CPU Power of FV-1 compared with other reverberator hardware?
Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:17 pm
Hi all:
I was reading an interesting article in a 1985 issue of the Computer Music Journal, by Anthony Agnello and Ed Hage, describing the architecture of the Eventide SP-2016. I didn't make a copy of the article, but from what I remember the "DSP" part of the system had a pretty sparse architecture by modern standards:
16x16 multiplier
16 general purpose registers
128 DSP instructions/sample at 40 KHz sampling rate
2 cycle access to delay RAM (but it seems that you could perform other operations while waiting for RAM access).
An example program, implementing a simple Schroeder reverb (4 combs w/o filtering, 2 allpasses), took 24 instructions. Apparently 5 of these reverbs could be run consecutively on the SP-2016.
In comparison, the FV-1 looks pretty darned good, especially for a $10 part. Allpass delays only take 2 cycles on the FV-1, compared to 4 cycles on the SP-2016.
Having said that, there are algorithms that were running on the SP-2016 (the Stereo Room, for example), that are eagerly sought today. For that matter, some of the simpler programs for the FV-1 still sound pretty good (like the reverb with 4 allpasses and 2 delays), while using only about 1/4 of the total instructions available per sample. This makes me think that many of the older reverberators were more dependent on good algorithm design than on particularly powerful hardware.
So, does anyone have any idea how the FV-1 stacks up against reverberation hardware of past years or present?
Thanks,
Sean Costello
I was reading an interesting article in a 1985 issue of the Computer Music Journal, by Anthony Agnello and Ed Hage, describing the architecture of the Eventide SP-2016. I didn't make a copy of the article, but from what I remember the "DSP" part of the system had a pretty sparse architecture by modern standards:
16x16 multiplier
16 general purpose registers
128 DSP instructions/sample at 40 KHz sampling rate
2 cycle access to delay RAM (but it seems that you could perform other operations while waiting for RAM access).
An example program, implementing a simple Schroeder reverb (4 combs w/o filtering, 2 allpasses), took 24 instructions. Apparently 5 of these reverbs could be run consecutively on the SP-2016.
In comparison, the FV-1 looks pretty darned good, especially for a $10 part. Allpass delays only take 2 cycles on the FV-1, compared to 4 cycles on the SP-2016.
Having said that, there are algorithms that were running on the SP-2016 (the Stereo Room, for example), that are eagerly sought today. For that matter, some of the simpler programs for the FV-1 still sound pretty good (like the reverb with 4 allpasses and 2 delays), while using only about 1/4 of the total instructions available per sample. This makes me think that many of the older reverberators were more dependent on good algorithm design than on particularly powerful hardware.
So, does anyone have any idea how the FV-1 stacks up against reverberation hardware of past years or present?
Thanks,
Sean Costello