DAC and real musical instruments

[Chris MacDonald]

> Now to get 127 notes from the midi keyboard, you will need 127x83.3 =
> 10.58V. The DAC ref will have to be a tad higher than this to account
> for the fact the lowest DAC output is zero and not 1/4096 of Vref.
> However, 4096 steps will give a LSB step of 2.58mV, assuiming the DAC is
> 12bit accurate, but it won't be. 

I think the step size does actually work out to be correct (2.60mV). The
key is to think of what value the DAC is outputting when note 127 is
selected. For a 12 bit DAC that value would be 111111100000 in binary
which is 4064 decimal.  So step number 4064 would output 10.58V.  Divide
10.58V by 4064 steps and you get .00260V per step.