NAMM 2023: Dave Rossum - Sound Semiconductor

US We talk to Dave Rossum about his life in designing chips for music 18/04/23

At NAMM 2023, Sonic State caught up with Dave Rossum, the founder of Sound Semiconductor, to discuss the company's exciting developments. Sound Semiconductor is a development from SSM, a company that designed synthesizer chips for the first Prophets in the early 1970s. SSM went on to produce chips for professional audio and was later acquired by Analog Devices. In 2016, Rossum, along with Marco Alpert and a little bit of seed capital from Universal Audio, started Rossum Electro Music. At NAMM, they met Dan Parks, who used to run SSM, and talked about the idea of resurrecting the classic SSM chips. Six months later, they started Sound Semiconductor, which includes some resurrections of the classic SSM chips and some new ideas.

Rossum explained that the analog chips give instruments their own unique character, which digital processing cannot achieve. Analog chips have variations from unit to unit, and the designer's job is to make those variations as small as possible while allowing those variations to give instruments their own individual character. Analog distortions are also natural, making them more appealing to the ears than digital algorithms that give aliasing, and Dave told us he finds designing analog chips to be more artistic and enjoyable than designing digital ones.

https://soundsemiconductor.com/

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