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m00dawg

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Everything posted by m00dawg

  1. geez, latencies are already pretty damn good on the GM5 relative to many other interfaces. That's also good to hear! I'm at the point where, build or buy, I need a MIDI interface that has multiple ports, handles sync well, is low latency, and reliable. GM5 almost gets me there but sometimes it just likes to completely junk out while I'm in Ableton Live (it's entirely possible it's something I'm doing since I'm the one that populated the board :P). Rackmount would be a nice plus.
  2. whoo!!! Looking forward to this! My GM5x5x5 is a bit quirky these days.
  3. Mmmk so first, this is absolutely gorgeous! Second, can I ask where you get your boards fabbed and how much?
  4. Oh wow that sounds pretty awesome! I hope you keep us updated! I haven't touched FPGAs since college so don't have much to share other than my enthusiasm. But with the SID supply drying up, it's nice to see more FPGA solutions come about. Ones that can work with MidiBox, in my opinion, are all the better!
  5. Yep, SMD was basically required because some of the modules just didn't have enough room without without having to use another board somewhere. I had to do that for the LED Matrix. The top layer plugged into a button board not unlike how the sammichSID works. I lost the latest design I made of it, but have older versions still around. Doing a full CS as one large board might avoid having to use SMD components, not sure. I might look at kicad again to see if I can make that happen. Wiring it all up wasn't too terribly difficult. The fear of having to make an expensive CS board, and front panel, and have them not fit was a very real fear though :) I like the rackmount idea though because there's so much room for activities! Such as a passive mixer, balanced outputs, cooling, maybe some SSM boards (although for that I think MBCV is probably the better route to go, something I'd like to try at some point as well).
  6. I tried it not too long ago. The problem was the it was fairly spare on the component libraries, but otherwise I liked it well enough (and it ran in Linux is I'm not mistaken which is not my main desktop when not actively making music anyway). That may have changed by now, though. The CS isn't using anything special part-wise. For the modular versions, I mounted the 165 and 595 SMDs directly to the CS and each module had basically and in and out to chain them together (not unlike how DIN/DOUTs work). For a single board, I'd likely do something similar but could also adopt the button matrix that the MB6582 used, though I liked having fewer cables involved (unsurprisingly since cabling has been my downfall for the MB6582).It'd be nice if I could use through hole as well just in case a chip fails (I think I have a failing shift register on my Virus Classic for instance, and I still find socketed chips are much easier to work with than SMDs..)
  7. My MB6582 has been sitting in a box for years now :/ I tried to fix it, again, in 2015 I think, but the baseboard to CS cabling connections just have never worked for me. I still want to make a custom control surface and just rackmount the thing. But yeah I'd love to see your design ilmenator! That'd get me something that may actually work for me at least ;) Alas, I had all my rackmount control boards done but somehow lost them in the ether :/ Honestly for how much the individual boards cost, if I could somehow swing making a large board I would (but EagleCAD is $$$ for boards of that size).
  8. If you are running 8 SIDs, .5A might not be enough, but I can't remember what the current draw was. My MB6582 power supply draw was under 1A on both as I recall (I used 78xx linear regulators, which are typically only rated at 1A). I think the first PSU would be safer as far as headroom. That said, I couldn't find the switching frequency and that's arguably the most important statistic. Question is, do you want to trust a PSU to your irreplaceable SIDs? If you've come this far, I wouldn't skimp on the PSU (if it were me) if you are going to go with a nice switchmode. I'd suggest seeing if Meal-Well has a PSU that suits your needs (again, pretty sure there were some suitable models mentioned here on the forums or on the wiki) since they public their switching frequency and all well regarded. In a pinch, you could run multiple wall-wart PSUs (a 5V and a 9V) if you can get nice linear regulated ones (switchmode wall-warts will likely be very noisy for audio). Jameco has some, for instance. That could get you buy while you find a better long term solution.
  9. There are posts here about using switch-mode supplies for various MidiBox projects since you would want 5DC and 9 or 12DC ideally. I believe you can find switchmode PSUs that offer both 5VDC and 9VDC, but if you can't, you can use a regulator to bring it down to 5VDC. Thing to be careful about here is you need one that has a high switching frequency and good filtering since you are using it for audio applications. The forum has plenty of discussion around this though. A C64 power supply offers +5DC and 9VAC (hence the transformer mentioned up above), which is options A or B for the MB6582. Might be ok if you want to use it for a C64 when you're not using it for your MB6582, but this design dumps more heat into the 6582. And if you were going to build a C64 compatible PSU, I would recommend just buying a new C64 PSU off eBay. They at least use more modern components, are cheaper, and would get the job done without you having to work with mains AC voltage.
  10. I know there have been quite a few designs of a GM5x5x5 enclosure here and was curious if anyone might be able to share their designs? Rackmount would be ideal but I've seen a few laser cut acrylic designs for say Ponoko that looked pretty cool. I've had the thing stuck in a Lego enclosure and then had the thing mounted on my wall using push-pins :P Both methods aren't particularly good.
  11. That looks lovely! I was trying to combine a sammichSID and FM into a 1U a while back. Never did get around to it :/ Can I ask where you purchased the 1U rackmount enclosure? That has always been the big headache for me with rackmount-anything.
  12. Re-read through the big RTPMIDI thread and it seems like clock issues are much better over ethernet. Doesn't surprise me too much given it's faster than USB and sits closer to the chip. I'm still not sure about polling, but I'd imagine that too is considerably better. Has anyone build an RTPMIDI + MidiBox MIDI I/O interface that could share some thoughts on clock drift? I was looking at the iConnect series of controllers as well if I wanted to avoid building (and it looks like it might have the added bonus of being able to chain my GM5x5x5 to it?). A hardware clockbox is also what I think I'm after, but if RTPMIDI is able to compensate enough, it might not be needed. Most of the time my Virus Classic is well behaved (not always), but my sammichSID really gets kinda mad about what appears to be drift. Occasionally it'll drop notes too. I plan on adding more hardware soon, so I expect my problem to get worse, not better.
  13. I've been thinking recently about some clock drift concerns I've had with sending a MIDI clock. My sammichSID has always been a bit drifty with the clock but even my Virus Classic lately can get a bit out of sync on long arpeggiations. This was with both the GM5x5x5 and my firewire-based Saffire Pro40. In fact I think the GM5 may handle it a bit better despite being over USB. Since RTP-MIDI uses Ethernet, it made me wonder how things would be different from a timing perspective? USB requires polling if I remember right and that could cause drift on a non-realtime OS right? I'm less sure how an ethernet/IP solution would differ here from that standpoint? The other option I was pondering was a clockbox for the clock master and set my DAW as a slave of that, but I haven't tested that yet. As I recall the last time I tried that I had some trouble figuring out how to get synths to respond to note data from my DAW and clock data from another source (I don't think I can even do that with a GM5?) Any experiences to share given the above?
  14. Yep I feel the same way. I also find it a bit odd that the Ti/Ti2 platform hasn't changed much in a few years now. It's a glorious synth which I suppose doesn't have to change, but other synth companies have been doing some neat things lately. It's great to see other companies coming out with some true analog and hybrid analog synths for example. The latter is the reason I want to fix my Classic instead of going with a Ti2 (or at least that's my plan). I'm thinking of maybe a Prophet '08 or Tetra for my next synth which sound glorious warm and analog - very much the sound I've been wanting for a while. I don't consider them as flexible as, say, my Virus Classic, so I don't think it would be a good main synth and I can't afford both that and a Ti/Ti2. So I'm left with trying to fix my Classic. Replacement chips came in, and I have the pins desoldered from one of the chips though it's opting to be a bit stubborn. The pads are small so I'm trying not to do any damage to it to make my problem even worse. As far as your audio input issue, you might just try swapping the jack if it's cutting out or you hear static or crackling (especially when you wiggle the cable) is the first thing that comes to mind, although I haven't looked at the audio path on my Classic too much to say if there may be something else at work.
  15. I did the last time I tried to fix it but heard crickets back. Instead I've just moved forward with trying to replace the two chips that seem to be involved. One is a D-latch chip and I recall those are known to occasionally fail so I'm hopeful it has something to do with that. It looks like they are using some sort of button matrix but doing so differently than, say, the MB6582 as far as I can tell.
  16. This post is not about my MidiBox stuff but more of a general troubleshooting thought, maybe anyway. The edit button on my Virus Classic registers phantom presses. At one point it made the synth unusuable but after replacing the tactile switch, it's better now, but I'm not sure if that was really the cause. I'm still getting a phantom press every 10 seconds to a few minutes or so. So my next thought was to replace the shift-registers on the control surface. They seem to be somewhat non-standard so before I did that, I was trying to think if there was perhaps another explanation or what folks that have seen similar behavior have done to troubleshoot this sort of thing?
  17. I haven't found much use in audio-in and I think you'll find most folks end up using a feedback knob, yup.
  18. Ah yeah that sounds nifty! I could see some pretty neat applications with that while keeping things clean (thinking of a filter stage such as an SSM2044 kinda thing). If I can figure out how to wire the MB6582 matrix, I think it makes the most sense to do it that way if it's not a total nightmare.
  19. Back in 2013 I was trying to devise a rackmount version of the MB6582 and what really nerfed that idea was how much it would cost to have all the control surface boards fabricated from OshPark. I rather liked the approach I ended up with, which was to mount the shift registers to the control boards themselves and just connect them end to end (similar to how DIN/DOUT boards work). This year I was thinking of tackling it again, but sadly lost some of that work and again realized that the board costs are non-trivial. Instead, I was thinking of going back to leavning on the MB6582's DIN/DOUT design which uses a switch matrix for the buttons or just using separate DIN/DOUT modules directly and wiring things up more like the Rev C control surface. In both cases I can likely make things work using protoboards. Using the switch matrix makes the most sense, but I'm not sure how I would go about wiring something like that across multiple separate control surface boards? Can anyone shed light on how that might work?
  20. Probably unlikely. The digital audio I believe came from the C64 and used the audio pin of the SID (though I could be wrong there). Thus much of the low res sound was external to the SID. If you wanted to at least hear digital samples through the audio amplification circuitry of the SID, you could use the audio in of your Sammich and run the digital emulated output from your computer to it. If you want the rull on real experience with digital samples, your best bet is to use the C64 I'm afraid. Playing back digital samples on MidiBox SID would require quite a bit of work is my guess. Perhaps the newer CORE32 platforms may open up more possibilities, but I would imagine implementing that would be non-trivial with a fairly narrow use-case. Code is accessible though if you want to give it a go!
  21. Your Sammich won't be able to play samples as there is no way to transmit digital samples using MIDI data. What I used to do what mute all but the digital channel on the computer and then have the MBSID do the rest. Works pretty well. I have yet to install Sidplay after reinstalling Yosemite so unfortunately I don't recall how to answer your second question (though I have done that before).
  22. Thanks TK! I tried that multiple times yesterday without sucess, but I did that just now and it worked. Not sure what to make of that, but it works now! Maybe I needed to reboot a few times or something? *shrug* Either way, I'm up and running now! Thanks again for the help!
  23. Yeah it's a shame. OS X for a while there was glorious - it gave me good tools, with a decent interface, and then would get the hell out of the way :) These days that's definitely less so.
  24. Ah hmm...quite odd. It really annoys me all the things Apple neglects at the expense of making UI tweaks, but I digress... I was able to get the first port working (at least output, though I haven't tried input yet). So I can function at least, although I'm not really sure where to go from here, other than to setup Ableton Live on my Windows box. But, man, the one thing Apple got right was Audio and MIDI :/
  25. I just re-installed OS X on my laptop and ended up having to do a clean install. I am using Yosemite and noticed that OSX now only detects 1 port on my GM5x5x5 only. I tried both the MidiBox and Ploytech settings (the J8 jumper) but it shows up the same in both cases - just one port comes up in Audio/MIDI setup. I was running on Yosemite previous but that was an upgrade from Mavericks (which I think was an upgrade from Mountain Lion). Anyone having a similar issue? I can't find any drivers for OS X apart from the built-in ones, so I'm at a loss on how to make the other ports show up :( To be clear, I used to have all 5 ports visible on my previous OS X install.
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