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Re: AlphaSyntauri
RichardK wrote:
Simon D. Williams wrote:
I got mine about 18 months ago... I _think_ you were bidding against me
then, but I might be wrong.
Sounds about right. Other people were probably bidding too, I know my
budget was tight on it.
From what I've read, and my own empirical observation, it seems like
that's really the Syntauri's strength. Even the generic organ presets
sound pretty good to my ear.
I've heard some sweet pads from it, very ghostly. It certainly seems to
have some ability, and credibility, as a digital synth.
The AlphaSyntauri was the first (only?) Apple II keyboard system that
implemented velocity sensing for the keyboard. To complement that,
they used a pair of digital oscillators for each voice, so that the
timbre could vary over the length of the note, and could be controlled
by the initial velocity.
The Mountain Music System provides 16 digital wavetable oscillators
which get their samples from Apple II memory using DMA. In addition
to the 8-bit samples, each oscillator has an 8-bit (IIRC) volume
control, so it is possible to get wide dynamic range while retaining
8-bit quantization noise.
The "volume" registers are reloaded by software, so arbitrary envelopes
are possible.
It is actually a very versatile 8-bit, 16-voice, wavetable synth that
was just waiting for someone to write some good software for it.
I first heard it demonstrated in 1981 at a Stanford seminar, and it
was amazing what a musician could do with it. I think that experience
may be one of the factors that led me to become interested in sound and
music for the Apple II in the first place. ;-)
By comparison, my RT.SYNTH is a "software only" synthesizer for the
Apple II that provides a 5-bit, 1-voice, wavetable synthesizer. ;-)
-michael
New, faster SUDOKU v2.0 solver for Apple II's!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
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