Commodore Free 24/Commodore_Free_Issue_24_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv iman

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 9KB | 318 lines

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Interview with Hypersynth Team
http://www.hypersynth.com/hypersid.html


COMMODORE FREE.
Please introduce yourselves to our
readers

HYPERSID TEAM
My name is Iman Jalayerian the founder
of Hypersynth. Im an electronic
engineer and also a musician. C64 was
my first computer and actually I
learned programming with this machine
many years ago. Its been about 7 years
ago that I started to design
microprocessor based circuits and
professional audio gear.

CF. Why the Commodore SID chip, what
makes the chip so special, they all
sound different are all susceptible to
changes in temperature and give out
lots of noise so why re-create these
features?

HS. SID accent is characterized by the
special analogue design of its filter
part. Generally all analogue circuits
drift in high temperature and produce
instability, which is in reasonable
amounts not considered as a
malfunction, but in music application,
it would add a special character to
the sound, which cannot be produced or
emulated with digital algorithms.
However, if this phenomenon (drift)
affects the VCO part greatly causing
the sound pitch to detune too much, we
can speak of a negative and
undesirable effect. Since SID VCOs are
operating digitally, these are not
affected by this analogue drift
effect. Although there is a noticeable
amount of noise at the SID output
stage, these can be easily gated out
by most soft or hardware based noise
gates and equalizers.

CF. Can you tell our readers a little
history about Hypersynth

HS. I started the company when I
designed a MIDI controller (MD-8) for
my home studio and decided to make it
commercial, but due to the saturation
of the market of MIDI controllers, we
didnt release MD-8. We wanted to come
up with something unique and useful.
At this point the Idea of HyperSID was
born and Hypersynth became more
official along its development line.
Gradually we scaled up our members and
gathered a well qualified team to
maintain HyperSID and also to design
new products.

CF. How long did the whole thing take
to design, build and test?

HS. It took about 8 months to design
and debug the whole HyperSID project.
To achieve the maximum flexibility we
had to design hardware, firmware and
software (VSTi) all at the same time!

CF. So there is a VST frontend called
HyperSID and a hardware implementation
is controlled by the VST instrument,
the software does nothing on its own
just control the Hardware unit?

HS. Yes, the Software itself does not
generate any sound because our goal
was not an emulation of SID chip.

CF. So the Hardware must be used in
combination with the software?

HS. Yes, both are required; maybe in
the future versions the hardware
itself will be able to store the
presets, but in the current version
the hardware and software must be used
together.

CF. what hardware/software
requirements are needed to run the
software, and does the software run on
any other system?

HS. Minimum system requirements:
Processor: Pentium III/AMD with SSE
support
Processor speed: 1.2 GHz
RAM (Cache): 256 MB RAM
Sound Card: Standard with MIDI port or
any other MIDI interface.
Operating system: Windows 2000, XP or
Vista
Host application: Cubase VST 3.7 or
higher or other VST 2.0 compatible
host software (FL-Studio,Sonar,).

CF. Have you seen the prophet64
hardware device, and did you purchase
one?

HS. Yeah, Ive heard about it but sadly
I didnt get the chance to purchase
one.

CF. But you have given away the
schematics to design the hardware and
the VST instrument is free, hey guys
you wont make much money doing this!

HS. Our intension was not to sell this
project; it was meant to be a "DIY"
project for the electronic hobbyists.
But amazingly we received a lot of
requests from musicians who were
desperate to get their hands on
HyperSID without going through the
difficulty of constructing one, so we
decided to design a limited numbers of
ready to use HyperSID synths, these
units can be purchased from the
website.

CF. How many SID chips can be
installed in the hardware unit?

HS. Only one SID can be installed. As
the SID production line is now
discontinued we must save our stock
for future so it is a great risk to
increase the polyphony. Although
Mini-Moog and Arp2600 (some of the
most powerful analogue synthesizers)
are monophonic!

CF. Can more than one Hardware unit be
controlled at any one time?

HS. Yes, you can open more than one
instance of Software and there is an
option to select the MIDI output
device on the GUI, so every instance
of VSTi can control a specific
HyperSID HW unit but you need to have
a MIDI interface with multiple MIDI
output ports.

CF. Why not just create an interface
to directly connect a C64 to a PC and
control it directly so our readers
doesnt have to remove the SID from his
or her machine?

HS. Our objective with HyperSID was to
have the maximum stability using the
SID chip and to minimize the latency
as much as possible. This would
require direct control over the
hardware hence creating the circuit.
By the way, HyperSID product is
shipped with a SID chip, so users wont
have to look for one or own a C64!

CF. Has anyone from the Commodore
community contacted you and what were
there comments?

HS. Unfortunately, we were not lucky
at this point in time, but the project
it relatively new so we are hoping for
some positive comments.

CF. What further plans do you have for
the Hypersynth?

HS. Beside HyperSID, Several new
products are being developed. Indeed I
can see a brilliant future for our
company. The most significant product
currently being developed is a
synthesizer which is inspired from the
SID chips internal architecture and
perhaps it could become an improved
version of SID with more polyphony and
many new capabilities. So we have a
lot of hard work at our hands.

CF. Do you know of any professional
musicians use the HyperSID?

HS. Commonly professional musicians
use lot of vintage synthesizers, this
also applies to most of our customers.
I would like to mention Mr. Frank
Neumann, a musician with outstanding
activities in C64 scene for several
years. It was Frank who influenced us
to build the rack mounted version of
HyperSID HW unit and giving us hope
and courage to develop this project.
On the other side we have received
offers from well-known sound designers
for building preset bank for HyperSID
with their signature. We hope to
release these preset banks in the near
future.

CF. How was the VST software interface
created?

HS. HyperSID VSTi was created by
Synthmaker, which is a powerful
platform for the modular development
of software synthesizers. Several
people were involved in the software
interface, MIDI engine programming and
GUI design, the project programming
leader was Mr. Aram Azhari who is our
most vital and respectable company
member. Every parameter on the SID
chip was implemented in VST interface
and a custom built protocol was
designed in order to communicate
between VSTi and a dedicated hardware
(HyperSID HW unit) via MIDI port.

CF. Why use both hardware and software
why not just create a VST instrument
modelling the SID chip so no hardware
is needed?

HS. The point is there are many
differences between analogue
synthesizers and the emulated ones.
There are several software based SID
synthesizers but only your ears can
judge between the two. The best thing
about digitally emulated synthesizers
is accuracy and at the same time their
weakest point. The fact that digital
is accurate makes it all look the same
and sound the same. But the analogue
synths sound more unique because of
their special analogue chips
characteristics.

CF. If our user wanted to order the
HyperSID what is the current price
with shipping, and these can be
ordered directly from the website?

HS. Current price for HW unit is 349$
(shipping included) and it can be
ordered from our website at
www.hypersynth.com .

CF. Has the HyperSID been reviewed in
any professionally produced music or
computer magazines?

HS. Yes, you can read some lines in
Sound & Recording magazine. Issue
7/2008, Article "Love The Machines".

CF. Do you still use Commodore
machines, and do you still follow the
Commodore scene?

HS. Unfortunately not, Focusing on the
current projects at our company keeps
us very busy, but if we get a chance
we would love to do that.

CF. Do you think any other Computer
hardware could be utilized this way?

HS. I dont think so, because without
doubt SID is the most powerful
synthesizer chip which was used as a
sound interface for home computers.
The main advantage is the mixed-mode
architecture (Analogue-Digital) of the
SID chip core which is mostly Digital
in other chips.

CF. Finally would you like to add any
of your own comments?

HS. It is a great honour for us to
become a part of SID history in
Commodore free magazine, at the end we
just want to thank Bob Yannes and his
team the original designer of SID chip
who never thought his invention would
become so popular in the world of
electronic music production.