[sdiy] Freescale Soundbuite

[Barry Klein]

Hi Karl and all,
Back to work today; glad to see no-one died and the discussion didn't get
too heated over the weekend.  I didn't post to start a flame war.

My reason for posting was more to propose development platforms for modular
synth design that are more enabling than one-up singular DIY approaches.
When everything was through-hole DIP we all could make our own boards in the
sink and DIY was perfectly fine.  But now I think the fundamentals of
subtractive synth design using this technology is either fairly well
understood and/or documented.  The "new" DIY is with parts that have too
damn many small leads.  They rely upon high frequency clocks and correctly
layed out PCB's for low emissions and low audio crosstalk.  Everyone can
still do all of this on their own - I envy you if you have that kind of time
and focus.  I can't.  I want to "find new ground" but in the simplest manner
possible.  I am imagining there are others of you that feel the same way.

For the newbies that are just getting into Synth-DIY there are tons of
boards, schematics, kits, etc. to get up to speed.  But once you have built
all these and used them what will you do next?

Karl, you talk about boredom... I'm with you there.  I looked for new
modules at NAMM and what I came across were unpredictable noise/control
signal makers.  Things that take clean signals and infuse digital ADC
limitations upon them.  But if I weigh my gut emotions from hearing these
vs. the Blofeld you mention - no contest.  I want the Blofeld!  Some of
these distorters are half its cost.  So who IS buying these distorters?
Do they buy the Blofelds too? 

I see that the modular and effects arena has its share of bizarre mindthink.
A pattern sequencer using CMOS sounds better than one with a
microcontroller?  Ummm how so?  I hear things like this and realize people
just are different. Whatever makes them happy...

So Karl, I'm not sure I truly understood the source of your boredom.  Are
you bored with everything modular right now?  That's fine - take a step back
and do something completely different.  Damn I have too many unrelated
hobbies: kites, rc electric planes, photography, electrostatics, rock
collecting, fixing just about anything, .....  but the funny thing is that
many on this list have many of these same hobbies.  We may all be similar in
that we would like to focus on one thing and be happy but we get bored so we
do something totally different to be happy for awhile.

Getting back to the DSP board etc., the difference between now and say 5-10
years ago is that hardware costs have dropped significantly and their power
jumped exponentially.  Along with this is the fact that experience in
software/firmware development for products today has resulted in better
software development tools.  The Tonecore and Symphony kits are just an
extension of this trend.  I am suggesting to narrow their breadth for our
modular design development so that modular DIY survives and hopefully grows.
You are right, when a $600 Blofeld comes out it hits the modular hard.  All
of a sudden AudioMidi or AnalogHaven have a winner on their hands.  I think
the future of modular synth development will be something like this - where
the development tools will improve, and enable us to do some very cool
things.  The hardware side of it though - to me - sucks.  Not fun. Not
something I enjoy.  I want someone else to do that, thus I suggest it. :-)
Barry   (sorry for being so long)