Sound Synth chips manufacturers - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: ZeroResistance
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 12:55:21 pm
content: Are there any manufactures around for Sound synth chips.I found only one company, called Dream,https://www.dream.fr/Any idea why wouldn't any one manufacture these chips any more or are they aren't sold in the open market?There are a number of products based on the Dream chip like Fluxamasynth, Nanosynth etc.TIA

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 02:57:10 pm
content: AFAIK the known synth makers like Yamaha, Roland, Ensoniq, Kurzweil to name a few, after the analog period ending late 70s begin 80s, all made their own custom digital chips.The synths I have seen from the inside, only few used standard components for waveform generation. It was their secret sauce recipe, not something you sold on the open market.Nowadays it is all PCs with plugins, barely new hardware sees the light of day.

author: ratatax
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 03:15:17 pm
content: There isn't much except Dream nowadays, most audio is done in software even in hardware synths.You could make your own synth "soft-chip" with a microcontroller though

author: ZeroResistance
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 04:13:31 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on May 27, 2019, 02:57:10 pmWill these companies sell their synth chips now? Don't find them on the market though..Quote from: ratatax on May 27, 2019, 03:15:17 pmHow hard would it be to do this, would we need a powerful MCU like the Cortex M4 to get this done?What about any chinese synth chips?

author: oPossum
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 04:45:51 pm
content: If you want to learn how it is done, the lectures by Aaron Lanterman are great. Analog and digital methods are covered. How much compute power you need depends on what you want to do.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnFQqfHz_iEV6EkjumBGEv6O-NMyKyVkhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnFQqfHz_iHvvUlt5jV162WUmvnzpoLahttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnFQqfHz_iFcdOTqI-6_FpOf73LWGNnthttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnFQqfHz_iHHFepUHj2r-tWKyfouxX3H

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 06:58:31 pm
content: Quote from: ZeroResistance on May 27, 2019, 12:55:21 pmThere is no demand for ASICs because it is now economical to use general purpose processors and programmable logic to do it.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2019, 08:27:25 pm
content: Quote from: ZeroResistance on May 27, 2019, 04:13:31 pmAFAIK they never sold them. In the synth repairs it was donor board swap if the custom soundgenerators were damaged. Often with lack of donors it was totall loss.

author: ratatax
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2019, 09:20:34 am
content: Quote from: ZeroResistance on May 27, 2019, 04:13:31 pmDepends on what type of sound you want, generating square waves or playing 1-period waveforms can be done even on an Arduino Uno. With a Cortex M4 you can do a lot of things !Synth chips are too specific, low volume, small market to be worth made as ASICs. That's why you wont find more than a few general-purpose sample players (Dream chips) old square wave/fm chips, but not no real modern full-featured synths. It could be fun though to work with some old FM chip like the YM2612 used in the Sega Genesis, you can still buy them (clones or orignals i'm not sure...)

author: ZeroResistance
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2019, 01:29:08 pm
content: I don't know what a high end synth should sound like but Dream does sound bad.Would this be possible on a Cortex M4?

author: ratatax
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2019, 05:46:10 pm
content: I don't think it sounds bad but it's maybe more related to the style you want, in your video it's a GM bank with mostly classical instruments. Dream chips can be configured to play custom banks. But they are mostly sample players, not the type of synth with tons of filters and modulations.I'm pretty sure you can get reasonable polyphony and interesting synth out of a 100Mhz chip, you just have to optimize things well since it's easy to eat a lot of resources in audio programming... any calculation you do in the sample generation loop has a large impact on the CPU load (it's done for each sample which means 44100 times per sec for 44100 Hz output frequency). Also, small ARMs and uCs are better suited for real synthesis than for sample playback since you'll run out of memory very fast -- not suited for classical, symphonic stuff where you need gigabytes of samples...