This is one of the most common myths about DSP. It was probably true, like, 20 years ago, but now general-purpose CPUs are much, much faster than DSPs. Even if you compare theoretical performance from chip specs, you'll find that a typical CPU is ~50-100 times faster than a typical DSP (for example, Motorola 56362 used in Virus is capable of about 100 MIPS, while my Core 2 Duo E6700 can do about 10000 MIPS). This difference can also be seen in practice with plugins that are available both as native VSTs and as plugins for hardware DSP platforms. For example, I've done an experiment with Sony Oxford Inflator plugin which is available in DSP-powered PowerCore and native PC versions, and I've been able to load only 8 or so instances in PowerCore before it ran out of DSP power, but for native version I simply tired of adding more and more instances; I finished on about a hundred instances and they took together only ~20% of CPU power.Cyforce wrote:if you would take the code of the dsp synth and would put it 1 to 1 on the pc, you will need a quad-core with 4x3 Ghz to get 4 voices out of the synth!
The reason why DSPs are still used in hardware synths is that they are cheap, and with hardware you always need to cut costs as much as possible. No one uses DSPs because of their power; actually, to make the device cheaper, the simplest and slowest possible DSPs are used, with performance just necessary to do the job.
Largo->demos->views on importance of different kinds of synthesis->demos->demo->DSPs->theories 
