SynthFrog » analog

Midi2CV Part 1

aris — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:09:00 +0000

This is a module for my synth. A pretty basic module as it is a note to Control voltage converter. It is based on midibox ucapps.de designs and it features 4 CV and 4 gate outputs. These can be made 8 bits which are quite good for note playing (4 x 8 bits) or can be made 4 and 12 bits each pair. I chose to have them all at 8 bits resolution.. The circuit is ready and it needs a panel (which you see in the photos) and some wiring an mounting

I used a long screw I found in the hardware store. It was a one meter , 3mm width screw which I cut at around 17 cm pieces. Then glued a nut on the panel with instant glue and put resin glue on top of it. Put the screw so now the nuts are filled with resin glue.

You can see here the resin . To align the screws, I fixed the other sides of the screws on a board .

Soundlab and WSG sonata

aris — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:37:00 +0000

The WSG (Weird sound generator) took it’s place beside Soundlab. So there are two samples, one (http://rapidshare.com/files/217106360/hhh2.mp3) which uses both of them and one
(http://rapidshare.com/files/214296536/hhh.mp3) that uses only Soundlab..
There is a little effect processing afterwards (delay+ phaser).

Both are fed from a +-15V PSU without any problems whatsoever.

An interesting experiment is to plug the output of WSG to the CV input of the SoundLab. It doesn’t cover the entire 0-10v range as an output but with a mixer/amplifier before the insertion you could have dramatic results. Nevertheless, it still sounds quite interesting..

Making a module case

aris — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:17:00 +0000

It is about time me and Braska started making a case for modules/synths we’ve made. The panels for the modules I’ve made are 12×12cm a unit and I have some standard panels made with 16 holes evenly spaced. These are the generique type that may house vcos, filters etc.

The big one is for midibox seq. which slowly but surely manifests on my desk. The others are for the soundlab I’ve finished and for an AVRsynth I’ve repackaged so this is a no-go.

So, the construction started by drilling holes for wooden dowels

… and marking the other wood panel where they should land

.. thus constructing the raw cabinet sized aprox. 72×36cm

The hard edges on the front side where smoothed with a router

.. and then it was painted with four coats of satin walnut finish (Water based, doesn’t stink, washes easily until it gets dry. Quite nice actually)

.. the balcony was a mess (and still is because I started something else

.. and here is after first coat

… and this is its current state, with soundlab fitted

The WSG is the next thing that will be fitted along with a yusynth filter and a midibox Midi2CV

(you can see that it is getting warm here on the white thermometer on the right!!)

It wasn’t the micas

aris — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:27:00 +0000

The silver mica 220pF capacitors arrived, substituted and failed… Still no response. Only random noise (if it wasn’t random. it wouldn’t be noise, would it?). So the only thing that remains to be done is to follow the schematic and have the soundcard probing various positions on the circuit so I can see (hear) where the signal ends.

Ray Wilson from musicfromouterspace.com has a nice article on using your sound card as an oscilloscope and I use http://zeitnitz.de/Christian/Scope/Scope_en.html for display

(Ray Wilson’s article is here)

Well well look what we got here :)

aris — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:05:00 +0000

I MUST finish it. (and of course, it’s panel