[sdiy] JOMOX

[Thomas Strathmann]

On 10/21/10 10:50 , Gergo Palatinszky wrote:
> All the time when I see this kind of projects/synths I'm really wondering that we cannot develop an open HW+SW platform basically a synth motherboard where everybody can develop an own module ... digitally controlled switching/routing matrix for audio/control voltages ...several controller(encoder) which can be assigned to a module(for a time being to set and save parameters there) a bus system where 16-24-32-... independent module can be plugged in - can be changed easily (different modular config can be set very fastly)
> Each module have a digital part for controllers assignment and for storing control parameters ...
 >
> At least it would be nice to start a specification round to see that this kind of community could be able to do it or not.... might comercial modular manufacturer can join to it ...

The main problem with specifications for very abstract and general 
things is that people can and will go wild adding feature after feature 
and not only does realizability suffer, but you also won't arrive at a 
well-rounded design which could be interesting to manufacturers because 
it is interesting to consumers.

Instead of just building a complete platform, I would rather collect 
different circuits and idioms of building certain things like modulation 
matrices, interfaces between digital control and analog sound 
generation, etc. This should include mechanical details so a person with 
reasonable skills and some free time on his hands could mix and match 
the different parts to come up with a basic design suitable for the 
synth of processor he wants to build. Kind of like the libraries for 
VLSI design. This should be an attainable goal as it "only" requires 
that people take the time to identify re-usable parts of their designs, 
extract them, write a little in the way of documentation (a name, a few 
words on what it does and maybe how if it's not easily deduced from the 
schematics, and some hints on how to use it, again only if there are 
some "special things" to consider), and publish them. But I guess this 
is not the case for most (if not all) people here who could contribute 
any meaningful bits, so this endeavour will probably never take off.

	Thomas