[sdiy] Axcel Resynthesizer (on eBay again...)

[James Patchell]

Probably not as complex as you might imagine.  More than likely, you could 
probably duplicate the ASICs quite easily with modern FPGA's (Xilinx, 
Altera, Actel) even with a good general description of what the chip 
does.  For example, if there is an asic that just has say 1024 oscilators 
in it (and that was all it did), something like that can be pretty easy 
(almost...I say almost but not quite...trivial).

You may not be able to divine everything it was able to do...but you would 
get close...

It really is amazing how much reverse engineering you can do without even 
seeing an instrument (just reading a list of capabilities is generally 
quite adequate).

At 08:05 PM 7/17/2003 +0200, Alex Stettler wrote:
>Hi together,
>
>
>as far as I know, the Axcel does a lot of the processing in specially
>designed ASICs. So you would need the chip designs / internal schematics in
>addition to the source code. E.g. the hundreds of oscillators used for
>synthesizing the analyzed sound are contained in ASICs. These must be rather
>complex digital circuits as they could generate different waveforms,
>accurate frequency and so on.
>
>I'd like to know, how much processing power the Axcel resynthesizer has
>compared to a modern CPU.
>For sure it's an impressing DSP powermachine for the eigthies.
>
>Alex
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
>[mailto:owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl]On Behalf Of Paul Maddox
>Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 10:55 AM
>To: Synth DIY
>Subject: Re: [sdiy] Axcel Resynthesizer (on eBay again...)
>
>
>Neil,
>
> > Nice user interface though :-)
>
>given what you can do ;- take a sample, perform an FFT and break into
>anything upto 200 partials, the change the pitch of EACH partial via an
>envelope over time, or change the amplitude of each partial overtime via an
>envelope, or change the FM amount over time via an envelope and so on and so
>on.
>Oh, and by envelope I dont mean ADSR, you 'draw' it on the matrix of
>buttons/LEDs
>
>Watch the videos and be amazed.
>
>The UI for 'Tempest' the project of mine was derived from a combination of
>this and the PPG realizer...
>
>Paul