[sdiy] Hardware convolution box?

[paula at synth.net]

Seems like an appropriate time to drop into the conversation.

>>> http://www.chameleon.synth.net/english/chameleon/
>> 
>> Yeah, that's the sort of thing we need, but the Chameleon is long 
>> dead, as I understand it.
> 

since around 2003 sadly.
Not aided by the fact that Freescale dropped the 56K DSP line, hey ho.

> It is but it's an excellent effort at creating both an open development
> platform and an end-user facing system in the same box given the
> constraints at the time (e.g. dsp vendors not being terribly generous
> with tool chains).
> 

Actually the toolchain for the Chameleon was very complete and the 
IDE/SDK was a dream to use.

>> Paul Maddox was involved and did some synths for it so perhaps he 
>> knows more. Paul?
> 

Well, yes I was.
You'll find the "Monowave II" and "Phoenix" sound skins on the site.

> Chameleon II was considered but I suspect he learned a lot of lessons
> from that project.  Like making a concrete instrument promises better
> returns than an open platform.  Or combining development and end-user
> features into a single package forces either compromises or over-
> provisioning.

The Chameleon II never made it past the drawing board, Sound-Art closed 
before it made it much further. This was at a time when everyone, and I 
mean everyone, was getting into VSTs and people didn't want hardware, or 
rather, not enough people wanted hardware.

I looked at starting the Chameleon II project with Terry Shultz, but 
sadly this was around the time freescale started pulling out of the DSP 
world.

Your choices for "DSP" now are to look at something like the Analog 
Devices Blackfin/Sharc family, look at FPGA (who wants to roll their own 
DSP) or a fast ARM Processor (like the Axoloti).

> 
> The Z-DSP seems like its evolutionary successor but if someone were
> to try an all-in-one platform again, the chameleon might be a good
> place to start for an architecture.

As has been pointed out there are a number of other platforms (Axoloti 
being one) but nothing offering the same kind of "oomph" that you can 
get with a dual processor architecture like the Chameleon. Though the 
Axoloti UI looks a like a dream compared to teaching yourself how to 
program in fixed point assembly language on the 56K chips :)

I guess the problem is that ultimately it comes down to the market 
appetite for such products. The Chameleon was great, but never really 
got the market it needed to survive. the Axoloti looks fab, but I doubt 
it's being made in serious volume (>1000 per year).

I'd love to know what DSP the Z-DSP uses, I suspect it's an ARM based 
chip, but I could be wrong.

What is nice is to see a resurgence of love for DSP and DSP programming 
:)

Paula