PROJECTS

Analog Devices A2B CES Demo

October 2019 - December 2019

Analog Devices has been ramping up support for its new automotive audio bus (A2B) for the past several years, as more and more automakers such as Ford select it for their products. A2B allows many audio devices to be daisy-chained with a simple twisted-pair connector. To demonstrate this technology at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, my team and I put together a mock-up car interior with a complex audio setup. This demo includes three speakers (left, right, sub), a microphone and line-in for karaoke, and an AM/FM tuner. We also added 4 LED strips (controlled with A2B) to make the demo more flashy. A large part of my work at Analog was designing the algorithm that would convert the audio signals from the karaoke into flashing lights.

Though the algorithm is written in C++, this project required me to be familiar with the hardware stack. My algorithm was running on a SHARC processor, which needed to send I2C commands over A2B to control the LED strips. I learned a great deal about testing with hardware and how DSPs are programmed.

"DAGger Synth"

September 2018 - June 2019

DAGger Synth is a dynamically configurable, high-speed wavetable synthesizer I built for Harmonix Music Systems over the course of nine months. The oscillators used in this synthesizer now have a patent pending. See my résumé or contact me for more information.

"FamiVST" Plugin

January 2018 - April 2018

FamiTracker (pictured) was one of my first music composition tools. It is an open-source program that emulates the sound chips in the NES and its expansions. I loved the sounds it can create and wanted to use them in more full-scale compositions in a standard DAW. Unfortunately, FamiTracker is a standalone application and is not formatted as an audio plugin.

Naturally, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Though I haven't been able to implement all of the instrument features available in the standalone app, I ported FamiTracker

to a working VST plugin that can replicate its basic wave shapes. This served as a great learning experience; FamiTracker has over 30,000 lines of code, which is far more than any code base I had worked with before. I got very comfortable with breakpointing and memory tracing in Visual Studio, skills that became vital for my work at Harmonix.

"Bridge" Audio Synthesizer

May 2015 - May 2016

My senior year in high school, I had the opportunity to design and complete a year-long research project in a field of my choice. My choice? Audio synthesis, of course.

The software synth itself was programmed entirely in PureData. This was a good way to start since I had never created an audio program before.

I also created several MIDI-compatible controllers, most of which used Arduino-type microcontrollers. The circuitry required to make these controllers

work was another first to me. I learned the basics of soldering, woodworking, and circuit designing. I also had to use some C++ to program the Arduino chips and to allow the non-Arduino controllers to talk to PureData via local UDP.

Lastly, I decided that these instruments, when played together, should be able to communicate. I extended my use of UDP to allow instances of the synth to communicate with each other of LAN. This opened up all sorts of possibilities. For example, one instrument could control changes in the current chord or key, while another could arpeggiate on that chord.

This is a video of the presentation I made to conclude the project. I give a consolidated walkthrough of the process, answer a few questions, and then exhibit the capabilities of the instrument in group and solo compositions.

Projects