The Days of External DSP Synthesis: Part 1

Moore's Law, the observation that computers get about twice as smart every two years (I know that's a gross over-simplification, bordering on the offensive LOL) has had a profound effect on the musical realm. Today's composer may run a huge number of software instruments simultaneously, all with instant recallability.

However, in the late 90's (and into the 00's) - computing power wasn't quite there yet - many systems could do non real-time synthesis quite trivially (Turbosynth on the Mac could synthesize a sound and send it over to your Emax in a jiffy!) and in Amiga-land, there were even some cool real-time applications.

In mainstream Windoze PeeCee-land (heh!), softsynths really kicked off with Sear Systems Reality; 1997's Windows-based software synth that ran ok at 44.1Khz on a Pentium PC (as long as you weren't doing much else!) so, dedicated DSP remained the order of the day for serious studio work. During this period, a number of interesting DSP soundcards & external modules became available, all attempting to integrate themselves into the PC ecosystem. The software provided the control - the DSP provided the sound.

So let's take a look at a few examples, eh?

Soundart Chameleon

This series of articles has been inspired by my recent purchase of a Soundart Chameleon. It may take a while to arrive from Australia, so in the mean time, I've been reading up on this unique instrument. In 2003, Spanish designers Soundart released Chameleon to the world. The 1U rack unit - adorned with audio IO and a number of real-time controllers - concealed a 32-bit Motorola Coldfire CPU and a 24-bit DSP56303, a chip who's family powered most of this era's synths & effects.

However, unlike the generally static nature of dedicated instruments - the Chameleon could be completely reconfigured. Sound on Sound's review mused:

"Supposing there were another option for the eternally dissatisfied amongst us, one that didn't involve getting rid of any hardware at all? Suppose, instead of selling that Waldorf Q, you could wave a magic wand and turn it into a multi-effects unit? Then, sometime later, into a drum machine? Could you grow tired of something as flexible as that?

The concept sounds like fantasy; but substitute our magic wand for a burst of SysEx data, and our named polysynths for a Soundart Australis (about which more later) and the implications of freely programmable DSP start to hit home. Soundart are a Spanish company whose first product -- the Chameleon -- is an open platform for development of audio programs."

Indeed, if you had the programming chops, you could create your own "soundskins" for the Chameleon - custom synthesizers, effects or anything else you could think of. One such person, Paula Maddox, created a couple of wavetable instruments for the platform - and one of those instruments, Monowave II, is the reason I discovered this little nook of 00's DSP fun!

So what goodies are available for the Chameleon? The website lists the following:

Australis: 16 Voice VA synth* with FM, Ringmod & 36 extra digital waveforms

Entity: 6 voice VA synth with a carefully modelled 12dB filter

South Pole: Filterbank & SP-Delay effects

Monowave II: Monophonic wavetable synth with "de-rez" lofi capability

Phoenix: A polyphonic variant of Monowave II

Infiltrator: Vocoder & Filter

Fahrenheit: "Rebirth"-style multitimbral instrument, 303, 808, 909 & effects

Amp-o-matic: Guitar gear emulation system

Chromasonic: Flexible multi-FX processor

FX Designer: SpinAudio designed FX processor with 6 modulated stereo delay lines

Roomverb M1: High quality reverb effects

Faze-1: Monophonic phase distortion synthesizer

Looper: Loop Machine

*The Chameleon is a 48Khz-based instrument

I look forward to playing around with these soundskins - though I feel Australis & Phoenix are the most attractive prospects, personally. Interestingly, soundskins are flashed to the instrument via MIDI sysex messages, taking about 1 minute to load, I'm sure this will give me the same nostalgia I get from sending a MIDI sample dump! Sounds may be edited on the rack itself, or via a software editor.

So what happened to the Chameleon? An mkII was announced with more IO, DSP power and a flashcard slot for storing soundskins, but was never released. A post on Music Thing from 2005 stated:

"It seems they've stopped developing the Chameleon MK2, and are going into 'hibernation' after selling off the last few Chameleons they have left. Having only sold 500 units, it looks like the forces of economics have closed in."

A shame, but technological process would soon eclipse the hardware plugin host, leaving the Chameleon a historic curio. Nowadays, instruments like Zynthian & the Arturia Astrolab follow this same path, hosting plugins within dedicated, reconfigurable hardware. Anyhow, see you next time for a look at some more DSP marvels!

Posted by MagicalSynthAdventure an expert in synthesis technology from last Century and Amiga enthusiast.

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