and the programs that go with/for them.  SAW+ cut off
their dealers and sells direct for $499.  It looks vastly superior to
my CAP.  But you need a Pentium 133 or 200 to do all the bells and
whistles.  I could say more but I'm venturing outside of this list's
subject matter.

klein_b at a1.wdc.com





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