This is a very interesting idea. A concept I've toyed with quite a bit, although I'm trying to emulate the Synclavier sound.
What it all comes down to is cost. To do a a VST style emulation is fairly easy and straightforward, although not ever good enough sonically.
However a hardware/software platform is much more complex, simply because you're dealing with a hardware prototype programming environment.
All my efforts lead to the same answer. Yes it is possible, but it's going to be very very expensive. Far more expensive than buying a used Fairlight or Synclavier.
What would make this extra price ticket worth it?
Perhaps a super sampler with, 100kHz (or more), disk streaming, analog filters, modern Mac environment?
Tobias
dvdborn wrote:
There is also another possibility to emulate the sound of the IIx more faithfully.
If someone would build a firewire/USB audio interface with 8 8 bit D/A-channels that use a
variable sample clock to transpose the sample of each channel and has an analogue filter for
each channel, using eg. the CEM chips from the DSI Prophet '08/Evolver.
I have no idea how hard it is to design an audio interface with todays technology that uses
old 8 bit technology. But I'm guessing that it isn't asking too much from the technology. Or
am I mistaken?
The front end can than be a faithfull emulation of the IIx's system as a VST or stand alone
application that drives the external audio interface.
David
http://dvdborn.blogspot.com