yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA

Hey all, This doesn't fit the 'chip' mold very well, more of a gray area like a retro/old skool game music sound. You decide
  So for a long time there have been projects that use a WaveBlaster daughter cards as a stand alone General Midi voice, somewhat like a Roland MT 32 or a Yamaha MU 80 tone generators. I've wanted to build one on and off since I ran across these projects years ago, but just couldn't drop the coin on a nice db50XG card.
  So just recently I learned of a (new to me) chip, the Dream synth SAM 2195 (was ASAM 2195) that is a compact midi voice!.
  The first time I had run across the Fluxamasynth, I thought is was like the shields that use the VS1052 MP3/Wav/Midi decoder chip. The VS chip sounds ok but not great; good for a portable device but not for the studio.
  Well I was wrong, very wrong. The Dream chip is sweet
Here's a sample from Wavetable.nl
Duke Nuckem 3D Intro
There are lot of examples there to check out smile

  There is a Belgium company, Serdaco BVBA, is producing a Waveblaster board as well as a connector-less version.
DreamBlaster Synth S1
  Stateside Modern Device has an Arduino shield, the Fluxamasynth, based on the Dream synth chip
Fluxamasynth
They are about the same price, $35 USD, so the shipping was the deciding factor for me.
  Both boards are super easy to interface: TTL Midi in, Vcc and GND and BANG out comes stereo line level goodness. With 250 plus midi sounds (GM bank and MT 32 bank)  And effects And filters, theres lots to play with. 32 to 68 voice poly depending on the effects used.
  Here are some links to check:
Midibox.org thread
and
Electro-Music.com
  So I'm off to build up an opto coupler Midi In and PSU so I can fire up this bad boy wink
Yogi

PS- the manufacturer has replaced the chip with a new model, so ATM prices for the boards have dropped (guessing till NOS is depleted). Hoping that boards will be redesigned for the new chip, but who knows.

lain2097
Offline
Montreal, Canada

Admittedly this is cool.

But isn't the DB50XG & SU60XG just the same as a MU10 which is already stand-alone? That or I completely misunderstand what this is?

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA

The db50XG is a daughter board for Waveblaster sound cards and can be fitted for stand alone like the MU10. My biggest road block is the price, though XG midi is sooo very good.  Current listing for the card are higher then a used MU. The NEC XR 385 card is a db60XG clone and for awhile were available via ebay for about $50 but the NOS source seems to have dried up. These are def my first choice sound wise.
   The best value I've found for XG midi are Yamaha YMF724 based sound cards for $15, but these aren't stand alone. There is an add bonus of an OPL core in these chips also, so there's FM fun there too wink
  The Dream Synth chip is a compromise of cost vs sound set, so for me, I can play with it stand alone without allot of cash.
Yogi

Matej
Offline
Solar System

This looks very good. I have two AWE32 without WAVETABLE boards... So definitely I will buy those.