[sdiy] THAT, Alesis, etc

[Richard Wentk]

At 13:50 15/11/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>Richard,
>
> > http://www.profusionplc.com/product-frame.htm
> > The Alesis and Wolfson digital ranges look interesting. (A 50MIPS DSP for
>a
> > fiver? Digital reverb for a couple of quid?)
>
>yep, looks interesting..
>Whats moer interesting is that they sell the matching stereo DAC/ADC to go
>with it :-)
>so for under a tenner (plus VAt of course) you could have a Serial driven
>Effects unit.

Yep. Although if you look at the eval board there's quite a bit on there 
besides the ADC chip, which would raise the price some. Building a good 
24-bit audio ADC is not easy. :-/

For a long time I've had quirky stray thoughts about an all-digital 
modular. Each module would have exactly the same core hardware on one 
standard PCB - a PIC chip plus some muxes to read knob settings, probably 
another PIC or two to sum various audio and control sources (all shunted 
through patch cables as a 24-bit serial signal) a DSP to do the dirty work, 
and some output latches/serial streamers. For different modules you'd just 
program the DSP with different firmware.

I can't think of any truly sane reason to do this, apart from the 
challenge. True, you wouldn't get any hum, and I suppose the oscillators 
would never need tuning. (Unless you put a digitally sampled thermistor in 
the box... :) ) If you went really over the top you could hook the whole 
thing up to a PC and have yourself the ultimate programmable synth rack - 
where if you wanted ten oscillators, one ADSR, and a VCA you could 
reprogram the DSP and other module firmware dynamically to do that.

Of course this would be rather pointless when there are things like the 
Nord and the Pulsar out there already. (And Csound, for those who can think 
in code. And Reaktor, for those who can't.) Besides, Intel/AMD flops are 
screaming skywards so fast, and DSP power just isn't following to anything 
like the same extent. But it's still kind of an interesting idea. :-)

Richard