Audio Effects Processor

There is a certain point during each and every semester when I essentially disappear. Normally, rehearsals are the culprit –
my involvement in way too many shows catches up with me and eats up weeknights and weekends leaving me little to no time for myself, friends or family. However, this semester I have been hiding on the 4th floor of the EECS building for different, yet still very musical, reasons.

This semester I am taking EECS 452 as my engineering Major Design Experience (MDE). As an upper level EECS course there is a certain amount of work which is expected and required, but in addition to that normal coursework 452 ends with a 6-week group project culminating in you and your group creating a working prototype of some product that uses DSP.

Early in the semester we formed teams of 4-5 students. My team consisted of three Computer Engineering/Science majors and two Electrical Engineering majors. In addition to their engineering backgrounds, each member of the team comes from a musical background bringing the experience of sound engineering, choral, orchestral and electronic music to the team. This resulted in an easy decision about the topic of project – we were going to create an Audio Effects Processor.

Modern music would not exist without audio effects processors as it has made the application of thousands of musical effects to an input signal as simple as the flick of a switch. Audio effect processors allow both novice and advanced users the ability to apply effects to their input audio without purchasing numerous expensive analog devices.

The processor which we created is an inexpensive, high quality audio effects processor. The processor takes in line, microphone or instrument level audio signal as an input, feeds the input through a pre-amplification circuit as needed, processes the signal using DSP techniques, and outputs a line level signal to be sent either to recording equipment, speakers, or additional signal processing units.

While this project has been tiring at times (Wednesday night/Thursday morning we were in the lab until 5 am making sure that our processor was working for Thursday’s Design Expo), it has been an exciting experience to create music via wires, circuitry and software rather than with a lot of breath support.