Robert Yannes (born 1957) is an American

electronic engineer Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current ...

who designed the SID audio generator chip for the Commodore 64 and co-founded digital synthesizer company Ensoniq. He designed the Ensoniq 5503 Digital Oscillator Chip (DOC) which was used in both commercial synthesizers and the

Apple IIGS The Apple IIGS (styled as II), the fifth and most powerful of the Apple II family, is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer. While featuring the Macintosh look and feel, and resolution and color similar to the Amiga and Atari ST ...

home computer.

Biography

Robert Yannes graduated from

Villanova University Villanova University is a private Roman Catholic research university in Villanova, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the Augustinians in 1842 and named after Saint Thomas of Villanova. The university is the oldest Catholic university in Penns ...

in 1978. He started out as an electronic music hobbyist before being hired as a chip designer at

MOS Technology MOS Technology, Inc. ("MOS" being short for Metal Oxide Semiconductor), later known as CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) and GMT Microelectronics, was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Audubon, Pennsylvania. It is mos ...

which had become a part of

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

. Al Charpentier recruited Yannes partly for his music synthesis knowledge. He has been infatuated by

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...

since the early 1970s. He claims the song '' Lucky Man'' by

Emerson, Lake & Palmer Emerson, Lake & Palmer (informally known as ELP) were an English progressive rock supergroup formed in London in 1970. The band consisted of Keith Emerson (keyboards), Greg Lake (vocals, bass, guitar, producer) and Carl Palmer (drums, percus ...

influenced him more than any other single song, and also lists Kraftwerk and

Mike Oldfield Mike may refer to: Animals * Mike (cat), cat and guardian of the British Museum * Mike the Headless Chicken, chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off * Mike (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee featured in several books and document ...

among his influences. He designed the ''MicroPET'' with help from Al Charpentier which became an unintended prototype for the

VIC-20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...

home computer. He designed the single-chip sound synthesizer voice chip SID (6581) with enough resolution to produce high-quality music. However, he was unable to refine the signal-to-noise ratio which he desired. He hoped the chip would find its way into polyphonic/polytimbral synthesizers. The SID chip was his first attempt at a phase-accumulating oscillator, the heart of all Wavetable-lookup synthesis. After he left MOS Technology he co-founded Ensoniq in 1982. The Ensoniq sound chips had multiplexed oscillators designed in such a way that it was possible to produce more voices per chip, typically 32 for Ensoniq's ''DOC'', ''OTIS'', and ''OTTO'' sound chips (48 for the final ''OTTO-48''). Given less time constraints than for the ''SID'' chip design, a proper MOS op-amp could be implemented to eliminate signal leakage and an improved filter to achieve high resonance. Current designs include waveform interpolation, digital filters, and digital effects.stud1.tuwien.ac.at - Interview with Bob Yannes
1996-08-30

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yannes, Robert Commodore people Computer hardware engineers Living people 1957 births