By George Petersen

You might not immediately recognize the name of Keith Barr. But he founded a couple companies whose names you might have heard of… like MXR and Alesis. Barr, the designer of classic guitar pedals, best-selling digital reverbs and the revolutionary ADAT digital multitrack sold out of both companies years ago—even taking a hiatus to live on a boat off Antigua in the Carribean for a couple years between his stints at MXR and Alesis—but he’s poised to make a return with this new company, Spin Semiconductors.

One of Barr’s passions was designing custom chips—something he did a good deal of during his Alesis days—and Spin Semi’s new product is a chip. The first in a series of affordable processors from Barr, the FV-1 is a true single chip reverb solution. The FV-1 can be readily designed into any variety of products—mixers, guitar amps, recorders, car audio, karaoke systems—most any OEM application seeking a highly integrated, low cost package.

“By integrating the DSP core, memory and the converters into a single 28-pin package, we have created the industry’s only available true single chip reverb solution,” said Barr. “This cost-efficient package lets product designers easily create and run custom programs via an external EEPROM, without an external microcontroller. The degree of integration is so complete that the FV-1 can be treated as an analog part when designed into a product.”

The FV-1 features a DSP core operating at 128xFs, 32K words of delay memory, three potentiometer inputs for real time parameter adjustment and integrated stereo ADCs and DACs. It includes includes eight built-in effects programs along with the ability to load eight custom programs so designers can differentiate their products from others in the marketplace.

An assembler for the chip is available now on Spin Semiconductor’s web site and a complete development board will be available soon. The FS-1 is offered in a 28-pin SOIC package. Pricing is well under $10 in production quantities. Visit wwwspinsemi.com for more details.

When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.

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Between MXRs classic guitar pedals and the first under-$1,000 digital reverb (the 01a) and the Alesis line of ADAT recorders, reverbs, and electronic instruments, both companies offered audio gear at prics anyone could afford. Anyone have any interesting Alesis/MXR tales to share?

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