Rossum (Continued from p.4)

and the ubiquitous ribbon cable tethering it all together. Without getting into the specific chips used, over time faster processors and cheaper memo- ry have allowed for higher sampling rates, longer bit word lengths, more voices in the polyphony, and cleaner digital-to-analog conversion. Rossum noted that the price which E-mu has paid for memory ICs has fairly closely tracked Moore's Law, in that the price per bit of memory has gone down by a factor of 4000 over the course of E-mu's existence.

When asked about whether there was any new ground left to explore, Rossum charted out his view of the history of synthesizers on "Expressive" versus "Fidelity" axes. He characterized early analog and FM synthesizers as being neither very expressive or having high fidelity. Wavetable synthesizers, which is E-mu's forte, were classified as having good fidelity but not very expressive; physical modeling tech- niques provided good expressivity without very high fidelity. The "Holy Grail" as he called it, would be to have a system that is highly expressive while main- taining high fidelity. Of course, lower cost and easier to use product interfaces are also ongoing goals.

Rossum also played a variety of musical selections made with these differentE-mu synthesizer prod- ucts, which helped to highlight the evolution of the technology. The sounds generated on the very early products were somewhat artificial indeed, but the realism increased dramatically on selections made with the more modern platforms.

A good turnout was on hand for Rossum's presenta- tion, and they kept him busy after the meeting with numerous questions.

Tom Wethern