CRE Convolvotron

CRE Crystal River Engineering Convolvotron

The CRE 3D audio technology was orginally implemented on the Convolvotron, shown above, a custom, massively parallel ALU convolution engine, which is tightly integrated to a TMS 320C25 DSP system. Each convolution engine has 128 16x16 ALU's, capable of 320 million multiply/accumulate/shift operations per second, coupled to dual ported static RAM memory, shared with the DSP system. Upto eight Convolvotron boardsets can be run in parallel to spatialize 32 anechoic sound sources or 8 sounds sources with first-order reflections simulating an acoustic environment.

The CRE Acoustetron is a 3D audio subsystem, hardware and software, that provides a common control interface for any host system. Internally, an Acoustetron may be configured with any combination of CRE spatialization hardware. Current CRE hardware includes the flagship Convolvotron and the low-cost Beachtron with MIDI synthesis and waveform playback capabilities. A typical high-end Acoustetron configuration would be outfitted with 4 Convolvotrons and 4 Beachtrons, with the Beachtrons supplying doppler, reverb, synthesis, sample playback, and special effects.


chapin@cdr.stanford.edu

last update - 9 Feb 94