[sdiy] The Owl: ARM fx pedal

[Martin Klang]

Thank you all who've commented, on list and off, for the great feedback!

I'll try to make the aim of the project a bit clearer, as this wasn't well expressed.

While there are more powerful DSP technologies available, what we want to create is a hardware platform that is easy to program using non-proprietary tools.
It is aimed at developers who are comfortable with, or interested in, coding audio applications for non-specialised hardware.
It is not meant to be the next big mass-market platform, nor do we suggest that anyone port their VSTs to run on it.

There are quite a few people on this list with amazing skills and experience in DSP, who have perhaps different demands and expectations compared to most of the open source community. While specialised audio DSP chips are clearly better at audio DSP, it shouldn't be underestimated how specialised and advanced the skills required to develop on these platforms are.
I think a case in point is the Line6 ToneCore Dev kit - great if you're already a seasoned DSP coder, tough if not.

By being open source and non-proprietary, we expect to attract developers and hobbyists who want a hardware platform to experiment with embedded audio. If we succeed then I have no doubt that wonderful and unconventional applications will come out of it - the creative potential is huge.

In the slightly longer term, we hope this will become a fun pedal for non-programmers who want to run the amazing code that is written for it. And we will work to create an eco-system around it for coders and musicians. But first, as Uncle Fester put it: developers, developers, developers, developers!

Many thanks again for the interest, happy to get more feedback!

Martin