[sdiy] digital synth design.

[ChristianH]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:10:23 +0800 (WST) Alwyn Lloyd wrote:

> Hi list.
> 
> i have been recently looking for something like a alesis nanopiano to get
> some "piano" sounds.  
> I then began thinking (which was a bit silly)

be careful with that, might become a habit - especially when it comes to
synth diy :-)

> and
> was pondering the feasability of making something like a rompler.
> 
> Obviously there are a few challenges in the project, software being the
> biggest, then something like making decent patches etc. then designing the
> hardware etc.  

I think software isn't that much of a problem (unless you are a pure
hardware man) - as long as the patch structure doesn't involve much
synthesizing and processing, i.e. mostly sample playback.

Functionally, hardware shouldn't be too hard as well. Main problem would
be to find a suitable processor chip that is a) available in single
quantities and b) isn't too nasty to solder (I'm thinking hard core SMT
here).

Creating the patches sounds like fun - as long as the patch structure
_does_ have lots of processing features ;-)

Probably the major difficulty might be creating _good_ samples. That
involves finding original sound sources, miking and recording (properly),
and editing. This last point really looks like it's gonna be a lot of
work, i.e. setting up multi sample layouts, in particular balancing
multi samples, so an even overall sound across the keyboard range is
achieved. Even worse if your going for velocity mappings.
No rocket science by itself, but probably quite a task to do it well.

regards
Christian