m00dawg

Wow that thread ended badly...ouch.

As far as I can tell, TK just spots the one he likes. There is a thread about adding some additional MIDI OUT clock capabilities, for instance. It's not within a firmware requests thread. I have a feeling his official answer would be if you want something, write the code for it :)

I hadn't thought of that but being able to chain 6582's would be a neat feature :) Graphical interface is kinda nice but I don't mind text-mode. Aside from that, some of the really neat things I would have thought TK might have added to MBSID are in the MBCV2 and having it separated makes it more flexible. *shrug* Oh well ok I know TK also talked about avoiding the ADSR bug with magic in the next version :) But since that can be mitigated I'm not sure what else he would add to an already really solid synth.

In my opinion, you won't gain much by going modular over the MB6582. If you want a custom control surface, you can still use the 6582 baseboard. I recall TK made mention that the next version of MBSID will still use PICs to control each pair of SIDs (but will add the LPC as the "main" CORE). That means the MB6582 baseboard will still potentially relevant. It may require more modification than a modular approach at that stage, but it still quite compact compared to a modular approach.

There is also a super-saw mode available (for 24 note polyphony, albeit with simple waveforms). Plus, you can use multiple engines at the same time. Have a lead engine on 1 pair, bassline on another, drums on yet another, etc.

Well the schematics that had both the pot and CV just had some resistor magic it looked like. So I thought I would copy those over. That said, I should probably stay focused on the bare essentials for my live rack first :) Need to finish my ArduinoBoy rack thing, build the MBSEQ, the PSU, and then rackmount versions of the MBFM and MBSID. After that, need some effect units (mostly for vocals) and THEN hopefully I'll get to work on filters and delay :)

So I'm looking at the schematics from the provided website and I don't see a CV input to control Q, but looking at the other parts of the schematic, it seems like that could be added pretty easily?

I, too, am working on an MB6582 rackmount, although not for my live rack (I will be using the Sammich baseboards and a very stripped down control surface instead). It's untested, but =sidr8tr]here is all the info on my rackmount MB6582. I have about half of the boards verified (on paper) to fit with the front panel, but that's about as far into the validation as I have gotten to this point.

If you have the room, I would say it might not be a bad idea to just have two bipolar and non-polar PSUs to avoid that problem. Sort of wastes a lot of components for the bipolar (given the current draw) but it will definitely keep things balanced. For what it's worth, that is the route I am likely going to go for my band's live rack (which will need +5, +9, and +/- 12 or 15V). Planning on having non-polar PSU module boards of sorts and a bipolar board. Haven't decided how many transformers I will use, but will likely use at least 2. But the modular PSU will sit in the bottom of our rack, so I have plenty of room to work with (most of the rack will have panel mount components so it will be pretty open).

Not sure why you would want to try and hook it up that way? Why not hook the +9V reg up the standard way? But to answer your question, yes I'm pretty sure the MB6582 shares a single ground.

Ah yeah forgot about that post! I have looked at it and it looks really intriguing. Lack of MIDI sync is a slight bummer since everything else is sync'd but yeah won't be that bad. My band-mate already has a pedal board we can use for delay until I build a proper one as well. I think I'm going to run out of spaces in my live rack though :P

Aha ok that was the other link I found, though I just now found the PDF schems on that page, oops :) The other link has an Eagle layout already so I may compare the two and see. If the Eagle one is the same, it'd save me a bit of work :) Re GB/NES, I think most any chip-synth will sound so kick-ass with delay :) Just need to find a MIDI sync'd delay pedal/effect box so we don't have to dial in delay manually. I'd also like an analog style one (though in reading even a lot of the analog ones still use some digital trickery?). I wanted to avoid using multiple GameBoys but we may have to in order to have delay on leads while not having it on drums. I'm getting a tad bit off-topic (a tad unfair since this topic should be about your very kick-ass song) but with 2 GB's we can multi-track in a Live setting as if we had one by splitting the stereo for each one. We just don't have a big enough mixer to handle all those inputs :) I use a sammichFM so I don't have a usable bipolar supply yet, but that will end up going in our live rack so that won't be a problem. +/- 15V is generally better than +/- 12V if given the option?

Is this where you grabbed the board design from perchance? I'd love to build one of these filters as I think it might sound really nice with both my GameBoys and (as you have already proven) MBSID. But I, too, would want a custom layout and wanted to use a schematic I knew was proven :)

Oh haha. Wasn't at the end was it? That looked like it landed - mostly :)

Dude that is a wicked filter! Great song too! Though sorry to hear about your friend :(

If start/stop could be linked to a button as well, that would be amazing, or even just a menu option I can select and toggle would work. I assume RyuX was referring to the F1 button on the sammichSID, but that won't work for us because it will play the patch. It would be really helpful for us if start/stop could be an independent event.

Actually I haven't tried using MBSID as a MIDI master. I didn't think it sent out a clock signal - I thought it just let you set the BPM for all the clock-based parameters? If you get it working, though, let me know! I too have an ArduinoBoy (actually just finished my rackmount design of it) and need to sync LSDJ to a clock. I was planning on using MBSEQ for that (as soon as I build one). As far as the 8550's - are you sure it's not 8580? 8580 is just one of the revisions of the 9V SID family (6582/8580). Compared to the 6581, it's less buggy, more punchy, but lacks some warmth and grit.

According to Wikipedia, you can using various methods. I don't think you could easily do that with an MBSID without some pretty heavy modifications though. I found this technique rather interesting (and new): "At the X'2008 demo party, a completely new method of playing digitized samples was unveiled. The method allows for an unprecedented four (software-mixed) channels of 8-bit samples with optional filtering on top of all samples, as well as two ordinary SID sound channels.[2][3] The method works by resetting the oscillator using the waveform generator test bit, quickly ramping up the new waveform with the Triangle waveform selected, and then disabling all waveforms, resulting in the DAC continuing to output the last value---which is the desired sample. This continues for as long as two scanlines, which is ample time for glitch-free, arbitrary sample output. It is however more CPU-intensive than the 4-bit volume register DAC trick described above. Because the filtering in a SID chip is applied after the waveform generators, samples produced this way can be filtered normally."

Anytime! Have fun with the build! Be sure to read the build guide closely (it's somewhere on the wiki - just search 6582 and you're bound to find it).

I think you can do it through MIOS Studio as well (so long as the PIC has the bootloader, which the ones from SmashTV do).

Basically, yep. Also can't hurt to mention to Smash you are using those for the MB-6582 baseboard just in case.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but to take a stab at it: For an 8x SID setup, you need 4x COREs and 8x SID modules. Each CORE must have a PIC with a different ID. If you click on the PIC ID Calculator on SmashTV's page (under where you would order the CORE8 kit) you can see how this works. Basically, you only need to change the SysEx ID for most normal cases, so the PIC IDs would be 0-3. The COREs are connected using CAN with the instructions on how to do that being on ucapps.de somewhere (here is a good place to start), but the headers you need already are on the CORE8 board. I believe the header used for the CAN bus is J15, but it is a specific pin is memory serves. All that said, if you want a solid 8x SID option, why not just go with the MB-6582 board which Smash also sells?

Yes, I'm almost certain you can save the state of the instrument after you make changes via NRPN. The MBSID editor (CTRLR or the older one) just send out those or SysEx to do parameter changes. That said, it's been a while since I have had the need to change a parameter via a keyboard and store it but I'm pretty sure it works. You just save the patch back like you normally would when editing patches. Doing a dump of the buffer I think is possible too but I've never looked into it. Saving partial edits is another story, though. I can't think of a good way to do that.

I think I finally figured out how to use the MC34161 along with the clamp. You can do some cool things like having under and over voltage thresholds but I have used it for over-voltage only. I would guess a discrete circuit that doesn't use a voltage divider is probably a slightly better design. I'm not sure how the IC compares to solutions that do use resistors, but at least I can swap the chip out if it fails. I removed the avalanche diode since the IC does basically the same thing. I might put it back so it handles small voltage spikes while the IC handles larger ones, but I'm not sure. Anyways here's the new schematic.

Looks like the application is mostly the same, although the newer chip has some nice features - and happens to already be in Eagle so that's a bonus :) Only concern I have is the accuracy of the voltage divider, especially with 12VDC. Can get high precision resistors, but still curious what the percent error might be. I suspect small enough to be useful. Using a voltage divider also means those only need to be changed to handle different voltage inputs, which is nice.