FPGA synth question

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

   Field-programmable gate arrays would seem to be teh hotness in synth-building projects these days.
Could someone please explain to me the advantages of a FPGA synth, other than that the circuits are relatively low-cost, hackable, and non-analog?

Yes, I Googled. Thanks.

Author	Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic
Ajay Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member Joined: February 01 2013 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 221	Topic: FPGA synth question Posted: February 05 2013 at 05:36
	Field-programmable gate arrays would seem to be teh hotness in synth-building projects these days. Could someone please explain to me the advantages of a FPGA synth, other than that the circuits are relatively low-cost, hackable, and non-analog? Yes, I Googled. Thanks.

engineer Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Newbie Joined: March 27 2013 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 5	Posted: March 27 2013 at 12:55
	FPGAs for instance can emulate analog behaviour with a finer resolution than DSPs (some ns) overcoming the limits of the sample rate and it's granularity. The output does not necessarily have to be 192kHz, but can be much higher directly driving the AA filter with some MHz -> less tradeoff regarding the edge frequency and non linearity of the the anti aliasing filter, but the advantage is small only. The available resources are better invested into the number of voices. The biggest advantage of FPGAs is pipelined processing, when used correctly. A current FPGA runs on e.g. 200 MHz and produces around >4000 channels for sample rate of 48kHz. To use 192kHz DACs, e.g. 1024 channel are processed during one sample period. My current synth offers in double structure 8192 voices. You might get impression here: http://www.96khz.org/oldpages/vamodelling2.htm