Design Team Member: Peter Olijnyk
Supervisor: Stanley P. Lipshitz
Background
Since the invention of the solid body electric guitar in the mid-twentieth century, there has been tremendous interest and many advances in the development of effects designed to expand the sonic boundaries of the instrument. All electric instruments rely on amplification to increase the signal generated by the pickups when the instrument is played. During the amplification stage, a device can be introduced to change or colour the sound. Such a device falls under the general heading of sound processing. The electric guitar therefore, provided engineers and performers for the first time the ability to electronically alter and refine the characteristics of their sound.
Early effects were developed using simple analog components, or were generated with sound recording equipment trickery. Today, there exist both simple analog guitar pedals and complicated multiple digital effect units that not only reproduce the old analog effects, but also offer new features that were previously unavailable in the analog domain.
Project description
Without spending a considerable amount of money, amateur musicians have little or no access to the pleasure that effects processing can add to their playing. The goal of this 4th year Systems Design Workshop is to combine the advantages of desktop computers and digital multi-effects units while eliminating their respective disadvantages:
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Advantages - the high availability and processing power of desktop computers and the advanced features and variety of effects found in ‘all-in-one’ modern digital multi-effect processors.
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Disadvantages – high cost of digital multi-effect units and lack of integrated real-time effects processing software designed specifically for guitar.
The goal is to produce software that can convert a properly equipped desktop computer into a digital multi-effect guitar sound processor.
Design methodology
The project is broken down into four main tasks:
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Researching various common effects. This includes learning about how they sound, their applications and how they alter a signal.
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Obtaining or developing algorithms that can be applied in real-time
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Implementation of the algorithms in non-real-time (MATLAB)
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Software design and development for a real-time implementation on a desktop computer.
The software will be developed for a PC running Microsoft Windows 95 or later, equipped with a soundcard capable of producing full-duplex audio (input and output at the same time).