In this article Julian considers the possibilities presented by emulating rather than modelling digital hardware.
We’re all used to the idea of emulations of classic hardware, most of us have plug-in versions of hardware from 1176s to Minimoogs. The only thing is that these aren’t emulations in the strictest sense. They are recreations.
Most of the time the difference is splitting hairs. It’s a software version of the hardware. It’s not the hardware so it’s an “emulation” of it - right? Well yes and no. Most hardware-imitating plugins look at what the hardware achieves and does the same thing, to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy depending on the plugin. With analogue hardware that’s all it can ever do but with digital hardware the possibility of running the same code, the original hardware ran rather than reverse-engineering its results becomes an alternative approach.
An example that will come to mind for TDM era Pro Tools users would be the TDM version of the Access Virus. Because the Virus used the same Motorola DSP as the TDM cards of the period, it was possible to run the same code on the same hardware - a clone.
The TDM Virus was a brilliant plugin, exploiting the fact that the prevalent DSP chips of the day were used in multiple products. This isn’t an isolated case, many of the digital synths of the late 90s and early 2000s shared the same hardware, something which hasn’t escaped the attention of some people in the hacking community. We’ll return to that later.
Clone Vs Emulation
However, the TDM Virus isn’t an emulation in the truest sense. It is a clone. The same code running on the same hardware. To explain what an emulation is we’ll look at an example from the mid 90s gaming scene.
MAME (pronounced Mah-may) was a software emulator, which used (then) current PC hardware to run an emulation of the hardware used in classic arcade games from the ’70s onwards. The open-source emulator was a software layer between the intel architecture of the PC running the emulator and the ROM code from the arcade machine. An emulation rather than a clone because the code is running on virtual hardware emulated in software. A different situation to a clone. Something which really illustrated the fact that MAME runs the same code as the original hardware is the way that the Pac Man game turned upside down for player 2 because it was a ROM from a table-top game machine. It’s not a recreation of the original Pac Man, it’s the real thing.
What has this got to do with synths? Well, it has come to our attention that there is an active thread on KVR Audio that discusses the attempts being made to create a Motorola DSP emulator. Returning to my earlier statement that many of the synths of the day shared the same DSP, in this case, variations of the Motorola 563xx. If such an emulator were created it would be straightforward, with little more than an EEPROM reader, to download the ROM from the hardware and run it as an emulation.
This does suggest that once the means are in place a great many pieces of classic discontinued hardware might become available again. But it also raises the question - is this legal?
Is Running ROMs On Emulators Legal?
The MAME emulator was perfectly legal, however, the ROMs of the games were copyrighted Intellectual Property (IP) in the same way as any other IP and it’s difficult to see how synth ROMs are any different. The justification for the original MAME project was often that as the original hardware ceased to work the code could be preserved on emulated hardware. We’re not legally qualified but it is our understanding that to download the ROM from hardware you own is OK, in the same way as in the days of installer disks it used to be legal to copy software installer disks you owned as a backup, but it’s difficult to imagine that online exchange of ROMs wouldn’t quickly become rife.
However, we hope that the interest among the hacker community might prompt some of the companies which own this IP to recognise the value of it and to get in on the action, release authorised emulations and bring back to life a load of hardware that isn’t currently being exploited in software. After all, if the emulator and the ROM are written already then as the owners of the ROMs they stand to sell a product without the usual costs of development.
What discontinued digital hardware would you like to see an emulation available for?