Japan’s Oki Develops Polyphonic Chips To Capture Unique Regional Sounds

Every country or region has its own unique sounds. For instance, in India, people use traditional instruments like Vina and Sitar heavily, and music is reproduced with unique prosodies (the stress and intonation placed on the notes). A mobile phone ringer tone LSI like the “GM sound generator” cannot reproduce such music accurately…although to be fair it doesn’t really reproduce guitars or pianos accurately either.
However, Japan’s Oki Electric Industry Co has developed a 32 polyphonic sound generator LSI, the ML2874, for the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets. This is the world’s first chip equipped with prosodies to play unique traditional instruments widely known in the rapidly growing BRIC countries, which include the Vina and Zither from India, Cavaquinho from Brazil, Balalaika from Russia, and Bawu from China. The chip is due for production in April. (from our sister site ContentSutra)
Related stories:
The Rise of the Mobile BRICs

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