Digital signal processing: Difference between revisions

If we assume a normal Equal Temperament Scale of 5 octaves between 0 and 5 V (for example), this represents 12 half tones per octave (or per volt). This is 60 steps which can be represented in 6 bits (2⁶ = 64 steps). Many cost-effective microcontrollers[[microcontroller]]s come with one or more ADC pins that range from 8- to 12-bit resolution, which makes them more than suitable for the purpose. A CV quantiser is either going to be free-running (i.e. quasi-continuous) or triggered by a clock or event from another module. It is not, even when free-running, going to be sampling at audio frequencies. It is actually going to be sampling at very low frequencies, and there will be little requirement for anti-aliasing because the clock rate of the controller is likely to far, far exceed the rates needed within the quantiser itself. This should make the selection of a core component very cheap and easy to build around. The main design challenges are more likely to be the calibration of the DAC output and the writing of the internal software.