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Things are moving fast. Want to build your own miniDSP? Operated within Analog Devices SigmaStudio Digital Audio Compiler? Try ordering the  ADAU1701 Carrierboard from Audiodesine. Quite surprising, the company presents itself as specializing in “Audio Design for an Analog World”.

Such statement doesn’t imply that Audiodesine people reject or ignore digital. How possible anyway, now that virtually all audio material get recorded, mixed and edited in digital?

“We love analog, but we do not hate DSP, though we do regret the fact that to get into DSP you seem to need SMD soldering skills and a lot of math”.

Audiodesine selected the ADAU1701 DSP because of SigmaStudio (from Analog Devices) requiring no programming. SigmaStudio allows you to drag and drop prebuilt blocks such as “State Variable Filter”. In a few minutes you have a circuit. (continue reading…)

LabVIEW from National Instruments (NI) is a renowned PC-based instrumentation system, specialized in signal analysis and measurement. LabVIEW became available on the Windows PC platform in 1992.
Since then it pervades the academic world, generating plenty R&D applications as spin-offs.
Many universities and tech schools impose LabVIEW tutorials to their students.

Back in 1992, an average PC was clocked at 33 MHz or so. One year later, thanks to the first i486 cores clocked at 3 times the external bus speed, the Windows PC performance got a big boost – when running on cache. (continue reading…)

Digital Audio Compilers are getting user-friendly nowadays. No more programming. Creating an audio application only consists of dragging and dropping blocks, interconnecting them, for defining digital audio signal flows. Let’s read the descriptions of three of them:

- ANALOG DEVICES – SigmaStudio
- FREESCALE – Symphony Studio
- DSP CONCEPTS – Audio Weaver
(continue reading…)

Although Graphical DSP Compilers are progressively becoming popular in most universities and tech school labs, they remain out of reach for many diyAudio enthusiasts. That’s not true anymore with Synthmaker and Flowstone.

SynthMaker is an audio programming tool that allows anyone to create their own sounds, virtual instruments and effects without having to write any code. These instruments and effects can then be used for playing live via MIDI or as VST plugins for use in making music using any of the popular recording software.

SynthMaker allows to program without writing a single line of code. This is achieved by linking together components. Components are simply building blocks that perform some action. All changes take effect instantly with no build time. Synthmaker has a highly efficient sound engine. This allows you to process one sample at a time without compromising on performance. Feedback paths are no problem which is essential if you want to design your own filters. Exporting an instrument or an effect is a simple one-click process. Having identified  the module you want to export just click Create on the resulting dialog box. You can export to VST plugin or as a standalone instrument that can be played via MIDI. (continue reading…)