[sdiy] Sound synthesis with microcontrollers

[Jay Schwichtenberg]

IMHO 24 bits good, 96 kHz overkill.

There is a big difference between 16 bit and 24 bit sound. There is a
difference between 44.1 kHz & 96 kHz but not as much. You really have to
listen carefully on good equipment to tell the difference on the sample
rate. Use your processor bandwidth on doing 24 bits. Another thing is if you
do digital I/O (SPDIF or AES/EBU) 44.1 kHz is easier to interface to.

If you really want good sound quality go with multibit converters vs the
single bit ones. Multibit get rid of some of the jitter issues and sound
much more transparent then the single bit ones.

Jay

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> [mailto:owner-synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl]On Behalf Of jbv
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 11:38 AM
> To: SynthDIY
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] Sound synthesis with microcontrollers
>
>
>
>
> 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
>
>