Thanks for the responses everyone.

My conclusion is that the biggest pitfall is trying to be too clever. I
have a bell sound I want to use in a .WAV file. Cooledit can convert
this to sample values that I will program into a couple of eproms then
use a PIC to generate the addresses for the eproms. The data output from
the eproms will just feed into a DAC then a low pass filter.

I appreciate that I could do the address counter in a 74XXX but then I
have some glue logig for start trigger, end_of_bell, etc. Using a PIC
will be an interesting exercise and hopefully future-proof the design.

Again thanks for all the input,

Mike.