[sdiy] ARM/FPGA synth - now with 100% more audio samples

[Paul Dickow]

Regarding digital projects,

I've been eyeballing the MIDIBox project that uses the FM synthesis
engine from old soundblasters- sounds like a Yamaha DX100 mutation,
very cool. Seems like a cool way to get into digital DIY if you don't
have the PIC/AVR/FPGA experience (like me!); plus the community and
kit infrastructure provided by the MIDIBox is extensive and
accessible.

Has anyone on Synth DIY built this successfully? ...Is it as cool as it sounds?

The thing I haven't done is gone online to find the chip and/or the
SoundBlaster card from which the chip must be cannibalized- not sure
of scarcity, which would affect my interest in doing the project to
some extent.

- Paul

On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Eric Brombaugh <ebrombaugh1 at cox.net> wrote:
> Ian Smith wrote:
>>
>> Eric- The analog comment was because, to me at least, digital usually
>> sounds like samples and this is... I dunno, it just sounds so rich and
>> warm...
>> You've made me want to try my hand at digital synthesis now.
>
> Yes - I figured you knew it was digital, I just wanted to quantify how much.
>
> I think your association of digital synthesis with samples is a common one
> that probably traces back to the heavy use of Fairlight CMI samples in the
> music of the mid-80s. A lot of non-sampled digital synthesizers had limited
> realtime expression too, which also lent a somewhat static nature to the
> results. This little project is a demonstration that extremely simple
> algorithms can lead to some pretty interesting sounds.
>
> I'd encourage you to try some digital stuff - you can get into it without
> too much cost and there are a lot of paths to take - FPGAs, dsPICs, PSoC,
> PIC, etc.
>
> Eric
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-- 
Paul Dickow
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