Is it possible to make a 90s-style ROMpler with Teensy?

[dannytaurus]

I'm looking to make a WAV playback device similar to a typical 90s ROMpler:

• MIDI input (USB to start then eventually 5-pin DIN)
• standard stereo WAV files stored on SD
• WAV files either streamed direct from SD or loaded into memory
• WAV files would be 'multi-samples' so each file spans several MIDI notes
• handful of buttons for selecting and loading sounds
• simple display to show current sound name
• stereo audio output

I'm new to Teensy but from my research I can see the MIDI input, display and controls seem fairly trivial. As does basic playback of audio files from an SD card.

The tricky part seems to be the polyphony. From what I've read we can stream 2-3 audio files from the SD simultaneously but further than that is a stretch. In that case would loading the audio files into memory solve it? If so, what is the maximum memory I can add for loading/playing sounds? Multi-samples can range anywhere from a few MB to 200MB+.

Is this feasible on any of the Teensy versions?

 

[XFer]

Large soundfonts/samples are not exactly easy to manage with a microcontroller, even as powerful as the Teensy.
The 4.1 has a very fast integrate microSD slot and quite some RAM for buffering; moreover, it can mount additional memory by soldering small chips (flash and/or PSRAM). And it's very, very fast.
Coupled with the Audio Shield for 4.x, it's probably the best (generic) microcontroller out there for music projects; that said, not sure about managing a poly rompler with hundreds of MBs of soundfounts.

For this very application, I got lazy and used a Linux SBC (running Fluidsynth), honestly.

 

[Frank B]

If the samples fit on a large Flash chip, it's possible. SD is too slow to play more than a few samples simultanously.
Another ways would be to copy them from SD to the FLash (or PSRAM), on request.