Patent ID: 8035021

Claim:
A tone generation apparatus comprising: a non-volatile first memory storing therein series of sample data of a plurality of waveform data, said first memory being capable of burst readout on a page-by-page basis, each of the pages comprising a plurality of sample data, the series of sample data of each of the waveform being stored in a plurality of successive pages in said first memory; a second memory including a leading waveform region prestoring the sample data of first pages of individual ones of the plurality of waveform data, and a buffer region that sequentially buffers the sample data of pages, succeeding the first page, of the waveform data to be sounded; a control register which, in response to a tone generation start for given waveform data, registers a leading waveform address indicating a portion of the leading waveform region, in said second memory, corresponding to the given waveform data of the plurality of waveform data, and second-page position information indicative of a stored position, in said first memory, of a second page following said first page; a readout control section which, in response to the tone generation start instruction, first reads out, at a given readout rate, the sample data of the first page stored in the portion of the leading waveform region indicated by the leading waveform address registered in said control register and then reads out, at a given readout rate, the sample data of the succeeding pages from the buffer region, said readout control section outputting information indicative of a progression of readout; a page address generation section which, on the basis of the second-page position information registered in said control register and said information indicative of a readout progression outputted from said readout control section, generates page address information that increments, with the second-page position information used as an initial value, in accordance with a progression of readout by said readout control information; and a transfer control section which instructs said first memory to burst read out the sample data of one of the second and succeeding pages in accordance with the page address information generated by said page address generation section and writes, into the buffer region of said second memory, the sample data of the page burst read out from said first memory in response to the instruction given by said transfer control section.