New DIY Synth?

[stryd_one]

This is kinda old news that I slept on...

http://www.anadigm.com/

Pretty interesting... Talks SPI (so does the PIC18F)... It's got me thinking ;)

[illogik]

hi; check this;

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/03/potentially-very-clever-sonoric-synth.html

[Wilba]

damn you stryd, yet another expensive toy I didn't know I wanted until now... :-)

[stryd_one]

hahahah

Well, it's not as bad as one might think.... You can (if you're clever about getting to the ordering page) order one of the chips (not the development board) for US$15, plus postage (it was $27 all up for me). I'll be ordering on Wednesday (payday ;) )

The beauty of combining one of these with MIOS, is that the control surface would be done by MIOS, so we wouldn't have to work on learning this new chip so much. All that would be needed is to get audio in and out of the chip, and let MIOS handle the control. A little more expensive, using a core module that does work that the anadigm chip could do by itself, but much much easier for us. I know I could get MIOS to talk SPI to the IC, the thing I would be stuck on is designing a circuit for the analog audio IO to/from the IC.

[Wilba]

The chips are pretty cheap, but the "expensive toy" is the $199 development board. It's not that expensive for a development board, actually... at least you can plug it into a COM port and start playing right away - no soldering, known good PCB for programming, etc.

I think you're wrong though - there's not enough on the chip to do everything like MIDI I/O and LFOs and such - you still need a Core to interface it to the world. This chip is like an uber-SID... you can program it to have whatever oscillators and filters you like. So once you've settled on a given synth design, you then use a Core to drive it much like the MBSID app (i.e. build a sound engine with the envelopes, LFOs, mod matrix, etc.). In fact, that would be a great project - program the chip to be like a SID and then use TK's sound engine to drive it via SPI. The audacious goal would be to develop a PCB that's MBHP-compatible, and combines the chip programming and Core interface components, so that you wouldn't need the $199 development board, only the chip itself and a PCB you can buy from SmashTV  :)

Sorry, this is typical of me... too many ideas and not enough time to do them all  :)

[stryd_one]

I think you're wrong though - there's not enough on the chip to do everything like MIDI I/O and LFOs and such - you still need a Core to interface it to the world. This chip is like an uber-SID... you can program it to have whatever oscillators and filters you like. So once you've settled on a given synth design, you then use a Core to drive it much like the MBSID app (i.e. build a sound engine with the envelopes, LFOs, mod matrix, etc.). In fact, that would be a great project - program the chip to be like a SID and then use TK's sound engine to drive it via SPI. The audacious goal would be to develop a PCB that's MBHP-compatible, and combines the chip programming and Core interface components, so that you wouldn't need the $199 development board, only the chip itself and a PCB you can buy from SmashTV  :)

Sorry, this is typical of me... too many ideas and not enough time to do them all  :)

That's exactly the idea I'm getting at :) Well, I was also thinking that the MB core module could also carry the configuration of the FPAA... So you could use the core to dynamically reconfigure from one synth to another, to an FX machine, etc... Depends on how big the dumps are, that are required to reconfigure the array... But the 4620 PICs have llike 4 meg of RAM on board, I can't imagine it would be more than that.

You're right about MIDI IO and LFO's being done by the anadigm chip, that certainly wouldn't happen... I was thinking about UI buttons/encoders etc, but even then, there's not really enough pins for the job.

Maybe it's just me, but this chip and the MIDIBox seem very well suited to one another.

"... too many ideas and not enough time to do them all  :)" Join the club! ;) I'm sure you were here when I started designing my 'uber-seq' about 2 years ago heheheh. Actually I'll be posting an update on the status of that very soon now, which just goes to show that if you are serious, you'll get it done....eventually....If you don't die of old age first ;)

[Wilba]

Reconfiguring the array from a Core seems like a lot of extra work for not much gain, not when you can dump to it from a PC.

If I had the time  :)  I'd be concentrating on getting one running and driving it from a Core module and worry about reconfiguring it from a Core module much much later, like when you actually have two great applications and really need to switch between them without using a PC.  ;)

[stryd_one]

Reconfiguring the array from a Core seems like a lot of extra work for not much gain, not when you can dump to it from a PC.

If I had the time  :)  I'd be concentrating on getting one running and driving it from a Core module and worry about reconfiguring it from a Core module much much later, like when you actually have two great applications and really need to switch between them without using a PC.  ;)

Totally :)