[sdiy] need help building a simple drum synth

[Tim Parkhurst]

On 2/20/06, M.C.Bull-02 at student.lboro.ac.uk
<M.C.Bull-02 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am a young product developer in my final year at university in
> Loughborough. I am designing a portable drum module and in order to gain
> credit for my final project, I am required to build a breadboard circuit.
>
> I am trying to build a simple circuit that will play drum sounds when
> triggerd. Perhaps 2 - 3 sounds in total. Though I only wish to use a modest
> sound set (say, 6 samples at 44.1/16 lasting 500ms), they are essential to
> the concept of my design, and I intend to make the sounds as real as
> possible. My knowledge of electronics is not vast, and
> though I understand the algorithms, I am unable to design circuits. I
> have seen PIC chips available that seem to fulfill my needs, but I am
> intimidated by the technicalities.
>
> Could anybody offer any suggestions as to how to produce such a circuit?
>
> many thanks
>
> Marc Bull
> cdmcb at lboro.ac.uk
>
>
>

Hey Marc,

If you really need samples, you might look on ebay for ROM or EPROM
drum sample chips. I see these chips sold for the Oberheim DMX drum
machine every once in a while. Once you have a few sample chips, all
you have to do read them out into a D/A converter. Most of the samples
will be 8 or 10 bits, and a reasonable quality converter should not be
too tough to build. A few Google searches and you should be on your
way. Ken Stone's wavetable VCO module might be a good place to start
(although modules like this are meant to play single-cycle waves, the
concept is the same for playing a one shot sample).

http://www.cgs.synth.net/

Tim (one-shot wonder) Servo
--
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein