Patent ID: 7235733

Claim:
A musical tone reproducing apparatus that is provided in a portable terminal apparatus and connected through a bus to a system controller, and that carries out musical tone reproduction, the musical tone reproducing apparatus comprising: a tone generator memory that has a first input terminal having a first bit width, a first output terminal having the first bit width, and a storage region constructed based on the first bit width, is capable of storing various data including tone color parameters, and is used for general purpose use; a cache memory that has a second input terminal and a second output terminal having a second bit width larger than the first bit width; a tone generator; and a tone generator controlling device, wherein, the system storage devices stores beforehand one channel's worth of a plurality of tone color parameters to be used for generation of a predetermined tone color in units of a first bit width, said tone generator memory is supplied at the first input terminal thereof with one channel's worth of the plurality of tone color parameters from the system storage device via the bus by a plurality of times of transfer under control of the system controller and stores therein the supplied tone color parameters, when a tone color is to be changed, the one channel's worth of the plurality of tone color parameters that are read out from the first output terminal of said tone generator memory are sequentially transferred to the second input terminal of said cache memory and stored in said cache memory, said tone generator controlling device supplies said tone generator with control data generated based on sequence data in a reproduction timing of the control data, and supplies said cache memory with a read request when the tone color is used, said cache memory outputs the one channel's a worth of the plurality of tone color parameters from the second output terminal thereof to said one generator by a one time transfer in accordance with the read request supplied from said tone generator controlling device, and said tone generator reproduces a musical tone based on the one channel's worth of the plurality of tone color parameters and the control data.