[sdiy]do a lot more on a regular PC, was: modern CEMs?

[Scott Gravenhorst]

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ren=E9_Schmitz?= <uzs159 at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>Hi Antti and all,
>
>> Excepting oscillator drift/jitter/warmth, everything else in a synth can 
>> be modelled without much trouble. 
>
>:-P
>
>Once you understand it, yes. But there are many attributes that we may 
>not understand and thus can model. And the question if a model can be 
>computed efficiently (within device constraints) remains still, so that 
>for an implementation some corners might have to be cut. If I'm copying 
>a schematic I'll get even those things right which I don't understand.
>
>> And nothing stops you from mixing and 
>> matching "components" or even synthesis models. Ever wanted to see how a 
>> Moog filter would fit into DX7? Now you can.
>
>And I may ask why is this always being so retro oriented, should this 
>not open some totally new soundscapes instead? I mean synthesized sound 
>when it was new gave rise to something unheared before. Shouldn't there 
>be a new quantum leap?
>
>The question isn't really that of how much horsepower you have, but what 
>to do with it. Speed gets you nowhere if you're headed in the wrong 
>direction. And I think that you don't have to wait for a fancy new FPGA 
>to appear, you could even do a lot more on a regular PC than you might 
>think, if one were to do away with the ubiquitous desktop (or server) 
>OSes that are usually run on these, and use just a realtime OS, do away 
>with virtual memory and run your code practically on the bare metal. Yet 
>no one seems to do that? Its just a little coding exercise. Not. :-P


Interesting points.  I know how much people hate DOS, but I think it could be possible
to disable most if not all of it's "nonessential" functions.  DOS is the only OS I know
of that is simple enough to do this.  If interrupts aren't needed, they could be turned
off individually or en masse.  Of course, this means that it would be difficult to save
things, but then this isn't always necessary (analog modulars can't save anything to
disk either, but they are still quite useful).  The synth application would be loaded by
DOS and then it would euthanize DOS just before starting it's main application code.  I
think it could even be possible to allow essential disk interrupts to be turned on
during a save or load operation and then off for sound production.  

Then again, this could all be a symptom of low blood sugar for me.


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-- Scott Gravenhorst | LegoManiac / Lego Trains / RIS 1.5
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