Line6 Tonecore DSP

[hibrasil]

Line6 have revealed some more details about the tonecore programmable pedals:

http://line6.com/tcddk/

the programmer is $199.99 and each blank module is $34.99. Of course anyone you sell a module to will also need a dock which is $69.99 for a mono and $79.99 for stereo.

It seems there is only one option for the blank module, which looks like it has 6 pots and two switches.

oli

[bvesco]

Cool looking stuff. I've been looking forward to the official pricing info for a long time.

[obiwanjacobi]

It looks very cool, although I'm not quite into the language they use (what's a module?). As I understand it you have this general purpose programmable digital pedal and an developer kit to program it with. Sounds very cool. I would like a 19" rack version of that with multiple effects, banks and programs and routing and, and, and...

[Shane Sanders]

If all that ever comes of it are some unique delay pedals, I'll be happy. I love my Line6 tonecore pedals for what they are, but having some different flavors will be cool.

[valhallasound]

Does anyone know if there will be a support forum for the Tonecore Development Kit? I know that the kit ships with a parametric EQ example, which looks like it is based around a state-variable filter. I am unsure how extensive the documentation will be, especially around using the RAM in the Tonecore dock. Is the RAM addressed as X or Y memory, or via some other method? What is the access speed?

I have the Developer Kit on order, and received a call from Line 6 saying that it will ship around August 15th.

It will be interesting to see how powerful this pedal can be. The DSP56364 doesn't have much data RAM on board, so programming modules using block processing might be difficult. I would think that FFT based algorithms would be difficult as well, but the Electro-Harmonix MicroPOG uses the same DSP, and it seems like it is using some frequency domain technique, or at least some multi-rate algorithm (wavelet?).

Sean Costello

[Muzik 4 Machines]

anyone want to make and audio driven synth?

[a_grey_angel]

would phase vocoding be too much for this pedal? or granular based effects? maybe a gate and hold (i.e. a slow gear plus a freezing effect)?

[wax+wire]

granular processing [i.e. a granulator of some sought] should be do able.

it seems a good idea. we need more granulators on guitars.

[runagate]

Looks cool, if terribly pricey for what it does.

But it's sad, and scary, to see so many people falling at the feet of hardware and expecting it to perform the miraculous feats our computers do...

if modular plug-ins could just be popped in a little, rugged stompbox they already would have been.

Course, then you miss out on the Baldwian evolution of crowdsourcing sound design and plug-in dev saints.

[valhallasound]

Looks cool, if terribly pricey for what it does.

$199 is NOT expensive for a DSP development environment. Not even close. The standard Freescale EVM is $750, plus $250 for each processor under question. There is a new $150 development kit from Freescale, the Symphony Soundbite. Still, can you throw it through a window like the Tonecore platform? Having a DSP development kit that is physically robust, and musical instrument ready, is pretty impressive.

If you want to develop any useful code for ADI or TI DSPs, you are looking at a $6000 and up outlay, at least if you use the official* compilers, evaluation boards, and the high-speed emulators that you need to get any work done. Plus, the evaluation boards are nowhere near robust, and the A/D and D/A inputs are often horrible. Trying to develop a tube amp emulator on a hardware platform that has noisy inputs, with lots of DC offset, is no fun.

As far as this versus computers, what do you think will be running 10 years from now? A VST/AU plugin that is programmed today, or the Tonecore hardware? Assuming that the Tonecore Development kits ever ship - I've been waiting a long time.

Mind you, I am not expecting that C code will work in this box without a lot of massaging. And by "massaging" I mean "converting every critical inner loop to 56K assembly." The 56K compiler is not known for generating efficient assembly from C code. Most DSPs work best with hand-coded assembly, with the possible exception of the C67xx series from TI, which has such a complicated instruction word that it is probably best to leave things to the compiler, and put a lot of "hints" in your C code.

Sean Costello

* There is a Linux toolchain for the ADI Blackfin DSP. However, it is not exactly "official" - there is a group that works on the support at ADI, but I am not sure that it is "supported by ADI."

[runagate]

My VSTs from 5 years ago I still use, notably Mr. Alias, my PC's processor makes Tonecore's look like a complete joke and I imagine in 10 years I'll be using some other plug-in standard with open source DSP algorithms that blow the ones of today out of the water as the community of online experimentalists who already share and learn together grows and computers are vastly more powerful then. Hopefully we'll all be on open source OS by then, too. And Tonecore will be a Speak'n'Spell. A Boss stompbox from 1985 works great now, but it does what it does and that's all. Whereas in my DSP toolkit of 2000+ freeware VSTs I can do not only all the things I ever dreamed of but things I still don't even have a name for.

I'm not comparing the price to other DSP chip options. I'm merely saying they're toys compared to a PC, just atavistic hardware fetishism.

I am still excited that it's happening, though. I'm certainly not going to buy it, but I'm hardware-incompetant whereas others are computer-incompetant.

[justin3am]

Dude, TI DSPs that run at the equivalent of a 333Mhz PII are selling for $10 a unit in the numbers that Line6 are looking to make! 32bit floating point DSP chips that require only very simple controllers. We're talking about processors that (without worrying about the overhead of an OS, DAW software, GUI libraries) can run the equivalent of Guitar Rig in the same space! Including limited convolution running from internal memory which is equally cheap these days.

I have a feeling that small DSP based solutions are going to become increasingly popular as creative music music environments become increasingly mobile.

[valhallasound]

My VSTs from 5 years ago I still use, notably Mr. Alias, my PC's processor makes Tonecore's look like a complete joke

Cool! How much does your computer processor cost? The Tonecore DSP costs $5 in quantities of 1000.

and I imagine in 10 years I'll be using some other plug-in standard with open source DSP algorithms that blow the ones of today out of the water as the community of online experimentalists who already share and learn together grows and computers are vastly more powerful then.

But what if you really liked the sound of a 10 year old plugin, that you can only run on some old computer held together with duct tape and a prayer, as the operating systems and plugin standards changed too much in the meantime?

Hopefully we'll all be on open source OS by then, too.

Hopefully all the good plugins you like will be open source too. And someone knows how to port the source. And that there is no assembly language optimization that was great for 10 years before (i.e. now), but has no meaning for the processors in the future. Take a look at the Quake III Arena source - it will run, but it has some very specific x86 optimizations, that are not very useful with today's SIMD processors, and the compilers designed for those processors.

A Boss stompbox from 1985 works great now, but it does what it does and that's all.

My Univox Superfuzz from 1968 works great now. My Traynor amp from 1973 works great now. Try running Pro Tools plugins from the mid-90's. Or finding a computer that can run Supercollider 2 orchestras. Or Music 11, or Music 360, or all of the computer music languages that came before Csound.

For that matter, try reading the MEDIA that the old computer music and early digital stuff was recorded/stored on. John Chowning had to reconstruct his 4-track composition from scraps of analog tape - no machines could play the digital recordings, and no computer could run the language it was composed in, or the punch cards that were probably used to program it. My old boss had to use a commercial data recovery service to open up a Sybase drive with his computer music PhD thesis work on it, and that drive was 8 years old. We assume that CDs will work 10 years from now, but that may be overly optimistic.

I'm not comparing the price to other DSP chip options. I'm merely saying they're toys compared to a PC, just atavistic hardware fetishism.

"Atavistic" hardware fetishism has been a part of a lot of the interesting musical movements of the last few decades. Cultural evolution tends not to be teleological. The fact that the DX7 was a more "evolved" piece of hardware than a TB-303 has no reflection on the quality of music produced with the tools. A lot of good music has been made with tools that were considered "toys" at the time the music was made.

As far as being "toys," this does not reflect that the clock speed of a DSP can't be compared to the clock speed of a PC processor, as the DSP has a lot of specialized instructions that make it run audio DSP operations faster for a given clock:

- Branchless conditionals. Instead of needing a branching if() statement, you can use conditional moves, which take a single cycle. Used for level detection in compressors and the like, makes things way easier.
- Built in clipping operations, or saturating math. No if() needed for clamping things to desired bounds. Useful for cheaper polynomial waveshaping, where you need to clip within bounds.
- Circular buffer management. Wavetables and delay memory have wraparound managed in a nice way.

Obviously, the above advantages do not mean that DSPs can outperform a CPU solution. Any algorithm that can run on a 100 MHz DSP can run on a modern 2 GHz CPU. However, can you physically step on your computer? Can you buy another computer for $150? Will your computer run 30 years in the future?

Sean Costello (who bought an iMac to run Supercollider 2 in 2002. The thing stopped booting in late 2005. Apple doesn't make any OS9 compatible computers anymore.)

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

interesting match...

[runagate]

Sorry I didn't notice this thread having been responded to the last couple of times I hit refresh tonight.

$5 in batches of 1000 is pretty hard to argue with (I don't recall how much my processor cost, but I bet it was a lot - my PC was the most expensive thing I ever bought in my entire life!). I thought an enormous amount before commiting to the pieces of hardware I now use, as well as the software. Months of research, embarassingly copious notes and diagrams...

Nonetheless, yes that's a merely a toy to me. For that matter my core duo 3.0 Ghz is, much as I feared it would be, completely inadequate for what I originally had in mind. My PC can only take what I do by rendering about 5 times, and only for 2 to 3 minute songs.

I'm not talking about a couple synth or effects emulations in a chain. I'm talking enormous, realtime modular chains of automated DSP processes. Which Tonecore most certainly will not be doing, and a stompbox interface will not be the interface because I'm thinking about the future, the looooong view. I've been thinking in that mode since long, long before anything I can currently accomplish was even a speck on the horizon. Notably I think everything that existed prior to the year 2002 for computers was a joke. I dismissed it all out of hand until it seemed promising suddenly around the time Cool Edit started loading the first VSTs.

But here's the rub: unlike on a hardware platform, even one that's open source, there's a bajillion people assiduously creating, every day, all over the globe, crazy DSP processes to share with anyone who cares to download.

And that requires an enormous user base using standardized tools. I wish to hell that it had nothing to do with a proprietary Steinberg plug-in format, using an antiquared 1983 musical data protocol (Dave Smith, I'm sorry we haven't even caught up to your thoughts in all the intervening time!), and most especially I wish it had nothing to do with Windows. But history just keeps building upon technological lock-in right now. There's too many people savvy to this for it to remain true forever. And I'm afraid that a Von Neuman device, not a specialized chip that only a certain subsection of experts, is where this evolution is going to take place. The engineering types that make these brilliant algorithms and codes are notorious for not being able to bring to life the potential in their own creations. I know, I design sounds for these charitable angels all the time.

You make many intelligent points about these DSP chips. And I have always been quite aware of the onrushing obsolescence of my favorite VSTs. The specific plug-ins might be retired (something I've not expereienced yet, in fact I still use the first plug-in I downloaded even out of the 2000 I've got installed but I know that's odd and lucky) but the ever-expanding collective archive of algorithms isn't going anywhere.

The TB-303, like the oboe del amor, creates a nice but very limited sound palette. I come from playing woodwinds and I know a thing or two about extending the sonic repertoir of a limited palette. I'm not talking about this kind of specialized tool. I'm talking about an essentially un-limited tool. Dynamic link libraries are what we use today, but the idea is easily extended into the future. The DX7 probably would have been cool had there ben some way for users to make presets instead of 2 guys in a room in Japan. But it only does FM synthesis.

Shit, a fairly large chunk of the DSP processes I most love, physical modelling synthesis for instance, were created in someone's mind long before it was even remotely feasible to get a piece of hardware to actually crunch the numbers.

Eventually hardware manufacturers are going to learn to expand on the current range of keyboards and drum triggers and learn that the hardware should be tailored to an individual's prefered playing style (much as we have an enormous range of musical instruments throughout history and every culture on the planet) but that it's merely the human interface device - the sounds will reside in a universal computing device.

Take a glance at the signal chains I post along with most every song in the music cafe to see what's going on under the radar of synth players and guitar players with (admittedly very cool nowadays) multifx units. We're already way, way beyond that, even if only a couple hundred people have heard this initial vagitus.