Home Products Free DSP Programs Support Forums Knowledge Base Distributors   About   Contact  

Informal Notes on DSP using the FV-1 Signal Processor

The FV-1 DSP chip is a great solution for stand-alone audio effects applications. The single chip solution can be dropped into systems as an analog part, with little or no knowledge of digital design techniques. Further, although the clock frequencies on-chip are rather high, the FV-1 has been specially designed to minimize any radio frequency interference that might cause problems during compliance testing. This feature makes the FV-1 truly analog from every external point of view. You really can plunk the part down on a PCB and wire it up, drive it with analog signals and take outputs off to other analog circuitry. You can even put it on a single sided PCB without being overly concerned about RFI. Time-to-market with the FV-1 is ridiculously short.

The 8 internal programs may be used directly for guitar amps, karaoke systems, mixer reverb, sub-bass generation and so forth, but the range of effects available is unlimited with an added EEPROM. The programs stored in the EEPROM must be individually written, which means understanding the FV-1 internal architecture, adding an appreciation for some simple psychoacoustic phenomena, and mastering the rather short and simple SpinAsm assembler mnemonics and syntax. The SpinSemi website is intended to help designers through this process without the thousand page reference manuals that are common with general purpose DSP chips. In this corner of the site, Keith's Notes, I will try to unravel the subject of audio effects DSP and implementation through the FV-1 in a simple and hopefully fun manner.

My name is Keith Barr, and I am an electronics design addict. Since an early age I've been fascinated with tubes, tape recorders, analog electronics and  transducers, then microcomputers, digital techniques, audio engineering and products of all sorts. For 30 years musicians and audio engineers have used products I have either designed or inspired, which to me has been a great pleasure and a high honor. The FV-1 is my most recent chip in the audio area, the result of intensive research over the past four years. I sincerely hope it can be a valuable addition to your product inspirations, and that whatever you build is well accepted and that the process is satisfying.

I am writing this area of the SpinSemi site in a rather unprofessional and informal manner, but this is my style; you will be hopefully impressed by our data sheets, the application manuals and so forth, but here, you will hopefully find a more personable presentation of 'How to Program the FV-1'.

Any comments may be directed here, for I am interested in any omissions, oversights or misprints, or hey, downright incorrect stuff that you may find within. I hope you learn a lot and and have fun while browsing through these pages.

Spin Semiconductor