«SndSynt» is the codename of a simple musical training game computer. The device was based on an 80 MHz Motorola DSP56826. The firmware has full implementation of MIDI player. The synthesizer uses sound banks generated by other tools in my repository list (Sound Bank Compiler).
The SndSynt software started as part of a game for Nintendo N64. It was decided to make a separate product incorporating only the MIDI player and synthesizer from the N64 game, and adding a keyboard and control panel. The N64 software was based on binary-only libraries, which were completely re-engineered as (mostly) C code on the Motorola DSP.
- Was initially part of project for N64
- Initially based on closed-source as N64 libraries
- Ported as C code to custom DSP based hardware
- Sample-based audio synthesizer
- 16 bits per sample, mono/stereo
- Up to 32 channels of polyphony on DSP56826 80 MHz
- Up to 128 virtual channels
- Complete midi specification defined sequencer
- Has hardware MIDI interface
- Able to play Hardware MIDI stream
- Easy to port to any other hardware design (a single file is responsible for the hardware)
- Has LED display and a keyboard on GPIO connection for user interface
- Uses sound bank compiled with additional utility sound bank compiler (SBC)
- SBC uses text description format (include files) and produces SBC.bin and SBC.cfg
- Multiple source files can be combined with the ‘include’ feature, allowing independent development of different components in an instrument bank.
- SBC.bin contains the waveforms data collection.
- SBC.cfg contains serialized sound bank data definition structures, referring to data in SBC.bin.
Although the original requirement was for a simple musical training game device, the resulting MIDI synthesizer was capable of producing quite respectable sound for acoustic, amplified, and synthetic tracks.