Xref: utzoo rec.music.makers:5580 sci.electronics:8616
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!orca!anvil!stank
From: stank@anvil.WV.TEK.COM (Stan Kalinowski)
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: home-made digital effects
Message-ID: <5348@orca.WV.TEK.COM>
Date: 15 Nov 89 00:57:39 GMT
References: <20445@brunix.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@orca.WV.TEK.COM
Reply-To: stank@anvil.WV.TEK.COM (Stan Kalinowski)
Followup-To: rec.music.makers
Distribution: usa
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR
Lines: 40

In article <20445@brunix.UUCP> bk@cs.brown.edu () writes:
>Does anyone have any experience with building simple digital effects for
>audio signals.  More specifically, I play guitar, and I would like to
>build an effects box for my electronic guitar.  Something based on delay

My advise to you is that such an undertaking is not worth the effort,
unless, of course, your goal is to learn how to design digital signal
processing systems.  The days of homebrew effects boxes are numbered,
the state of the art has advanced well beyond the skills and equipment
of the average musician/technician.  In a recent issue of Electronic
Musician, Craig Anderton made this very same point, and I agree with
him.  (In case you didn't know Craig wrote a book about building
guitar effects pedals in the 70's, I think it was titled "Electronic
Projects For Musicians", it was once very popular and may be out of
print now.)  Craig's point in the EM article was that homebrew pedals
made sense when the quality of the commercially available pedals was
poor and they were costly, but the new designs are very reliable and
very often cost less than the price of the parts you would have to buy
if you built it yourself.  You should also consider that most digital
effects boxes use a specialized DSP processor chip, so if you wanted to
"roll your own", you would likely need access to a software
development environment for the DSP processor.

Having said all that, I don't want to discourage you from trying to
build a simple digital delay yourself.  I simply suggest that you
examine your goals before doing so.  If you want to learn, then it
would be a worthwhile project, but if you want to save money, then
don't bother, your time would be better spent shopping around for the
best price on a used digital delay.  By the way, if you do want to get
into digital signal processing, I would recommend getting access to a
computer that has the hardware already (like the NeXt box), and
concentrate on learning how to program the DSP processor.  The
software is the really interesting part, the conversion hardware is
not very exciting, technically.

							stank
US Mail: Stan Kalinowski, Tektronix, Inc., Interactive Technologies Division
         PO Box 1000, MS 61-028, Wilsonville OR 97070   Phone:(503)-685-2458
e-mail:  {ucbvax,decvax,allegra,uw-beaver}!tektronix!orca!stank
    or   stank@orca.WV.TEK.COM