[sdiy] Thoughts on a Polyphonic Synth

[James Patchell]

You are right...I build synths because I love to build synths...I never 
worry about reinventing the wheel.

I have been wanting to build a polysynth as well...for a while.  My plan of 
attack was to make a two board set.  One board would be a voice card, and 
the second board would be a controller card.  I was going to go the route 
where envelope generators and LFO's were done in digital hardware (my 
current plan is to use a Xilinx FPGA running a MicroBlaze softcore 
processor).  All the sample and holds for the analog control signals would 
be on the controller.  The voice cards would have a pair of VCO's, possibly 
3 SVF, VCA, and whatever...
Everything would be made so it could be easily cascaded to make an n-voice 
synthesizer....i.e..how much do you want to spend...

That, like a lot of other things, are on hold until next year...as I have 
something much more important to do...(completion date...December 30th, 
2006 at http://www.fpcsb.org/ )

I am estimating that the polysynth I want to build is going to cost about 
$5K / 8 voices...

At 05:12 AM 3/25/2006 +1030, Mike Both wrote:
>The 're-inventing the wheel' line could well be directed at most of the 
>modular stuff people build also, and it's a theme that comes up often. For 
>me, I'd be interested in building a polysynth 'just because' - and it'd be 
>neat to learn about, design and implement such a beast. Then it would be 
>'my' wheel, and I'd make it just the way I wanted! :^)
>
>Mike
>
>rkmoore at memphis.edu wrote:
>
>>...to me, designing
>>and building a polysynth seems like reinventing the wheel.
>>
>>Richard

         -Jim
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http://www.oldcrows.net/~patchell

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