Artesia

WARNING ! {not a bean...}

beans, beans.. the more you eat, the more you...

ill trade cotton wool for earbuds ;) :)

arumblack ...respect :) mind i do solder smt chips for prototyping ..tho i just wouldnt fancy soldering all those smt resistors n caps for a production run ;) wobbly volume pot; its secured by shell and pins like the rest; however its a different kind of pot (resistive not encoder) ..and has some slightly different mechanic tolerances to the shaft ..which makes it seem to wobble more. not a problem ..tho i did trash one in trying to get the casing off (caps superglued on) ..which is why its missing from one of the photos, pending replacement. thus i can confirm, short of outright abuse, itll be fine ..as for the rest of it, i suspect you could tie it to a stick and use it as a cricket bat ;)

please :)

christ ..lol :) i think i'll go make me a cuppa tea..

haha.. lol ;) they dont design & install systems for a living; and whilst they may have a respectable grasp of music & djing within their genere; that doesn't equip them to truely understand acoustics ..or even get it vaguely right. its kind of like a viccar deciding that being down with god is all that he needs in order to pick up a bricklayers trowel & build his own church. (quote: "And artesia: screw literacy. Theory is crucial in my opinion") - viccar with a trowel, dj with a router ..just hang on a second - where's this 'theory' of theirs come into it ? ;) :) its all in the details of what they say that has me and others chuckling.. Firstly, they start jibbering on about valve reggae sound systems.. yes very nice, however there isnt a single valve amp involved in thier rig; Secondly they talk of building the whole system 'in 4-5 days', without any sleep.. and any woodworking experience ? ...come on ;) Thirdly "what of layers of stuff ? Yeah birch ply" They also quote that they built their system on the merit that commercial rigs just dont drop low enough for d&b bass.. and yes alot of people do have wimpy installs with no bottom end - however there are plenty of bins around with good depth ..even, gasp afew affordable ones ;) ..most people who build their own rigs do it on affordability grounds - as to be fair, even a top flight dj and his crew cant and dont want to bulk out the money for properly designed off the shelf kit.. and who can blame them for taking that route :) The only problem with these chaps rushing into diy - is that its not a garantee that theyll actually get the best bang for their buck, or even build the kit properly.. and due to the efficiency of some systems.. it actually works out that at price per a decibel ..some commercial solutions would not only be cheaper - but take up one truck of space; not three ;) also they quote the classic scoop cabinet; which is a long standing fave of the reggae folks.. it does however suffer a serious flaw - its doomed by the very nature of its design to have a lumpy smeared sound - the sound arriving out of the back of the cabinet is significantly delayed from that at the front. this causes two things; the higher bass notes arrive way before the lower ones coming thru the rear horn (which is also out of phase) & a huge amount of comb filtering occurs from cancellation points in the frequency response from the front and rear waves meeting. also, especially when blindly loaded with an unsuitable driver - they dont work anything like well ..will produce one or two loud honks in the bass register & produce a slurry of mushy mid racket often mistaken for 'dirty bass' ..please folks; keep the 'effects' in the studio ..not on everything your sound goes thru ;) :) also the physical dimensions & the nature of this coupling wouldn't equate to deep, deep bass ..and not especially good bass ..but bass none the less.. if they where swayed by unbiased experience of sound systems & even modestly familiar with speaker theory.. they may have encountered well designed, single ended folded horn enclosures (for which diy plans are available on the web) which can, will and would blow any scoop or reflex out of the water on sheer bass depth, loudness to watt/$$$ rating ..oh and good ones have by principal very low distortion, flat gapless freq resp, their wavefronts behave in a directional manner when stacked in numbers (putting all the sound where its wanted) & they punch like a frenzied boxer ;) btw, their current mid highs are a batch of Tony Andrew's Funkiton one resolution cabs of the older design.. probably got a bargain on them on a install change over.. and yes they are a nice cab :) ..however it definitely looks like they abandoned the MH boxes in the background of the video; which are of a very old reggae cab design - in favour of an off the shelf box.. In fairness, its a bunch of guys who wanted their own reggae rig.. and ive got plenty of respect for them on that. iv'e done it myself. however it just feels like they tried to make it out to be a bigger ball game than that.. so much so that guiness book of records approached them asking if they'd go for a 'loudest sound system' whilst they where banging on about it.. they declined. would i catch them sometime to hear it ? ..sure im always curious about these things :) "experience is king" ..not to sound like a flame rant; tho i've spent a very long time designing, building, running & installing sound systems & i currently work with one of the uks leading pa manufacturers as their design engineer. However i dont go out of my way, to go on about that; and in that respect i would like to think that i know what im doing ;)

heres sound engineering comedy ;) ..what happens when acoustically illiterate dj's get it into their heads that they have da skillz to design and build the bestest sound system in da world. and thus a C4 documentary is made ..hilarity ensues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o3IOdwE9Zs

Sorry folks, no pictures inside this one.. as im kindly respecting the calibration sticker on this borrowed unit - however generous ventilation has provided ample opportunity to pry at alot of the workings ;) http://www2.rohde-schwarz.com/product/UPV.html This Unit is a Professional R&D tool used in numerous development labs in the audio industry; so given the opportunity to play with one - i was curious as to what components where declared fit to test everything else out there. the unit is a low noise, low distortion signal source/generator & digital analyser built into one ..erm convenient box. the digital wares consist of a mish mash of hardware melded with a pc pc based on a celeron 1.5ghz processor & 433mhz 1gb of ram. the storage tools are a 20gb fujitsu sata hard drive (hmm.. i still think they could of gone for a better make ;) ), theres a dvd writer, usb ports, network & the ability to connect an external second monitor - oh and a keyboard + mouse. yes, it is a computer incognito, it even runs windows xp embedded, and the analyser program is a windows based app (which will run on any pc oddly enough, in a 'demo' mode). the hardware is specified for upto 195khz signal generation bandwidth & 250khz fft signal analysis. the noise floor is supposedly -140db. however even when correctly terminated i observed what would seem to indicate one of -120db. dynamic range is specified at 170db. the test features are numerous, see website for full details; the signal generation options cover most waveforms & can play back a digitised source. the anayser is principally aimed at fft analysis, but also serves as an oscilloscope, thd analyser, phase & delay measurer. sadly, thats not a touch screen - however it does have an impressively thick wedge of glass in front of it & oscilloscope like construction throughout. frankly the melding of the software and hardware is pretty poorly conceived. its deeply frustrating to use with its inbuilt controls alone.. it has the feel of an interface which was initially designed for a pc user & roughly hashed around to fit into a vaguely stand alone box like interface. Ultimately you find yourself quickly reaching for a usb mouse to avoid some of the painful gui procedures. Also the program gui seems to be set well in the mid 90's, it feels clunky & could be greatly improved ..and i expect in that respect - sales within the sector would improve too ;) heres a quick run-down of the majority of the chips and parts observed where i could: (I, was in some cases quite surprised.) Power supply for everything is an encapsulated switch mode with a large external linear regulator bank supplying the following voltages: {outputs organised into two sepperate banks with labels ending in 'a' and 'g' respectively.} * + & - 15v * + & - 20v * + 5v Curious Devices: * Altera Apex - Programmable Logic Device. A PLD with goodies like a pci interface, memory, PLL & some widget for storing and protecting 'intellectual property' ..dongle anyone ? :) http://www.altera.com/products/devices/apex/apx-index.html Digital I/O: * Analog Devices - ad811 (video opamp). http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/data_sheets/AD811.pdf Analog I/O Front end: * Analog Devices - ad8610a (dual j-fet opamp) http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/data_sheets/AD8610_8620.pdf * TI - ne5534a (single, old as the hills, pretty darned good opamp - HA ! ...LOTS of them ;) ) http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/ne5534a * LM339 (standard opamp, afew of them) http://www.national.com/ds.cgi/LM/LM139.pdf * linear technology's - LT1763 (Low noise, 500ma linear regulators - plenty of them) http://www.linear.com/pc/downloadDocument.do?navId=H0,C1,C1010,C1778,C1764,P1778,D3903 * Axicom 5v relays (Lots of them - machine makes curious clatters when doing certain things) * op2750 (burr brown OPA ???) * op2134 (opamp, dual) http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/opa2134 Audio Back End: * Analog Devices - AD 7723bsz ((2x) - 16bit (erm.. yep !) 1.2MSPS, single channel, sigma delta ADC 90db snr) http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/data_sheets/AD7723.pdf {puzzling, very puzzling} * No sign of DAC, however a rather inconspicuous chip not too far away had a sizeable heatsink on it & around 24 pins ..probably the culprit, tho unfortunately no way of grabbing details rn. * more ne5534a, tons of lt1763. * nxp - 74lvc4245a (3.3v>5v logic level converters) http://www.standardics.nxp.com/products/levelshifters/alvc164245a/ * lvt3234 (???) * analog devices - ad797b (single opamp) http://www.dscc.dla.mil/downloads/milspec/smd/93133.pdf No gold enshrined virgin moth antennae or snake oil ;) Surprised ? :) Fin. :)

sad thing is it doesnt actually cost any more to get good response; just using the right values ;) muppets :] mind theres also a unit identical down to the last component made by rolls; someone copyed someone elses bad design along the way :)

I recently adquired some art technologies "pro" balanaced to unbalanced converters from a kit clearout.. given that a friend needed to use them to convert his desk outputs to drive some long cables; i figured i should check their performance.. listened to and measured below.. i was shocked and not at all impressed.. for an accessories company which is a division of a pa company (yorkville sound).. this is unbeleiveabably careless :/ however excercising some braincells, a soldering iron and changing some components.. the response was tuned to perfection ;) http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp?type=90&cat=13&id=77 Here is a plot of the frequency response of the unmodifyed box (blue) and the pink trace is the tweaked one over a 10db range; each line represents a 1db step. mod vs original, freq response 10db range: mod vs original, freq response 2db range: mod vs soundcard loopback, freq response 2db range: as seen in the 2db range magnifycations, the modifyed version now essentially follows the input signal to total perfection, actual deviation is a fractional percentage ;) and further comment from the 10db range, the response on the original slides down by roughly half a decibel from 5-10k ..and without checking it ..probably drops a whole decibel by 20k ! ..okay, well whilst that may not be 'major', the sag on the bottom end is criminal; it starts rolling off at 300hz & is down by 5.5db at 30hz ! ...someones bound to come up with a b.s. argument that this was done in the 'interests' of 'protecting' your speakers & reducing 50/60hz hum ..but really, is it eq that you asked for - or where told about ? :) ..amazingly Their website makes no meantion of this, the frequency response ..or anysuch things. okay, so thats frequency response, so what about phase drift and distortion ? Original Phase Response: Modded box Phase Response: :] Mod vs Sound Card, THD distortion: As seen here, the distortion floor on the soundcard, although low, can be considered to still be higher than that of this box now ;) Mod vs Original Thd distortion: Actually, this one just shows how the old box seems keener to run into distortion.. heres being fair to it & driving it lower down: ony thing, is this only takes into account the addition of unwanted harmonics & ignores the collosal deviation of volume level over the circuits range ..if that was factored into the distortion measurment, it would look really ugly. All in, im appauled that they could call this the result of 'applied research & technology'.. My CV available on request ;) components replaced where 1uf caps with some 100ufs i had handy, green ones of a small value likewise & the jrc 5538's (a modern dual version version of an old, trashy opamp - the 741; but supposedly jrc 'improved it') ..with some 5532's i had to hand, low noise & fast :)

well, this repair has been shelfed for now... Fixed a bunch of stuff on it with regards to broken tracks & fried power supply; however the right processor 68hc11 seems to be skitting out & is generating random midi data making the bizzareist burbles. traced the midi in all the way to the bottom right pin of this processor & there appears to be no external interference between the socket & the cpu. im guessing that despite the EEPROM; that these chips still have some of their code imbedded internally; so simply replacing them wont work ??? so... i've pinched two of the knobs & one of the original pots to make my first pulse perfect (damn getting hold of those knobs is -impossible- !) & this has been shelfed as a source of pulse spares ...roll on the next fixer upper pulse :)

best answered here... Hi, the flash mem is definitely connected to the DSP, the bottom row of pins with the orientation dot to the left; the top side of the wiring traces for this are clearly visable in the above post.. where the traces follow underneath can be seen on photo below. Tho frankly theres probably not alot extra special to learn from those traces...

after completeing a pile of must finish electrical tasks; the waldorf is next up; just looked into this.. unfortunately none of those cables are connected on my one :/ that middle pin does however appear to be functional; it goes to pin 10 of the first tl064cn opamp.. this in turn feeds the Tip of the Gate Out socket on the back. Look around on your pcb; theres sure to be signs of where one wire sheared off :)

could be interesting :) ... would love to hear about that too doug :)

tizzle... well it makes for a more universal shortand than a bunch of fft plots ;) its not wine swilling :] collector, well not exactly, that would be some kind of music crime.. these things actually get put to use; rather than relntlessly polishing n' dusting them off with grannys gusto, whilst thinking 'god damn your'e sweeeeeet' ;) augmentation: pa397 senseible answer. it has far more high frequency/top end transparency & the filter/signals distortion elements are more pleasing to the ears :)

the 3396's are pretty sweet chips, got two m1000's fullof them. however the pa397s are a definate improvement :) the oscillators work better, the filters seem more refined & overall they seem to have alot more tizzle :)

im working on robbing another mks80 off doug ...just have to have a rev4 &5 ;)

waldorf on a cpu farm.. now there would be something :) ..then again there was a protools waldorf plugin that did just that :) well, almost all the waldorf stuff is based on the motorola/freescale 560000 series processors ..however they went from custom digital ASIC, with analog filters to motorola high power, general purpose pic, to rigs consisting of a right mix of general purpose pics & loads of dedicated DSP chips. then theres the fact that in some cases different programmers developed different core code for each of them; so theres making sense of, and extracting all of the relavent bits from that for accurate recreation.. then theres the matter that the codes will use individual optimisations/explots specific to the variant of the hardware it was on to get the job done ..converting that over too ..would be 'fun'.. so i'd imagine its not quite so straight forward to actually live upto that promise 100% :/ ...will see :) (notably, it was apparently only one chap who developed the core code to the q !) yup on the last point ...sigh, marketing :/ :)

a chroma ! :) yey ! cs80.. rare as rocking horse doo doo.. the only one ive seen in the uk lately was someone advertising on SOS ..and 5 months on still wants NINE grand for it. spoke to him once, as i inquired about some other synths he had, various bits.. but the guy was giving it the right hard sell.. and even if he isnt a scammer, he's sure trying to scam legitimately ;) 1,500-3,000 is probably a reasonable market price for one in really good nick.. i very much doubt he's going to get the sale he wants. however keep an eye out for the lower end cs series synths ..the mini format ones ...they have the same guts in them; albeit less of it ..and go for far, far less. ..hundreds ..rather than Bentleys ;) ..im pondering getting one of the low end cs's ..can just stack them up in recording for layered polyphony/multitimberal if required :) korg oasys ...5 uk grand i think. yeah, some of their earlier machines ..and some of their higher end ones arent too bad on sound ...mind that bloody triton le & the radias make me cringe ..had encountered both whilst working on some peeps projects ..frankly ive heard better budget plugins :( ..lots and lots of corner cutting going on with dsp.

yeh there is.. its supposed to be the stromberg: http://www.waldorfmusic.de/en/products/stromberg "Additionally, Stromberg renders sounds from the legendary Waldorf Wave, Microwave and Q with awesome accuracy." if this is so; the stromberg is going to have to be quite a significant departure sound engine wise from the blofeld. another thing; is they announced this product ages ago ..and they still havnt released it ..which is ticking me off a little ..i have the desire to find a trade show and play one.. tho not seen Waldorf billed for exhibiting in the uk lately. ..oh, also ...according to their webpage the q+ has generated so much interest.. that they are putting it back into full production and making new ones :) ..yey for everyone who wants one ...ack damn ! :/ ..for it becoming abit of a nice rareity ;)

UPDATE: Heres a quick comparison of a q+ patch i created, rendered as best i can, exactly the same way on the blofeld. had to use drive curves to beef up the LP a tiny bit, as i used the analog filters on the q+ originally. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nausicaa.valley/ucapps/q/Q99-rec.mp3 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nausicaa.valley/ucapps/BLOFELD/BLOFELD_QSOUND.mp3 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nausicaa.valley/ucapps/alesis_andromeda/ANDROMEDA_QSOUND.mp3 (plus another shoddy improv with the andromeda) sounding distinctly different, the blofeld sounds very digital to my ears.. comments welcome :)

yeah.. i do like to grumble about it tho ;) the markets a little different now however, really perky soft synths and all.. about the only current monosynth that i know of thats shifting relatively well at megabucks prices is the moog. id be especially curious to hear of anyone else who's duplicating that kind of success on monosynths :) in all fairness tho, the little phatty is actually pretty good value for money by their standards.. and the build quality is really really high; feels as well as sounds great to use.. its peeps like korg that with all their polyphony make me wince tho.. feels so horrible & plasticky, and alot of their new gear just sounds trashy and weak to my ears ..unless its an oasys ..which is ..erm around 5 grand ! Ah yes doug... will look up those wires soon...

Thanks for that doug :) should do the trick :) yeah, its a right rats nest for a commercial product; the pulse plus has AFTERTHOUGHT written all over it... back when it came out, it wasn't cheap, round about a grand (uk pounds) in the 90's if i recall.. and as nice as they are.. its shocking that they managed to command that t price for a relatively rudimentary monosynth ! I guess adding the cv/av features was a way of adding a little extra value to the synth and tempting afew more customers. worst part of it, was they chose to use some rubbish, solid core ribbon wire which is highly prone to snapping ! on the other hand, the main board appears to be identical to the vanilla pulse, which means this tells me something really useful.. how to add audio in to the filter of the plain pulse correctly (without a firmware mod i expect :) ). and also how to add cv in and out to the plain pulse (will almost definitely require firmware flashing). i could retrace the auxiliary cv/audio board to circuit diagram if peeps want that :) and given that the pulse is a long gone product, i guess i dont mind putting my neck on the line too much & going to the trouble of finding a suitable rom burner to read the firmware & provide it to peeps who want it on request :) Thoughts ? (see here for post with vanilla pulse pics: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,8222.15.html )

quite likely; i heard off the uk distro people, that when waldorf sunk the most recent time round; some of the guys immediately got jobs working for access. Those people may have also pooled in the expertise of other ex waldorfer's too, to complete the implementation..