Digi Synths

I do some hardware design using FPGA's (Feild Programmable Gate Arrays, they allow you to simulate hardware) and I would like to mees around with designing a simple digital synth. Is there anyplace that gives detailed explanation of the components of a general digital synth?

Not sure if this is any help.

http://www.avrx.se/index.html

Thanks, thats a nice start. It appears to be using an embedded system (IP core maybe?) that can run C, does anybody know if most digi synths are like that?

There are many kinds of digital synth, including, but not limited to:

• FM
• Phase distortion
• Linear Additive (LA)
• Sample-based (ROMpler)
• Physical modelling / firmware based

For some of these, you will need to implement a simple computer, and write the synthesis engine, for others you will just need to wire up some (posssibly hard to find) ICs

http://www.fpga.synth.net/

your best bet would be to do something based on the spartan3e, a decent & cheap eval board with 500k gates, but you'll have to be pretty fluent in fpga design to get something useful out of it i guess

this guy http://www.strellis.com/fpga.shtml is making an additive synth around a FPGA system but as you can see its a shitload of work and it doesnt have any extra merit compared to .. basically any software synthesis program for yr pc..

there also is another eval board called the FES3 and according to the first link its excellent but unless you really have to much spare time and/or know exactly what you want to do, you might be better off sticking with, say, the AVR. if you look at the SDIY list there's loads of programs written for the AVR, good sounding filters, nice oscs. actually, that list might be a good place to look since there's also a few guys fucking about with fpga there (but none of them got much further than a few oscs and some envs). you might find some verilog code and/or schems on the list so that you can see what you're getting into:)

  ThePredator said:

Thanks, thats a nice start. It appears to be using an embedded system (IP core maybe?) that can run C, does anybody know if most digi synths are like that?

no, its just that the avrx is using a ATMega128, simpeler avr solutions (cruder microcontrollers) will have to be programmed in assembly. btw the avrx kernel is done in assembly too (speed!).