Towards a High-Performance Platform for Sonic Interaction Interfaces

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a hardware platform to proto- type interfaces of demanding sonic interactive systems. We target applications featuring a large array of analog sensors requiring data acquisition and transmission to computers at fast rates, with low latency, and high band- width. This work is part of an ongoing project which aims to provide designers with a cost effective and acces- sible platform for fast prototyping of complex interfaces for sonic interactive systems or musical instruments. The high performances are guaranteed by a SoC FPGA. The functionality of the platform can be customized without requiring significant technical expertise. In this paper, we discuss the principles, the current design, and the prelim- inary evaluation against common microcontroller-based platforms. The proposed platform can sample up to 96 analog channels at rates up to 24 kHz and stream the data via UDP to computers with a sub millisecond latency.