Hypothetical 6502-based synthesizer calculator?

[benbradley]

I remember when the SID chip came out, a description and the whole data sheet was printed in Polyphony magazine (originally started by PAIA and largely aimed at DIY synthesizer makers, it later became a mainstream magazine for keyboard players, Electronic Musician). It used DDS/NCO for the oscillators and thus had high resolution (something like 0.01Hz) frequency control. It would have been interesting for use in synthesizers and music-generating expansion boards for other computers, but Commodore chose not to sell it to others, but to only use it in its own computers, most notably the C64.

What the OP describes would be "neat" in a retro way but I can't imagine anything like that happening today. I'm a bit surprised even the 8-bit processor architectures have survived with all the ARM chips being so cheap and ubiquitous. Everything the SID did and much more can be done in software on an ARM.