[sdiy] Sound synthesis with microcontrollers

[jbv]

Paul,

> Agreed, but why not go 24Bit?

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.
Anyway, internal calculations can be done on 24
or 32 bits, only i/o will remain 16 bits.
This is a personal approach, but for me analog
gear is a mean to produce rich, dense, fat & "dirty"
sounds, almost impossible to get with digital.
I'm afraid the gap would be too big between analog
modules and such 24 bits things... Keeping 16 bits
ADC & DAC would keep some slight digital distortion,
which never hurts...    ;-P

> Ermmm, why not use a DSP?
> This would do all you need in one chip and VERY quickly, and with 24Bit
> resoloution.
>

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

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

jb