[analog31]

The Teensy boards are fabulous. I'm so impressed by what Paul Stoffgren has done. He must be some kind of 100x developer. And there are some power users of his boards, who have contributed libraries as well.

It's worth noting that while you can ease your way into programming with the functions available within the Arduino IDE, there are libraries for many of the special functions of the chips, and all of the special function registers are exposed, so you can make full use of your hardware capabilities if desired.

As for choosing a microcontroller, I'm generally tempted to start by choosing a development tool, because I'll be spending more of my time in code development and testing than in any other activity.

[Berobero]

We've had the pleasure of having Paul as a sponsor for our senior project, a sample-based midi synthesizer, running on, at least, the Teensy 3.2 and 3.6; we got free hardware for development, and he's been quite supportive, despite being obviously perpetually busy. And I can't say I ever felt at all hindered by the hardware or its libraries, and although we started the project with almost no embedded experience. Quite a fun way to end college.

[brokenmachine]

Do you have a site about your project?

I'm interested in synths (and teensies) and would be interested to see it.

[abdupattoh]

Having worked on college labs with Paul 100x is about right. We just kinda looked in wonder at his projects... and he sold us the parts for ours... A real serving individual actually.