PIC Polyphonic Sample Player

[iipeacefrog]

Hello all. I've been trying to figure out a way to make a circuit (assumably with the dsPIC33) to play back multiple 16-bit 44.1 khz uncompressed .wav files from an sd card (or other appropriate low cost storage if necessary). The basic idea is to have 5 buttons or so each connected to a wav file on the sd chip (or storage)......each button can trigger a wav file, and they can be played simultaneously. I am guessing each file needs a separate DAC but i'm not sure exactly how the input flow and memory storage would work with the circuit. This is for a musical application so there can be no delay between the sample playback and button press, and the sound quality needs to be comparable to cd. Any suggestions or starting points? The closest thing i've found is the dsPIC wav player
uC Hobby » Blog Archive » dsPIC WAV Player
Thanks!

 

[Someone Electro]

I made that wav player. I sugest you use a 33F with internal DACs. You probably are going to need samples of only a few seconds so a fast external eeprom would do fine rather than a sd card. And if you are atempting to create a instrument it might be better to synthetisie the sound in real time from short samples in internal memory.

 

[missionjw]

What is cheaper?

I'm thinking about creating a gagdet that creates midi sounds or mp3 sounds.
What is cheaper in production costs? Midi or Mp3?
And is there a large difference in price?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I'm thinking about creating a gagdet that creates midi sounds or mp3 sounds.
What is cheaper in production costs? Midi or Mp3?
And is there a large difference in price?

They bear no resemblance to each other, but if you want MP3 - then just buy one, they are far cheaper than you could make one.

 

[futz]

I'm thinking about creating a gagdet that creates midi sounds or mp3 sounds.
What is cheaper in production costs? Midi or Mp3?
And is there a large difference in price?

Seems like I'm forever trying to explain this to people. MIDI is NOT sound!!! MIDI is data that tells sound generators, or synths, or samplers or whatever, what notes to generate, and for how long and how loud. It can also be used to send non-sound data, like mixer control or lighting control.

MIDI is very simple. The sound generation devices can be anything from very simple (cheap) to incredibly complex (hideously expensive).

MP3 is fairly complex, but so popular that it's reasonably inexpensive to do.