[sdiy] Sound synthesis with microcontrollers

[Paul Maddox]

JBV,

-> Yeah ! 24 bits at 96 KHz...
> I guess I first want to test my ideas on 16 bits,
> which means less technical constraints and
> cheaper stuff.

reasonable..

> Yep, I see your point. Actually the frontier
> between uC and DSP tends to blur, especially
> with the 16 bits uCs...
> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I still consider
> a 16 bits uC easier to implement for a DIYer than a
> DSP... I found countless eval. boards and free prog.
> tools for uCs in magazines, but very few for DSP...
> Besides, when you check app notes for uCs, you can
> find many signal processing algos (FIR filters, FFT...)
> easy to implement...

possibly, but then if what you want to do is test ideas DSP is probably
quicker to do this with than building piles of hardware and desiging stuff
like 32 bit multipliers from scratch, when the DSP (motorola 56303 at least)
has a single cycle 56bit * 56Bit multiply command..

> I have the feeling that DSP tends to be used mostly
> for high end complex apps these days...

only because they can, there's no reason why you can't use DSP for simple
apps..

> And of course, cost is an important decision factor for
> DIYers. For instance, in Farnell catalog :
> - Philips XA-S3  68 pins / 16 bits / 30 MHz : 25 euros
> - Sharc DSP   240 pins / 32 bits / 50 Mips / 40 MHz : 74 euros

yes, if you're just talking money, but if you're talking time......

Paul