PD82 8-Channel, 2-Operator Phase Distortion Synthesizer

Completed: 5/7/2010, Build Time: Eight Academic Weeks.

Notes:
This two-operator phase distortion synthesizer was designed and implemented for the Digital Systems Design course in RIT’s Computer Engineering department. The synthesizer itself was written in VHDL, and tested on an Altera DE2 board interfaced with a Super Nintendo running a simple register-poking program.
It was found that while the synthesizer generated acceptable sounds for its purpose, waveform generation accuracy could have been higher, and the synthesizer’s complexity could have been reduced through the use of a log-transformed sine table. Things like ADSR envelopes were also never implemented. Write missing was also a large problem, due to the poor way the synthesizer watches the system bus. However, it did work as planned. Which was nice for a first FPGA project.
The source code is freely downloadable below, do what you wish with it.

Design Materials:
PD82 Design Summary- The project report detailing component design and implementation.
VHDL Source- The source code for the entire synthesizer.
Demonstration Video- A higher quality version of the YouTube video below.