So, I finally did it, I’m graduating from university for the second time. The first time was 12 years ago when I got myself a master’s degree in Physical Chemistry, now it’s time to tie up some loose ends and get a degree in what I’ve been doing professionally for the past 14 years – Computer Engineering.
This time I’m so proud of my work in my master’s thesis that I’m willing to share it in public, so here it goes:
- My master’s thesis – Virtual music instrument and signal processing effect architecture for limited resource hardware (In Latvian, PDF, 1Mb)
- My master’s thesis – Presentation (In Latvian, PDF, 2Mb)
- My master’s thesis source code on GitHub
- Additionally a demo synth running on SHARC Audio Module source code on GitHub
Abstract
In today’s live music performance a computer has become one of the music instruments on stage, but unfortunately it might become a cumbersome factor because of it’s universal nature. As an alternative this thesis researches processor architecture and operating system combinations for running virtual music instrument and virtual sound effects applications on specially developed embedded hardware for live music performances.
The research was done on two different devices with programs running on Linux operating system and directly on processor (bare metal). The main criteria for the research were – the ease of use of development tools, processor performance of floating point calculations and power consumption with an aim to use the device with battery power.
Conclusions were drawn that with today’s relatively cheap embedded hardware devices it’s possible to run virtual music instrument software, these devices boot up fast enough and they can perform long enough on battery power to use them for live performances on stage.
ARCHITECTURE, VST, DAW, EMBEDDED HARDWARE, MUSIC INSTRUMENTS, SOUND EFFECTS, DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING, SOUND SIGNAL SYNTHESIS.
And finally…
So where to next? If that would be possible, I’d look into opportunity to wire a joint doctor’s thesis in chemistry and computer engineering, but we’ll see …