Digital DIY synths?

[Ben Stuyts]

On Mon, 4 Jan 1999, Harvey Devoe Thornburg wrote:

> I think this has more to do with the interface (knobs) than the
> quality of components.  It is definitely possible to get repeatable
> sounds out of analog synths with a certain level of design.

Yes, but having programmable presets on an analog diy synth would be kind of  
nice. Has anybody done anything in thar area? It shouldn't be to difficult now  
that digital pot ic's are so common.

One other thing that I'm missing from pure analog synths is the fact that you  
can only record the end product, the output wave. You cannot record your  
performance in, for example, a midi sequencer. I recently got interested again  
in analog synths, and thought I'd buy a paia fatman kit. Then I looked at the  
Waldorf Pulse, which is a DSP based analog modeling synth, where they used  
the fact that all controls are available (in and out) through midi. I thought  
that was a pretty good point. Anyway, while looking in the shops for these  
kind of instruments, I found the Yamaha An1x, which I could try out over the  
holiday. (Yep, gonna keep it!) The whole DSP thing started to make more and  
more sense to me. Not to mention being able to use it polyphonically. (sp?)

Don't get me wrong though. I'm an electronics software *and* hardware  
designer by profession (mostly embedded turf), and I like them both. I have  
looked at and enjoyed a lot of the web pages the people on this list have  
published recently.

In contrast to a few of the replies here, I do not consider the whole  
software thing more difficult or less arty than the hardware approach. I think  
it is more a state of mind thing. I think one can just as well enjoy tweaking  
a musical algorithm for sound quality (or lack of! B-)) and performance, as  
one can enjoy tweaking R's and C's.

> You might also be interested in the music-dsp list.  About 70% of
> the posts are about audio DSP stuff, the other 30% discuss a
> certain member who likes to flood the list with manifestoes and
> machine gibberish (I personally find him/her entertaining, and he/she
> has developed some interesting software).  find out more at
> http://shoko.calarts.edu/~glmrboy/musicdsp/music-dsp.html

Thank you, I've subscribed immediately. I haven't seen any messages yet though.

Best regards,
Ben