XCore Exchange

Just curious about the Dream chip from Atmel.

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/devic ... ily_id=618

I used to own a Game Teather 64 sound card, which used DLS bank of sounds, and had a great sound. It was years ago, and I even made songs using only the card and Cakewalk Pro Audio. ;-) It had nice digital filters and some kinda-good effects.

I wonder if it would be easy to get a single Dream chip and interface with a XMOS chip via software? Just curious, as I don't even know how to get the chips anyway...

I know a lot of good quality companies are using dream chips, like the Johannus organs and even some keyboards from M-Audio, but I can't confirm. (can someone confirm)

Anyway, just wondering about this, as a few years ago I was dreaming of a project using only Dream chips to make a killer sample-workstation synth. :ugeek: (even with Wavesequencing, as its just a mater of mixing waveforms the correct way to get WSeq from a Dream Chip)

Wk

Atmel can't even supply their ordinary chips, so I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to become available. It might be possible to implement those functions in software on an XMOS device, anyway.

Yup, after posting I did some searches with google and couldn't find the prices of either Dream chips, only quotations. So I guess those are not in stock on any online supplier... :?

In any event, I remember an old DOS program called AXS, which would turn my old Pentium 100mhz (no 3D-Now, SSE or any parallel SIMM codes) into a powerful VA Sequencer Workstation + Sampler with 2 effects. It was pretty simple, but I made some nice tunes with only that program. It was my first legit software purchase, I remember using my parents credit-card. :lol: The disk came on the mail, and had some severe protection to it. Now the program is free and can be downloaded at the following link:

http://www.resolutionaudio.nl/

http://www.resolutionaudio.nl/Files/Axs ... Beta_4.zip





Wk

leon_heller wrote:Atmel can't even supply their ordinary chips, so I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to become available. It might be possible to implement those functions in software on an XMOS device, anyway.

Arrow seems to have some of their chips in stock, but most of the DSP's are allocated. FWIW, the DSP's are non-trivial in the extreme to program, they require a great deal of support from the France office--which is no doubt why they're not in distribution.

Paul
(ex M-Audio guy)

Ahh, good to know, specially from an Ex M-Audio guy. ;-) I have the ProKeys which uses the chip, and it sounds great. Too bad there's no midi-input, so I can't use with an external sequencer. :-(

Are there any alternatives to the dream chip that are easy to use?

Wk

Huh? I know i'm late, but most of those are microcontrollers + DSP, and thus can work rather autonomously. You get an optional ROM from DREAM with their CleanWave soundset, MIDI interpreting and synthesis software. There have been dozens of WaveBlaster-compatible daughterboards, which is basically, MIDI TTL goes in, line audio comes out; consisting out of a DREAM 9703 or 9708 or so, a ROM, a pinch of RAM, and a DAC, and that's it.

Also the Dream chips are now available at Profusion PLC, see

http://www.profusionplc.com/pro/gex/pro ... prdtyp=dsp