DIY Digital Synth

[jbv]

>
>
>     Anything is posible.  Actually the best modular digital I know of is
> the
> Nord Modular.  Although, it is only modular because of "software".  A
> digital
> "hardware" synth would be much more of a challenge.  Patch cords would
> be a
> bitch :^)



What about fiber optic patch cords ?    ;-)

More seriously, I've been wondering a couple of times if a modular
"hardware" digital synth would be feasable... A modular in which
every module would be built around a DSP, or a uC of some kind...

And it appears that the main problem would be sampling frequency :
let's say everything's running at 48 KHz; should every module have
its own clock, with i/o signals fed through ADCs & DACs to make
connections between modules analog (for possible connection with
a "real" analog modular), or should the whole system be driven by
a single clock (and in that case, how should the clock signal be
distributed among modules) ?
Furthermore, I'm afraid that sampling frequency would introduce
audible delays in the signal in case of complex patches in which
a large number of modules are involved...

Last but not least, I tried to figure out what kind of modules would
benefit of being 100% digital... Apart from DVCO (currently
discussed), there's of course various forms of reverbs, delays,
waveshapers & pitch-shifters...
But I was also thinking of some typical & unique type of module
that could not be done the analog way, and I was thinking of
some statistical distribution generators (sorry, can't find any
better description), stuff that would output, when triggered,
clouds of events (ADSR, frequencies, MIDI notes, whatever)
following certain probabilistic / mathematic rules that the user
could modify / program either by tweaking pots on the front panel
or by voltage control... IRCAM MAX and PatchWork software
feature such fonctions; the idea is just to reshape them as
hardware modules...

And there's also that Cellular Automata & Genetic Algorithm
stuff I mentioned in previous posts, but I must confess that
my brainstorming on those topics didn't go very far...

jbv