m00dawg

Did you come from Reddit perchance? :) I mention MidiBox almost every-time I see the MIDI Fighter mentioned :) Either way, welcome! To steer you in the right direction, for the buttons you would want to use the MB64 or MB128. Both can be found on ucapps.de (where all official MidiBox projects live typically). For the LEDs, you might get some help on the [url=http://midibox.org/forums/forum/43-midibox-blm/]BLM[/forum] sub-forum. I don't think you need to use AOUT as that is for analog output to control things like analog synthesizers, etc. LEDs would typically use the DOUT modules.

Nice! Very mellow. And you reminded me about DSI :) I forget about Dave Smith way too often!

But it still looks cool, was a good song, and made me now want my own o-scope :) And wow they have really come down in price on eBay! SCIENCE! *whoosh*

Yeah agreed I'd want an analog display for one I get. Seems like they are more responsive and more fun to use anyway.

That is both a really cool song and an amazing use of an oscope ;) If I can ask, which did you get and how do you like it? When I get back to working on the PSU section of my SID synth, I was thinking of grabbing up one so I could see if I could measure ripple and other things. See a lot of Tektronix brand scopes for pretty cheap off eBay that go up to 100MHz (plenty for what I would need, I would think).

I don't know offhand why you're running into that problem, but I used the sammichSID firmware and had no issues uploading the initial patches, or any other patches for that matter. I haven't updated the firmware in a while though, but I would be surprised if the latest firmware would have that restriction. I'm not sure what the problem is though :/

It works pretty well I must say! Took me a while to get it up and running, and it does have some occasional flaws, but is WILDLY improved over using the MBSID application. I haven't tried the automation yet, but just being able to run both CTRLR in Live is a huge help. I can now edit patches on the fly without having to exit my DAW :) That and the interface is improved in many places.

On MBSID, there is an external filter option which controls the bypass. If that's not available in MBFM, I would think it could be added pretty easily. This is just rampant speculation - I'm actually curious about this as well :) But I think TK has made an MBFM with some SSM action so it's very possible to do.

Java itself works just fine on OS X. Minecraft is a Java application, after all. The problem is that some libraries were removed from Snow Leopard that implement MIDI support. You have to now install these separately from Mandolane. They do point out it is no longer required for Lion so perhaps these added MIDI support back in? I haven't tried Java on MIDI in Lion yet actually.

At least with the MBSID it's more functional and compatible. I haven't had too many issues with it once you get used to the quirks. Of course, it doesn't work in tandem with a DAW which is annoying (in fact, I have to close out my DAW to use it as they both try to gain exclusive access to the MIDI port).

w00! Start to something awesome TK! Ctrlr is a pretty good framework from what I understand. There is a panel for the Virus B that might work with my Virus Classic I have been meaning to try. There was definitely a need for updated MBFM software though. I was getting surprisingly good with sammichFM interface though :)

I think that can also be done with the LPC17. Since it's where all the new development will be, I'd still recommend evaluating that first.

These days I would look to see if the LPC17 CORE will do what yu want. It already has 2x MIDI interfaces, and more can be added fairly easily. The GM5 solution is not ideal since it may be difficult to source the GM5 chip itself, and it is just meant to be a straight USB to MIDI bridge (it can't do any processing/filtering by itself). Not sure what the limits on MIDI interfaces would be for the LPC17, but the GM5 only supports up to 5x5.

Perhaps you have used the wrong resistor value for your DIN modules? You can use multiple values but there is likely a range of values that would work best (I would stick to what is documented here. If you don't use resistors or use the wrong ones, you can have problems similar to what you are having (called debouncing).

Wow that turned out pretty awesome! I think I've decided to built an MBCV2 box at some point when I get there. Still have to finish my rackmount SID (on the expensive part...ordering the control surface boards and panel, so I'm a little trigger shy). For this, do you have a schematic of the power design you ended up going with out of curiosity? I see those huge transformers in the pic but couldn't make out much else. Curious to see what you went with after this hugely epic discussion :)

Much better, thanks! I should have thought to look at Soundcloud sooner, derp! Oh well, it was worth the wait! Great builds and overall feel! Wish you kept it going longer though! :)

I have no clue why, but YouTube never does load your videos fast enough for me. *shrug* Other videos work fine. I don't get it. But what I can hear it sounds fantastic! Have you considered throwing up the music onto something like SoundCloud (apologies if you have done this already and I just missed it :P)

Actually, it would be for both the passive mix and the discrete out. The reason is that the output is so loud that it often distorts if you don't further attenuate it with an analog mixer. The original mod for mixing in the cartridge audio used the original NES audio pipeline so using a resistor before the pipeline worked pretty well. In my design, the same valued resistor isn't helping as much. I figure a trimpot over a decent range would do the trick, though. That way it works for both the PowerPak and normal cartridges that have their own audio (they both require different resistance values, to taste). I think I can simulate the same effect on my current design by putting a trimpot in between the cartridge audio and the NES input pin so I may try that just to see what comes of it and go from there and hope. That will at least help me figure out and good resistance if I want to forgo the trim and use a different valued resistor (if I start running low on space as the board is designed to fit inside the original NES case, under the mainboard, without having to do anything like cut posts and things).

Ah hmm that's a good point. Noise isn't as much of a problem for the cartridge audio - it's already pretty noisy from the PowerPak (much less so when using Famicom games though it would seem). Although I hadn't thought of noise otherwise. I was going to add trimpots to all the channels just cause. But if the smallest value is 100k, I'm no worse off then when I had resistors right?

Ah indeed. That's basically how I have it setup now, except it's before the cap, although in my previous attempt I still had the 100k resistors in place. That makes me think I will need a trimpot with a pretty big range (like 100k-1M?). And yeah I think it should be logarithmic as well. I don't really need ones on the other inputs since I want the volume of the cartridge audio to be matched to the volume of the NES, although space permitting I guess it can't hurt to have trimpots for all 3. Hmm...well sounds like I was mostly there. I'll see about making the changes and seeing what comes of it. Thanks!

This is not a MidiBox specific question, but more of a general question that I will apply to my NES audio amp board. I am wanting to add a passive mixer to mix the 2 NES channels plus the cartridge in channel into a summed output. I believe I have that good to go, but the problem now is that the cartridge input requires different resistor values depending on which cartridge is being used. The original mods mixed the cartridge audio directly into the NES audio pipeline. My design bypasses that (to reduce noise) and uses an op-amp. I think that is where my problem is. Originally I was trying to use resistors before the op-amp to attenuate the volume, but changing values there didn't seem to help much. However, I would like a solution before the op-amp so that my outputs are all consistent (as in my passive mixer output has proper volume for all the channels as well as the discrete output of the cartridge audio). The reason for this is that, by itself, the cartridge input audio is very loud compared to the original audio coming off the NES and I want to be able to balance the volume of the cartridge audio with the NES audio. So I guess without getting too involved - what is the best way to attenuate volume before an op-amp so I can balance all the input sources to the op-amp and get a consistent output from all of them? Do I just need to increase my resistance by a factor or is there something else going on? Schematic is posted for the current design, with my desired trimpot and passive mixer, for the curious. The previous revision can also be found here if you want to build your own.

I don't have a concrete answer, but I don't think it would be too difficult to do. Curious what comes of this as it could be handy for other pursuits as well! I've been thinking about making a MIDI sync'ed delay pedal, for instance (though the thing to do the actual delay I haven't figured out, unless I make Ableton Live an effect box, which I wanted to try and avoid for live shows).

Ah right on, thanks for that!

Is the x0xb0x kit still attainable? Last I checked on AdaFruit, some stuff was available, but not enough to actually build it :(

Field Programmable Gate Array. It's basically a bunch of logic gates that can be arranged and programmed (via a hardware language) to do something. It's about the closest you can get to fabbing a chip and, as a result, supposedly the FPGA-SIDs are the most accurate. Not small and not really cheap considering the cost of the real thing. This is true but you can overcome that with a VCF like the SSM2044 :) Not the same as a SID, but still a great way to have a pretty kick-ass synth that is very similar, but with a better filter.