Re: [linux-audio-dev] control curve patent

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] control curve patent
From: David Olofson (david_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Fri Dec 08 2000 - 03:52:21 EET


On Tuesday 05 December 2000 16:37, Frank Neumann wrote:
> Hi,
> (just catching up with 150 old mails, so this reply comes a bit
> late..sorry) David Olofson wrote:
>
> [..]
>
> > One could dig out the good ol' C64 as well. The old method of
> > playing samples on the SID (the 4 bit volume register method) has
> > been around for almost as long as the chip. Consequently, there
> > were "sound digitizers" for the C64 as well, and obviously, there
> > had to be software for them. Wonder what one could find there...
>
> This made me think of how wonderful it would be to take a project
> like "Sidplay" (http://sidplay2.sourceforge.net/) and make a
> virtual synth out of it.

Yes, indeed; I've been thinking about doing that for very long, but
never got around to hack anything.

However, looking at the code, I'm starting to think that it might be
a better idea to rewrite from scratch using higher end DSP algos,
looking at the emulators and other info to get the emulation right.
Part because they're currently using LUTs and low resolution integer
processing, part because most emulators are designed to work in full
system emulators, which means they're concerned with emulating the
CPU<->SID interaction properly on register level, rather than just
emulating the *sound*, as would a soft-synth.

> Alternatively, there is a hardware remake
> that uses the original SID chip 6581 from the C64 and has some MIDI
> stuff built around it - see http://www.sidstation.com

Yep, that's a full-blown MIDI hardware synth with it's own processor
and patch system. (It *does* play SID files as well, but you have to
upload them to the synth to do it, AFAIK. Can't replace a 1 MHz bus
with some 20 registers with a MIDI cable...)

I like the idea of using the SID chip for serious stuff (it's been
used in some commercial tracks), but I don't like the idea of paying
around $400 for a machine with only one chip and no source code to
hack... I'd rather either

        1) Build my own hardware (I have some chips lying around), or

        2) write it all in software, emulating the SID's peculiar tone
           generation techniques, and then expanding on it.

//David

.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
`----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -'
.- David Olofson -------------------------------------------.
| Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |
`--------------------------------------> david_AT_linuxdj.com -'


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