Nord Micro Modular + Patchable modular idea.

[Cameron Zwarich]

At 09:28 AM 6/20/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Jeff,
>
>
>> Hello, I am a silent appreciator of synth-diy for nearly a year. I have
>been considering purchasing a Micro Modular and would like to have any
>experience or helpful word passed on about what I understand to be a
>powerful computer based synth. Also, now that school has finished I am
>planning on building a simple Tychobrahe Octavia pedal, so any info is again
>appreciated.
>>
>
>Ive heard lots of good things about the nord micro modular (and the full
>version)
>The main advantage of these over a softsynth is that you can write patchs
>and store them in the little box. then if you do a gig, you only need the
>box, not the whole damn PC!
>
>I was toying with the idea of doing a patchable modular which was fully
>programmable and has knobs, but no wires..
>
>The idea was to have modules as per normal modular and plug them into a case
>with a back plane. Then you have all your normal knobs for each module but
>instead of sockets you have push buttons.
>You have a module which has a VGA output on and controls the whole thing.
>To 'patch' a module simply hold down one button on a module and press
>another button anywhere on any of the other modules. This 'patch lead' is
>then
>shown on the VGA display.
>
>It would mean people could build up huge systems but still have it all
>programmable and yet still flexible.
>
>What do you guys think?

Designing the interface for one of these digital modulars isn't very
difficult. What is more difficult is designing the hardware to be used, and
moreso the software running on the system. Getting a lot of DSPs to work
together properly with audio is difficult, and that is why only a few
systems can pull it off. In fact, Kyma is probably one of the only
"consumer" boxes that does it right (the Nord Modular doesn't count here).

I'm no hardware engineer, so I can't comment much on getting the DSPs to be
nice to eachother, but Analog Devices has tried to integrate a lot of these
features onto the die, so they might be the best pick for a new system.
They also use floating-point DSPs, which are very friendly to audio
programmers.

As far as the actual sound generation goes, you have a few options to
making it sound better than the "average" virtual analog. You can increase
the sampling rate (doesn't the Nord Modular run at 96khz?), or you can
program the synth better. For example, band-limited interpolation removes
the aliasing and digital artifacts you get when you use wavetable
oscillators. On the filtering side, root-locus techniques have created a
nice model of the Moog VCF, and there are other (much simpler) techniques
to achieving that analog resonant peak. Careful attention must also be
payed to any sort of non-linear amplitude response from different devices,
such as envelopes and VCAs.