Hello Theo
the word "hip" regarding FPGA seems to be a good hint. In several music groups the new music machines are discussed heavily. In terms analog modelling and recreating these formerly analog machines we know the digital way. At the first sight FPGAs are consequent descision what me and others doing such designs in professional business have a clear view on design speed, cost, amount of work and in many cases FPGAs are not acceptable and totally fail in comparison to DSPs. Yes, FPGAs have become cheaper and more powerfull in the recent decade and so did DSPs and CPUs too. If you look and todays options with multi core CPUs and GPUs, VSTs could take advantage off, i hardly see cases where FPGAs can do well.
I tried FPGA sound synthesis myself and also completed some designs, but found that MIDI treatment is better hosted in the softcore part or in a hard core like in Cyclone V's ARM architecture. A 600MHz ARM design does all required for MIDI rapidly and totally sufficient. The same is with USB. Writing an USB core in FPGA is no fun I can tell you and is also better donw in a CPU / MCU architecture. Things like changes, new requirements, testing and simulation is much easier and can be done in the CPU / PC domain. We have sandboxes, testboxes, trigger cases all available in Python and CC+Libs ready for usage. And they can be accesses by any person for free. FPGA high tech development and simulation requires a profesional license when you want to do it effectively.
I tried FPGA sound synthesis myself and also completed some designs, but found that MIDI treatment is better hosted in the softcore part or in a hard core like in Cyclone V's ARM architecture. A 600MHz ARM design does all required for MIDI rapidly and totally sufficient. The same is with USB. Writing an USB core in FPGA is no fun I can tell you and is also better donw in a CPU / MCU architecture. Things like changes, new requirements, testing and simulation is much easier and can be done in the CPU / PC domain. We have sandboxes, testboxes, trigger cases all available in Python and CC+Libs ready for usage. And they can be accesses by any person for free. FPGA high tech development and simulation requires a profesional license when you want to do it effectively.
What should be discussed regarding MIDI and accurate timing is things like channel handling and controllers. Todays synthesis units and VSTs have tons of parameters and MIDI does not really support this. It is already a hazzle to join 2 or more controllers to have 16 channels to control a DAW and add a third one to run the tunes. Synchronisation is an issue too.
Rolf
Gesendet: Sonntag, 22. Juli 2018 um 22:21 Uhr
Von: "Theo Verelst" <[email protected]>
An: "A discussion list for music-related DSP" <[email protected]>
Betreff: [music-dsp] Creating new sound synthesis equipment
Von: "Theo Verelst" <[email protected]>
An: "A discussion list for music-related DSP" <[email protected]>
Betreff: [music-dsp] Creating new sound synthesis equipment
Hi DSPers,
I would like to reflect a bit about creating (primarily music) synthesis machines,
or possibly software, as sort of talking about a dream that has been of some people
since let's say the first (mainly analog!) Moogs in the 60s. What is that idea of
creating a nice piece of electronic equipment to create blips and mieaauuws,
thundering basses, imitation instruments, and as recently has "relived" all kinds
of more or less exciting new sounds that maybe have never been used in music before.
As for some it's like a designer's dream to create exactly the sound they have in
mind for a piece of musique concrète, for others it's maybe to compensate for their
lack of compositional skills or musical instrument training, so that somehow through
the use of one of those cool synthetic sounds they may express something which
otherwise would be doomed to stay hidden, and unknown.
Digital computer programs for sound synthesis in some sense are thought to take
over from the analog devices and the digital sound synthesis machines like "ROMplers"
and analog synthesizer simulations. It's not true this has become the decisive reality
thus far: there's quite a renewed interest in those wonderful analog synthesis sounds,
various manufacturers recreate old ones, and some advanced ones make new ones, too.
Even though it is realistic that most folks at home will undoubtedly listen most of the
time to digital music sources, at the same time there's a lot of effort still in the
analog domain, and obviously a lot of attempts at processing digital sound in order
to achieve a certain target quality or coolness of sound or something else ?
Recently there's been a number of interesting combinations of analog and
digital processing as well as specific digital simulation machines (of analogue
type of sound synthesis) like the Prophets (DSI), The Valkyrie (Waldorf "Kyrie" IIRC)
based on FPGA high sampling frequency digital waveform synthesis and some others.
Myself I've done a Open Source hard- AND software digital synthesizer design based on
a DSP ( http://www.theover.org/Synth ) over a decade ago, before this all was considered
the hip, and I have to say there's still good reason for hardware over software synthesis,
while I of course can understand it is likely computers will get better and
better at producing quality synthesis software. At the time I made my design, I liked to
try out the limits I liked as a musician, such as extremely low, and very stable latency
(one audio sample, with accurate timed Midi message reading in programmable logic)
straight signal path (no "Xruns" ever, no missed samples or re-sampling ever, no multi
processing quirks, etc). My experience is that a lot of people just want to mess around
with audio synthesizers in a box! They like sounds and turning some knobs, and if a
special chip gives better sound, for instance because of higher processing potential
than a standard processor, they like that too, as well as absence of strange software
sound- and control-interface latency.
I'm very sure there are a lot of corners being cut in many digital processing based
synthesis products, even if the makers aren't too aware, for instance related to sample
reconstruction reality compared with idealized design theories as well as a hope for
congruency between the Z transform with a proper Hilbert transform, which is unfortunately
a fairy tale. It is possible to create much better sounding synthesis in the digital
domain, but it's still going to demand a lot of processing power, so people interested in
FPGA acceleration, parallel software, supercomputing, etc, might well have a hobby for
quite a while to come, in spite of all kinds of adds about music software suggesting
perfection is in reach!
Theo V
_______________________________________________
dupswapdrop: music-dsp mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
I would like to reflect a bit about creating (primarily music) synthesis machines,
or possibly software, as sort of talking about a dream that has been of some people
since let's say the first (mainly analog!) Moogs in the 60s. What is that idea of
creating a nice piece of electronic equipment to create blips and mieaauuws,
thundering basses, imitation instruments, and as recently has "relived" all kinds
of more or less exciting new sounds that maybe have never been used in music before.
As for some it's like a designer's dream to create exactly the sound they have in
mind for a piece of musique concrète, for others it's maybe to compensate for their
lack of compositional skills or musical instrument training, so that somehow through
the use of one of those cool synthetic sounds they may express something which
otherwise would be doomed to stay hidden, and unknown.
Digital computer programs for sound synthesis in some sense are thought to take
over from the analog devices and the digital sound synthesis machines like "ROMplers"
and analog synthesizer simulations. It's not true this has become the decisive reality
thus far: there's quite a renewed interest in those wonderful analog synthesis sounds,
various manufacturers recreate old ones, and some advanced ones make new ones, too.
Even though it is realistic that most folks at home will undoubtedly listen most of the
time to digital music sources, at the same time there's a lot of effort still in the
analog domain, and obviously a lot of attempts at processing digital sound in order
to achieve a certain target quality or coolness of sound or something else ?
Recently there's been a number of interesting combinations of analog and
digital processing as well as specific digital simulation machines (of analogue
type of sound synthesis) like the Prophets (DSI), The Valkyrie (Waldorf "Kyrie" IIRC)
based on FPGA high sampling frequency digital waveform synthesis and some others.
Myself I've done a Open Source hard- AND software digital synthesizer design based on
a DSP ( http://www.theover.org/Synth ) over a decade ago, before this all was considered
the hip, and I have to say there's still good reason for hardware over software synthesis,
while I of course can understand it is likely computers will get better and
better at producing quality synthesis software. At the time I made my design, I liked to
try out the limits I liked as a musician, such as extremely low, and very stable latency
(one audio sample, with accurate timed Midi message reading in programmable logic)
straight signal path (no "Xruns" ever, no missed samples or re-sampling ever, no multi
processing quirks, etc). My experience is that a lot of people just want to mess around
with audio synthesizers in a box! They like sounds and turning some knobs, and if a
special chip gives better sound, for instance because of higher processing potential
than a standard processor, they like that too, as well as absence of strange software
sound- and control-interface latency.
I'm very sure there are a lot of corners being cut in many digital processing based
synthesis products, even if the makers aren't too aware, for instance related to sample
reconstruction reality compared with idealized design theories as well as a hope for
congruency between the Z transform with a proper Hilbert transform, which is unfortunately
a fairy tale. It is possible to create much better sounding synthesis in the digital
domain, but it's still going to demand a lot of processing power, so people interested in
FPGA acceleration, parallel software, supercomputing, etc, might well have a hobby for
quite a while to come, in spite of all kinds of adds about music software suggesting
perfection is in reach!
Theo V
_______________________________________________
dupswapdrop: music-dsp mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
_______________________________________________ dupswapdrop: music-dsp mailing list [email protected] https://lists.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
