m00dawg

Hmm...I can't say much about that either, but I do know that the Virus TI series uses VSTs as part of its "Total Integration" package. I'm pretty sure the VST is just sending stuff to the Virus (either using MIDI or some proprietary protocol). So it /can/ be done, but I don't know what all Access did to make it work like that on the Virus ;)

Indeed this is some pretty cool stuff. That guitar work on one of them (doh I forget which...been a long day...) was bordering on epic!

Haha oh yeah, duh :) I check out your stuff every so often. Just didn't associate the name with the music :) Ooops. EDIT: Err no, I must've missed that follow e-mail. Sorry! I got my K's messed up as well. Well anyways, following you now and checking out your stuff as I type this!

Have a website or place I can check out your band perchance? Love to hear it! As far as vinyl goes, it can even be more limiting than you think. You can only fit 18 minutes or so on each side of a 12" LP typically. Since records spin at a constant rate (unlike CDs), the tracks towards the inside won't sound quite as good as the outside since the grooves are passing under the needle more slowly. This can impact how you arrange songs on your album. But they have a wonderfully warm (some would say inaccurate and flawed) sound, are great for collecting and are just fun to play! Definitely not cheap to make though...

It (Chips on vinyl) does sound nice! Not cheap though :/ But something we really would love to do so we're going to see how we can make it work.

It's been just over a year since we released our first song (Tsunami Gaiden) and we finally have just released the full album! We made a silly promo on I haven't yet put up the final 3 songs on SoundCloud yet, but you can check them out on our BandCamp page! Though the NES dominated the chiptune sounds, we also used the GameBoy with my sammichSID and sammichFM synths making their appearance in a few songs (most notably, The Final Boss). We have already started on our next album, although still plan on trying to get Chipsurf Pipeline on vinyl (wouldn't that be intersting - chiptunes on vinyl?). Our next album will likely feature the SID more, although with a bit more effects on top. Anyways I'm excited if you couldn't tell!

SwinSID comes pretty close to replacing the functions of a real SID, but I rather like to think of it as a different option, or a solution for your C64 so it can still make sound after your "borrowed" its SID chip :) Where SwinSID shines, I think, is in the extra support of the MBSID firmware to open up the extra waveforms and things. That plus being able to have a different sound to augment real SIDs with. When the market truly dries up though, this will be an option, but I wonder if the SID on an FPGA style projects might not be more accurate.

There is a VST somewhere I think, but it's out of date. is probably worth looking at as TK mentioned adding support for CC/Sys-Ex and, I assume that means it would not take too much effort to forward those events to a MIDI interface rather than the emulated sound engine. Just rampant assumption though. And yes, you can use CC, NRPN, and Sys-Ex to talk to the MBSID such that using a framework like Synthedit may work as long as you can get it to talk to the synth via MIDI.

I've run into this as well. Thought it a bit odd and it's messed me up a few times. I haven't needed to be in that menu often enough to have it be a major annoyance, but it does seem a bit removed from how other things are handled, I'll agree.

I can't say if the sammichFM encoder will work but I think they are both standard pinouts. I will say I, too, find the encoder for my sammichSID to be wonky. It's MUCH better on the sammichFM. I wonder, if you really get in a bind, if you can map that to a CC or Sys-Ex message to do the same thing and just use another controller that has better encoders? Could get you by at least for your live show.

All revisions have fairly similar pin-outs, but you will always want to verify that with a multimeter. The C64 Optimized PSU includes the pin-out you will need to mate with the C64 PSU connector and you can use that to validate the pinouts on your C64 PSU.

Ah. Looked like copper to me but I didn't really give it a close look. If it's gold plated, that's cool :) But either way, as long as the solder sticks to the pads I'm happy, and it seems to. I've had some boards with SMD pads as well through Dorkbot and was happy with the results.

I <3 DorkBot. The only very minor gripe I have is solder pads aren't tin plated - just bare copper. But one just solders on-top of it anyway and, in fact, I find copper easier to solder on than tin plating myself. They are faster than BatchPCB, and for the same price, you get 3 boards, not 1. Plus, as TK mentioned, he accepts Eagle .BRD files directly.

+1000 for DorkBot (Laen). He's nice, economical, and fast! Better value than BatchPCB in my opinion.

A PC PSU is not a very good idea. I believe there was a sub-discussion as to why in the thread I mentioned so I highly recommend you thread through it. When you're talking about building or modifying PSUs, you need to be mindful of what you're doing since some solutions involve having to deal with mains (ie 120V or 230V AC) voltage. If you do not feel comfortable with that, consider using the multiple power bricks as I mentioned in my previous post. It will get you up and running rather simply without involving potentially dangerous voltages. (If you didn't catch the hint, I'll say it directly - read the post I linked to)

If you are just making a simple MBSID (1 CORE, 1 SID, LCD, a few buttons) then you can power the CORE with the same PSU you power your SID board with and just put a heatsink on the CORE's voltage regulator. Or you can simply buy two power supplies. In a larger MBSID, the C64 Optimized PSU is something to consider. Even if you don't use an original C64 PSU brick there are clones that provide the same voltages. There is also an excellent on custom power supplies and options. It's lengthy but it's full of great information and will give you lots of things to consider (such as buying pre-made multi-voltage switchmode or linear PSUs; builting your own with various protection circuits built-in, etc.). It's really for something like the MB6582 or similar but you should be able to get some good information from it if you're building something more custom.

For what it's worth, I have a hard time getting the editor to play nice with Ableton Live. I'm using the GM5x5x5 but, for some reason, I can't get Live and the editor to work both at the same time. I don't seem to remember having that problem on Windows XP (I'm on Windows 7 now) but who knows. I don't think you would mess anything up if you did a software router thing, as long as you were passing the SysEx messages properly to/from the editor. Worth a short anything - I doubt you would do anything bad even if that setup didn't work (though back up your patches just in case ;) )

Nice job as always Hawkeye! Definitely love that SID sound. Nothing quite like it! I also second the desire to see jojjelito's modular rack in action :)

Hah well most everything is made in China :) I'd be wildly surprised if the Pioneer was fully made in the US. The difference there is that the Pioneers are built like absolute tanks. The vinyl versus digital argument for DJing, while a bit different than it is for just listening to records (I'm in the vinyl is better camp there too), there's some similarities. For me, it's not quite as much about the audience. As a member of an audience, I'm far more impressed if I see a DJ bust out a real (not timecoded) record. But, you're ultimately right, usually it's about the music and party and not about what the DJ uses. Having said that, one big plus for vinyl, and to a lesser extend things like CDJs - what happens when your hard-drive crashes, you drop your laptop, spill something on it, etc.? Did you bring two computers with one already setup and ready to go? Few people do that, but if you're using TTs or CDJs and the like, you can keep on going. For me, the tactile feedback and sound of vinyl does it for me. Even when it comes from a digital source, the sound of vinyl I find more pleasing and it's fun to see how components influence the sound. Digital is a cold bitch, frankly. If you don't warm her up, she's going to stay cold. And even when you do warm her up, don't expect anything kinky. That's why good mastering shops run digital through an analog process (even tape) and back in. And it's why, I think, the sound of modular synthesizers pleases me more than, say, my Virus and certainly soft-synths. The tactile feedback of vinyl is huge. Using auto-sync is largely thought of as a crutch by many DJs and after doing without for some time, I tend to agree. You can be MUCH more flexible and creative when you're the one that has to think of beats. Consider how to sync something in 3/4 with 4/4 and the BPMs to do so all with sync. You don't need a turntable to beat match, but as you pointed out, jogwheels suck. At least mine do unless I'm searching through a track or using them as a big effect knobs. And, either way, I just don't feel as intimately tied to the music. That's why I'm going to do both. Best of both worlds. If I want to cut up a track to bits, I can easily do that. Though modern mixers and CDJs and things can do similar things, I do find that such things are certainly easier with software. My favorite tracks I have and will continue to try and collect on vinyl and spin those unless I want to do crazy things with them. And perhaps after that I'll move to CDJs if the hobby takes off in more places than my bedroom and an occasional small show when we're doing a party at work. All that said (and it was a lot, sorry - I'm bored as my main Internet connection is down and am on my slow tethered cell connection ;) ), DJing is a diverse art so ultimately whatever you use is up to you and that's the way it should be. I find DJs online (such as places like /r/djs) have way to much hubris about the whole thing. Use whatever makes you, and your audience happy. Just keep pushing the envelope.

Ah yes, looks pretty intriguing. My Reloop + NanoKontrol setup seems to work pretty well, although I need to setup a scene on my Nano for cueing so I can more easily do loops and things (I suppose a NanoPad would be better there). Since I'm trying to do the whole vinyl thing, I'm thinking of getting something like a DJM-500 (when I can afford it, hah) so I can have 4 physical decks, two being for Traktor; and two for Analog. Numark also makes a simple (no effects) 4-channel DJ mixer that is fairly economical. I occasionally find myself using 4 decks in Traktor but I do like that this setup is more raw this way. I could run my TTs through Traktor as well (which I will do until I can get a DJM or similar mixer) which works well enough for the interim. Even though that setup is rather analog, since I'm hoping to use both Traktor and TTs, I rather like the idea of some of the new interfaces coming out, like Native Instruments' new pad thing (looks similar to the Behringer, at a vastly increased cost obviously :). I think on those fronts, making some MidiBox gear would be a bit more rewarding. Then again, I /still/ have to finish my rackmount MidiBox SID :)

*drool* That's quite impressive! Hard to take my mind off how good the Kraftzwerg itself sounds and focus on the MBCV feature-set though (which is, also, very very cool)! Really excited about this! I should probably start figuring out where to source some SSM2044's so I can hurry up and build this thing and have a use for it :)

As far as I have heard, it's very much an LPC CORE option. The control surface is being prototyped for digital (iPad/Laptop) with the intend being to have a physical control surface option. I'm not sure how much of a template for a real control surface there will be since the project is fairly flexible in its own right so it may come down to preference.

That would probably work, save for the any non-note data (like modulation and stuff). I can't remember what effects AdlibTracker supported but I bet you can also translate those using the CC or SysEx idea noted above. Even if one couldn't get that stuff working, just having the patch and note data would go a long way.

I had a similar problem with my sammichSID. Go back and check /every/ solder joint. It's a painful process but it helps. In my case, I had a cold solder joint that I couldn't see with the naked eye. I had to test it by cutting tracks (not so fun). As a result, you could also try to simply reflow solder over some joints. These issues can be problematic to troubleshoot. If the trace you over-heated (and it's component) are still functional, it's probably not that. I don't think you could have over-heated the SMD chips either as long as you used proper techniques for soldering them (letting them cool sufficiently between soldering, etc.).

Whoa that was incredibly impressive and catchy! Checking out your discography on iTunes now. Really cool stuff! The hipster in me that I'm trying to claim isn't a hipster (but probably is *sigh*) is wondering if you guys will/would ever do a release on vinyl perhaps?