Elektron Musical Instruments

My SidStation is, as I'm sure anyone who owns one will know, an 
excellent source of dirty and wild sounds. I use it more as a noise 
generator than a synthesiser per se.

But the only thing that really annoys me about its sound is the 
constant hiss. Whether you're playing it or just letting it rumble 
along, there is almost always a tape hiss transmitted with the sound. 
Occasionally I manage to get rid of it with cunning use of the 
low/bandpass filter but usually that also removes the higher 
qualities from a sound I wanted to preserve! So I EQ it using 
SoundForge's more complicated filter, to try and salvage as much of 
the SidStation's sound as I can whilst still cleaning away the hiss.

Does anyone know if the hiss is inherent to 8-bit synthesis?

What about replacing the SidStation's phono output with a SP/DIF one? 
I'm no technician but if it were possible to get that modification 
done, would it improve the sound quality?

--- In elektron-users@yahoogroups.com, "Col Dee" <coldee@m...> wrote:
> Does anyone know if the hiss is inherent to 8-bit synthesis?

Just inherent to the Sidstation, I believe.

> What about replacing the SidStation's phono output with a SP/DIF one? 
> I'm no technician but if it were possible to get that modification 
> done, would it improve the sound quality?

I usually just run it through the gate machine on the MD, then use the
filter values to get rid of the hiss.  Then again, sometimes I like
the hiss :-)

Anyway, I'm sure you could do something similar in hardware with a
nice gate/compressor.

Joe.

On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 06:13:21PM -0000, Col Dee wrote:
> Does anyone know if the hiss is inherent to 8-bit synthesis?

it's inherent to having analog and digital too close on the same piece
of silicon.

> What about replacing the SidStation's phono output with a SP/DIF one?
> I'm no technician but if it were possible to get that modification
> done, would it improve the sound quality?

the sound is inherent in the chip itself.  the only way to truly quiet
it down would be to re-layout the silicon.

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@...
  "Isn't an OS that openly and proudly admits to come directly from Holy
   UNIX better than a cheap UNIX copycat that needs to be sued in court
   to determine what the hell it really is?"  --  Michael Sokolov

> it's inherent to having analog and digital too close on the same 
piece of silicon... the sound is inherent in the chip itself.

Oh well, who cares.