Jaicen

As far as I know, the circuits for both the DR boxes can be triggered with +5v 10ms pulses so yeah they should work nicely with your design. At the minute, none of my voices include accent, as the way that the DR's work it is to have an output amplifier with variable gain, depending on the accent setting. It would be possible to duplicate this 8 times for each voice, but i'm not sure how useful that would be. If it was being live, I guess it would be ok to have accent for the drums and one for the hats/cymbal. I'm not sure about any of this really, just thinking out loud.

Sounds familiar ;)

It's possible for the PIC to generate tones itself, be they square waves or otherwise. Is this what you're getting at?? Have you seen the AVR synth? I think that's pretty close to what you're imagining. http://www.elby-designs.com/avrsynth/avrsyn-about.htm

Hmm, tough act to follow there Moogah! How about this then?? I've got all the voices from the DR-55 & DR-110 cloned now almost ready for prototyping. I still need to add the noise generators and voltage regulator to the main PCB, but it's almost there! You can check a component overlay here: (Measures approx 6x5" which is not bad!) If it looks strange, its because I did the layouts in a modular fashion then stitched them together as it were. I'll give you all an update when it's done. I have to open up my DR-110 first to check the schematic, as I suspect that there's some filtering missing from the snare noise source. Anyway, what do you guys think??

Yeah, i'm aware that many languages don't use all the same characters. It's like the old Jif Lemon cleaner that's now called Cif, as there's no J in the Latin alphabet. (J-Range Lambretta anyone ?? ;) )

Hey, let me know how you get on with that LCD, as it's the one I had planned to use for my SID project too! It looks brilliant!

I didn't even see this thread to be honest, or I would have answered earlier! I personally would very much like to see your work on the TR-808 triggers and Seq. I'm working on cloning the voices from my favourite drum machines, the DR-55 and the DR-110. They're not that far removed from the 808 (which I plan to build afterwards) but they have enough of their own character to warrant cloning I think. When I do build the 808, i'm not building any of the 'latin' style instruments or cowbells as I have no real need for them, just toms, kick, snare hats and cymbal, although I might go mad and build them just for 'show off' kudos ;) My plan had been to adapt an Aout module to send triggers and global accent CV to trigger the four sounds of the 55 and the some of the DR-110 (Kick, snare, hats and cymbal). I might add CV accent to all voices, but it means adding an output buffer to each voice. I've not cloned the clap, as it's triggered with multiple pulses which I don't know how to do! I rarely use it anyway. I've done some experiments in modifying the DR-110 snare to sound like toms, which is pretty easy: tune the tone down and use less noise. At the minute, I'm limited to only 8 individual triggers, so some of the sounds would need to be doubled up (ie, 55hat or 110 cymbal and 110/55 kick or something along those lines). However, if you've figured out how to succesfully trigger the drums using Dout's, all the sounds and more could be used simultaneously. AAaanyway, back on topic! Like I said, i'd like to see some of the work you've done so far if you don't mind. I'm more of an analogue kind of guy, i'm not too hot with the programming. I'd be interested in more details of your synth clones too, i've just begun looking at building an ASM-1 inspired simple mono with MS-20 filter, but that's still just in the ideas stage. ::)

It seems to me that some of you percussionists are a little offended by what I said, which is not at all how it was intended. I accept that a good drummer will have anticipated the rhythm so will be more or less in time, it was merely an example to show the small changes in timing when different drums are played. All I was doing was trying to put across an idea for a unique type of 'shuffle table' as was suggested earlier in this thread. I've personally never heard a sequencer that can get 'on top' of the beat the way that Ginger Baker used to, but then he was probably the best drummer of a generation so perhaps my aspirations are too high ;)

Yeah, it should work at anwhere from 3-6v in theory so 5.5v or thereabouts is fine. With regards to the equation, i'm not sure if it's an international symbol but it is definitely V for volts, derived from the equation V=IR.

The 5.4v you're getting is probably due to the wayward tolerances of most 1/4w resistors commonly available. You'll probably find that one or more of the resistors which makes up the regulator circuit is slightly over/under the valu it's showing, in which case either find another with better tolerance or add a second resistor in series. If it's a real issue for you, you could always put in a resistor in series with the output of the psu to drop the voltage a little. R=V/I so if you have a current of 100mA a 400 Ohm resistor will give you a voltage drop of 0.4v and hey presto, clean regulated +5v supply. The series resistor will also help with supply noise if you're finding that's a problem.

I could be misunderstanding, but i'm sure c0nsumer said that the board was 180 x 80mm to fit in a hammond project case. Ergo, must be a full version of eagle.

I'm sure it is, but i've rarely heard a drummer that doesn't have a 'feel' for the music. I'm a sound engineer so I've had a lot of experience with recording drums. It doesn't matter how tight you are, a drummer will never sound like sequenced beats, there's always that groove factor. I don't think the stock 'delay the second note' shuffle is particularly effective at giving sequenced beats more life. Sure it's better than without, but it's still mechanical. Put it this way, there are a million programs that allow you to sample hits and make your own beat, but James Brown's drummer is still being sampled today ;)

That's definitely what i'd do I think. I had considered using a DIN module with 32 on/off switches mounted under a keyboard, but honestly that's a lot more work than I can be bothered with, especially when MIDI keyboards are so easy to come by. I used to have a small one I bought for £30 which I'd use if I could find it! As far as the original Standalone synth idea goes, i've pretty much abandoned it as I don't think it's worth the effort when the existing options work so well. I'm looking at designing a single module synth which will be compatible with the AOUT LC module on here. It's based on the ASM-1 synth from here:http://home.swipnet.se/cfmd/synths/friends/stopp/ At the minute I don't plan to have any patching etc as it's doing my head in. Features will be: Single VCO with saw + square (simultaneous) and sub osc (Squ) LFO assignable to PWM or Filter (may just replace this with a CV control from the AOUT) Glide Simple state variable VCF ADSR & VCA Thoughts are welcome on anything. It's just at the 'thinking about it' stage so nothing's set in stone. I need to speak to the people at ASM before I do anything anyway.

Not a problem, i'm here to try and help as best I can ;D

Well i'm not sure on the current draw of the Core, but the SID itself only draws 100-200mA. Most of the current draw will be for the backlight in your LCD, so check that. I'd use a 1A psu wherever possible, as it will run more efficiently if driven under its maximum load. You'll get more heat generated running a 500mA psu at 450mA for example, which is less efficient.

Why exactly do you want a 15v PSU, when the max you need is 12v? I don't get it? As long as you're not skimping on current, ther is no reason to feed the regulators more than 12v, especially if you're using an 8580.

Seconded. I've got hundreds (well, not literally :P) of old PSU's from phones and stuff. I rarely throw anything away, particularly electrical as you never know when you may need to salvage a part to save a trip to the rat-shack ;)

I know that, i've been following this thread for some time. I just think that the TR sequencer has a really nice interface so any similar design should not be limited to one intended use, especially for those that want to play live without a PC/Laptop.

You can get some very cheap power supplies quite easily if you know where to look. For example, I don't know where you live but in the UK we have shops called Poundland where everything is £1. You can often find a wallwart type variable powersupply there for..you guessed it! Just a pound! If you get one of those, set it to 12v and then feed it straight into the optimised power supply. I honestly don't understand how many people have trouble with the power supplies! It really is the single most simple part of building the MBSID!

If the output impedance is too high, you're going to have a rolloff of low frequencies with a smaller cap. However, i'm fairly sure that the SID output is buffered to prevent this, but i'd still use larger caps just to be sure. They're only there to block DC, so as long as you don't use a huge electro cap, then you should be fine. I'd go 1uf film caps on the input and 10uF on the output.

Yeah that will be fine, it's set up to be self biasing as it is (R11 & R12 form a voltage divider, so the bias point is always half the supply voltage). You can make R13 a variable resistance if you want a master volume control, higher values increase the gain, but bear in mind this may introduce noise at higher gain settings. It may also be an idea to increase the 0.1uF caps, as i'm not sure how low the output impedance of the core is.

Yeah, i'm digging the speakjet especially for unusual ambient sounds. I don't really have much use for speech but it could be cool too. Can it play poly when in the tone mode? With regards to the pokey, I believe that it's not possible to directly address specific frequencies, so making it work in a musical sense could be difficult. The SMS chip is a pretty generic device so it's slightly easier to work with as it supports the same kind of microcontroller addressing. Of course, this is all from what i've researched, i'm in now way qualified to say wether it's all true! I'd like someone use the old VIC chip as a tone generator, as it can output 3 channels of square wave and one of noise simultaneously, much like the GB (for obvious reasons ;) )

Yeah I dig it! Actually what would be unbelievably cool is to have a feature to mimic the way a drummer plays a real kit. For example, if they're playing a straight beat on the snare, then go into a roll ending on a cymbal, it takes time to reach across to the crash and back to the snare, which slightly delays the first beat of the following bar. Perhaps an algorithm can be developed to add slight delays between adjacent 'hits' depending on which drum is being played. I don't know if this is a new idea, but I think it would be cool, especially when you're sequencing real drums sounds.

Hehe, I suffer from a similar affliction! That said, if I understood how TK had implemented the addressing of the SID core, I guess i'd understand how to address the SMS chip. Since it only has rudimentary envelopes and no filter I guess it would be simpler than the SID. Personally, I don't have much use for a 3x square wave digital synth. If you were to implement native CV control for a nice resonant filter, it might be nice though.

That schematic should work just fine for your needs. If it was me, i'd power it from the highest voltage you can, a TL07x can handle +/- 18v so you should be fine running it at 9-15v. The more voltage you have, the more headroom is available so that's something to consider. edit: If you're confused by the pinout you can always build it using the PCB layout on that page, but it's not that hard to figure out.