hkr4627@acf4.UUCP (Hedley K. J. Rainnie) (07/06/85)
I have been thinking about synths and I was wondering if anyone has done the following. An all digital synth with digital filtering all digital effects and of course MIDI control. The synth would use the digital signal proc. chips from TI or NEC. The syth is controlled real time by a master processor, I am bit-slice crazy so maybe a AMD 29116 would be a good fast start. The idea is the proc coordinates the dsp chips and the filtering parameters. The synth would of course be polyphonic and have a velocity kbd. I really think this is a potent combination. I may tool around with a design very soon. Hedley Rainnie Allied Corp NYU Brain labs Electro-optics div.
mark@apple.UUCP (Mark Lentczner) (07/09/85)
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About three years ago I spent alot of time developing the
design for just such a beast: entirely digital synthesizer
with not only digital osciallators, filters, and effects,
but virtually any other thing you'd care to program. The
modules were all polymorphic, they could be oscialltors one
in one patch and filters the next and their interconnections
were alterable. It was expandable (add more processing
power as you desired) and could support more than one
performer playing it at a time (wow, what an idea, a whole
band playing into one big synthesizer that could do all
sorts of things based on the interaction...).
Problems:
* It would require a ton of software to make it usable
by anyone but computer music programmers. And I mean
a ton, like many megabytes of object code due to the
complexity of the thing.
* It probably would cost too much to build a DX7 look-alike
(16x6 modules + ~20 more @ $200 a module = $23,300) but
that same hardware would be many times more flexible than
a DX7 much more like a Fairlight or a SynthClavier (sp.?)
I'd sure like to see one, though. I find most synthesizers
on the market (like the DX7) far too limiting for my tastes.
(Oh give me those patch cords...)
--
--Mark Lentczner
Apple Computer
UUCP: {nsc, dual, voder, ios}!apple!mark
CSNET: mark@Apple.CSNET