During this week, I began working on the wave adder module, which takes a series of weighted coefficients and applies them to the oscillator waveforms. The module is pipelined into two stages. The first stage performs multiplication, where each individual waveform is multiplied by a 32-bit unsigned coefficient. The second stage performs addition, where the products from the multiplication stage are summed and then normalized.
This process introduces a two-cycle latency, as we anticipate that this stage may become the critical path in the design.
In addition to implementing the module, I wrote a simple testbench that feeds in oscillator waveforms along with an array of oscillator coefficients and outputs the resulting summed waveform. However, based on visual inspection, the output waveform does not match the expected result. Debugging this module and identifying the source of the issue will be the main focus of next week.
Together, we also finalized our design report, which details the specific algorithms, protocols, and components that will be used in our implementation.
Our project is connected to cultural factors because music is deeply tied to culture and interpersonal expression. By designing a flexible synthesizer capable of recreating sounds from a diverse range of instruments, we hope our product can increase accessibility to and awareness of different musical traditions. We have designed the system with the intention that it can reproduce musical sounds originating from a variety of cultural backgrounds.