Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Casio SA-10 + FPGA = Audio Synthesis

Hello there!

First, yes, I'm alive... You just need to know where to look for (Hint: Flickr or dA).

Second, no, this won't be a long post.

Third, new project!
https://github.com/zebarnabe/music-keyboard-vhdl/

Regarding this last point, I'm building an audio synthesizer from my dead Casio SA-10 (non-destructive modifications, might be able to repair it in the future) and my old Digilent Nexys 2 FPGA board...

So far, so good... It works as a proof of concept, though I need to make it properly since to ensure polyphony I instantiated 32 basic synthesizers instead of properly serialize the processes ... processing everything at the same time is always fun in a FPGA.

Currently taken logic is at 10%, I guess I can make it a lot better by serializing the output mixer alone... or lower the precision... 144kHz sampling with 16bits and 32 channels is a bit overkill, specially when the PWM controller only does 8 bits.