[sdiy] New dsPIC chips with on-chip audio DACs

[Veronica Merryfield]

A very good point. I am currently working on a software version of the  
Synergy (used by Wendy Carlos who created a large sound bank). Anyway,  
this is a digital additive synth. For the 32 oscillators (and 64 EGs)  
it takes around 20MIPS so this should fit into one of these devices  
and the beauty of it is that it doesn't involve much DSP just phase  
accumulation, table lookup and adds. The synergy uses a phase  
cancellation technique for amplitude control to avoid a multiply which  
could either be used or if this device has a quick multiply, that  
could be used (I'm still looking at the instruction set and it is more  
or less an instruction per cycle but pipelined - there are  
instructions that add a cycle or two of delay though so it might end  
up being nearer a 20MIPS processor with real code than the 40MIPS they  
quote).

Anyway, it looks like it would be enough horse power to implement an  
additive synth module. Might even have a go at it when I've done the  
virtual one.

Veronica

On 28-Mar-08, at 2:13 AM, jbv wrote:
>
>
> Tom Wiltshire a *crit :
>
>>
>> In fact, if you followed it with a analogue filter and a VCA
>> (SSM2045/47 spare anyone?), you could probably build an entire synth
>> voice with it.
>>
>
> as I love to play the devil's advocate once in while, I'd like to  
> ask if
>
> building synth voices is really the only horizon that offer those new
> & cheap & fast dsPIC chips ?
> I really don't want to trigger any flame war, but I just wonder if  
> it's
> sufficient (if not a bit frustrating) to approach these chips only  
> from
> an analog synthesis point of view (MIDI -> DCO -> VCF -> VCA)...
>
> I'm no dsp wizard, but well, a little bit of imagination never  
> kills...
> so why not ask how many osc can be run in parallel for additive
> synthesis, if FFT/iFFT or NN or GA can be implemented, and how
> it could paved the way for new kinds of music gear (affordable and
> made by DIYers), and why not for new kinds of music ?
>
> just a few questions for our friday morning...
>
> Best,
> JB