CEM3374

[Bjorn Wesen]

>Now what I would like to know is whether it is possible to reproduce
>CEM chips by some kind of feild programmable analog array, if such
>devices exist.. any pointers in this direction appreciated..

Sorry my ignorance, but what is the "desired quirk" of an analog VCO that
would keep one from using a digital dito? I mean, it's easy to make
something in an FPGA that produces bitstream modulated waveforms, then you'd
feed that into a lowpass to get the analog waveform back. It would be much
more expensive than a pre-built chip of course, but you'd loose problems
like temperature drift.

There already exist plenty of digital oscillator chips - what is the problem
with them, do they have too bad input control quantization, too limited
range, or what is the key concept you want to capture with an analog one?
The fact that the control voltage is analog is a slight complication of
course, but assuming that can be digitized with enough precision.

To answer your question, yes, there are programmable analog "arrays" - they
are of course not as densely packed as their digital ditos but they provide
some kind of programmability - I have never laid my hands on them though.
Don't expect them to be able to "reproduce" an existing analog device - you
could maybe make something similar though.

>There is a parallel between chip designers and musicians, I feel.

Analog silicon design is really 100 times more difficult than digital
design. Anybody with some digital understanding can grasp the VLSI design
concepts, but analog design requires so much more knowledge and experience,
above all. If it hadn't been that way, we'd have much more modern synths
using integrated analog electronics instead of just a DSP (which is far more
simplier).

/Bjorn