Amiga DSP sound cards - any creative uses?

[commodorejohn]

I'm just curious, as I was looking through the Amiga Hardware Database and noticing how many Amiga sound cards include a DSP, and that at least some of the Delfinas allow them to be reprogrammed. I gather from a quick glance around Aminet that these are largely used for standard reverb/chorus/equalizer-type effects processing, but I'm curious as to whether anybody made more creative use of them for synthesis or more unusual sound-warping. I see a couple massively-multichannel wavetable systems on Aminet, but that's kinda boring - I had a Microkorg running a 120MHz DSP that could do four-voice two-oscillator synthesis with an emulated resonant filter and custom signal patching/modulation, so I have to imagine that the 40-70MHz ones in some of these sounds cards could at least manage a convincing monosynth...

[Xanxi]

Don't know but it would be great if the Delfina's DSP could be used for something else than sound (picture processing, background file compression/decompression, ...) just like the Atari Falcon, because it is worthless as a sound processor due to the poor delfina.library.

[Matt_H]

Take a look at The Dave Haynie Archives to see what could have been with a DSP. There were plans to make it a true co-processor before Commodore imploded / management cancelled it.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, I've seen some of that. Shame they didn't go that route, Amiga software would probably have made better use of such a thing than the early Mac Quadras did (Apple having developed a "do it in software!" culture from the get-go on the Mac...)

[LaserBack]

DSP on amiga sound cards are not very powerful to be used outside playing MP3 files
what would be useful is using the powerful EMU20K1 chip present on the soundblaster x-fi series which is ultra fast
it operates at 400mhz...I'm sure is faster than any powerpc used on the amiga

[commodorejohn]

DSP performance metrics aren't really that comparable with CPU ones, though - they're designed for completely different tasks. A moderately-clocked MHz DSP can do a lot of math-heavy signal processing that an equivalently-clocked CPU would choke on, while a CPU can much more easily do general-purpose computation. And yeah, you could probably do more with an ultra-modern chip like the EMU20K1, but that's rather academic since no Amiga cards have the EMU20K1. As I said, plenty of interesting stuff has been done on such hardware; the microKORG is a full analog-modeling semi-modular polysynth on (I believe) a 120MHz DSP, so I don't see why 40-70MHz shouldn't suffice to do some fun stuff with.

[Matt_H]

There is a full Amiga devkit available for the M56002 on the Delfina, so one could conceivably write something cool for it.

[freqmax]

FFT analyze seems like an suitable application.

[Linde]

Soundblaster Live! cards from the late 90s had an EMU 10k1 on them. A chip like that would be great. There's a Windows driver project for the Live cards that lets you program and load effect plugins into the DSP, freely routing any sound source through them. Someone even built an analog modelling synthesizer with the DSP.

[amigakit]

Following on from our ZorRAM and MAS Player Evolution projects, we are in the early stages of product development on a new Amiga Zorro card with a modern DSP.

I would be grateful for valuable feedback from Amiga users out there on what features you would like to see on this card and what features you would like in the software.  

It's going to be a notable software and hardware development cost, so we want to get the features right for the Amiga Community.

I hope new project will be a catalyst for Amigans to be creative in sound and audio projects.

[Fransexy_]

Following on from our ZorRAM and MAS Player Evolution projects, we are in the early stages of product development on a new Amiga Zorro card with a modern DSP.

I would be grateful for valuable feedback from Amiga users out there on what features you would like to see on this card and what features you would like in the software.  

It's going to be a notable software and hardware development cost, so we want to get the features right for the Amiga Community.

I hope new project will be a catalyst for Amigans to be creative in sound and audio projects.

Good! how about a modern bridgeboard? vortex86 chip is a good candidate for it. it have low power consumption, it have good enough performance (up to 1ghz) , have isa bus (so would be easily to comunicate with isa/zorro slots and is not a very expensive. I am thinking in put a small headless vortesx86 motherboard inside the A1200 and control it with VNC on workbench but it would be cool if it could be able to have more integration with amiga like old bridgeboards (or even better integration). Do you will ask why? because it's cool to have Winxp on a window (or custom screen) on workbench at almost full speed :-D and control all inside the Amiga

Edit: and sorry commodorejohn for the offtopic

[spirantho]

Good! how about a modern bridgeboard?

A bridgeboard is not a possible idea I'm afraid - you'd need a 1GHz minimum CPU to be of use, and a fast PCI bus to run anything at all usefully, and an A1200 just doesn't have anywhere near the right electronics for that kind of thing. You'd end up with it the other way round - the PC would be using the A1200 as a dongle.

I'm not sure what that's got to do with the AmigaKit DSP card anyway...?

[Fransexy_]

A bridgeboard is not a possible idea I'm afraid - you'd need a 1GHz minimum CPU to be of use, and a fast PCI bus to run anything at all usefully, and an A1200 just doesn't have anywhere near the right electronics for that kind of thing. You'd end up with it the other way round - the PC would be using the A1200 as a dongle.

I'm not sure what that's got to do with the AmigaKit DSP card anyway...?

Vortex86 has up to 1ghz.The A1200 example is only a project that I have in mind only for fun but big box Amigas with zorro/isa will be doable

[Xanxi]

Following on from our ZorRAM and MAS Player Evolution projects, we are in the early stages of product development on a new Amiga Zorro card with a modern DSP.

I would be grateful for valuable feedback from Amiga users out there on what features you would like to see on this card and what features you would like in the software.  

It's going to be a notable software and hardware development cost, so we want to get the features right for the Amiga Community.

I hope new project will be a catalyst for Amigans to be creative in sound and audio projects.

Wonderful news!!
Would be great if such a card could hardware decompress MPEG or DVD.
What about using it to emulate other systems?

[Matt_H]

Following on from our ZorRAM and MAS Player Evolution projects, we are in the early stages of product development on a new Amiga Zorro card with a modern DSP.

I would be grateful for valuable feedback from Amiga users out there on what features you would like to see on this card and what features you would like in the software.  

It's going to be a notable software and hardware development cost, so we want to get the features right for the Amiga Community.

I hope new project will be a catalyst for Amigans to be creative in sound and audio projects.

Hot damn! That's wonderful news! While I'm dreaming, hardware wise, it would be neat if you can make it connectable via Zorro or Clockport (I think Jens Schoenfeld made some boards like this in the past) and if it could support both Zorro II and Zorro III. I'd also like to see onboard ports for audio mixing (4-pin audio from CD drives, some other connector for Paula, and 1-2 more?) to allow a single audio-out connection for the whole system. Software wise, AHI is essential, as is a driver compatible with the mpeg.device API (cd32mpeg.device, delfinampeg.device, etc.). And I suppose a software mixer will be needed, too.