vout

I wanna be a happy fella cheers, vout

Hi, Great idea - I would take two please. cheers, vout

Knobs arrived today - hooray! :D Thanks Goblinz, hope things work out for you.

Hi, I noticed this effect too - when I was experimenting with different values of filter capacitor I found that the cheap ceramic disc capacitors give a veiled, slightly grainy sound, compared to plastic film ones which have a more detailed, open sound. This is nothing to do with the capacitor value/filter cutoff, but seems to be the 'sonic signature' of the capacitor. I liked both types of sound, so I have included a multipole switch in my stereo sid that adds/removes the ceramic capacitors from the circuit. Not wishing to get into any audiophile voodoo here, but the sonic effects of different capacitor types does seem to be pretty well documented and accepted these days, there is lots of stuff online about it. Cheers, vout

8 SIDs just landed in bonnie Scotland :) Thank you Wilba.

Thanks Kartoshka - yeah, that makes sense - still, I wish I had seen this earlier! Cheers, vout

Hi, I just found this thread - why is it tucked away in the miscellaneous section and not in bulk orders? Anyway, I built a x0xb0x from self sourced parts a while ago, but I was unable to obtain the grayhill switches and ended up using offboard mounted miniature hex switches instead. They are not really suitable, so I would like to obtain the Grayhill ones, but it looks like I am too late for this order. Is there any possibility of another order? (or any available spares from this one?) Thanks in advance. Cheers, vout

Very nice work - unfortunately, I am having the same problem as Imp. When the program is first started I can Receive or send a patch or bank dump, but immediately after this I start to get error messages - sometimes there is an error about the midibox not receiving the correct number of bytes, then there is an error that communication has been lost. My SID has the latest version of MIOS and the SID app, also MIOS Studio (and other Midi software) works perfectly on this system, so I don't think it's a Midi problem (system is a Dell laptop with USB Midi cable). Any help would be appreciated. Cheers

Hi, Thanks for the comments everyone. I should have said that was my first post, but I've been lurking here so long I actually didn't realise it was! So, hello to all :) Anyway, apologies for the picture quality, but my camera is very cheap and nasty! I will try and post some better ones in a few days (I'm actually on holiday right now, just found an internet cafe) About the headphone output - I found that the SIDs output is enough to drive my Technics headphones directly, so it is just wired across the audio outs, it works quite well, but could do with a bit more volume (looking at the circuit, there is a transistor on the SID audio output - I wonder if it is possible to increase the output gain here so I could add a volume control?). The greek lettering was by accident (I'm not Greek) - I was just trying different fonts out and found a greek one on my system - thought it looked good and a little different. The panel is actually black but the lamination was a bit uneven and it has a mottled grainy look to it - I am going to add an audio feedback control and switched filter capacitors so I will redo it anyway, probably with matt surface laminating film, should give a better look. Anyway, thanks for making it Midibox of the week! Cheers, vout

Hi, heres my new SID - it's a stereo version using smashTV boards (these are excellent quality) and 8580R5 SIDs. The box is a cheap aluminium project box from Maplins that I had lying around, the display is a cheap 4x20 blue with white character backlit from ebay (£5!) and the panel is laminated laser printed paper. I had zero problems putting it all together (apart from drilling a hole in the wrong place - oops!) and frankly, I am amazed at the sound of this thing - I think it is up there with some of the best analogue synths in terms of raw oscillator and sync sounds, even the filter has a lovely phasey quality to it. I chose the display because it was cheap, so I was very pleased to see native support for 4x20 LCDs in the latest upgrade. All in all, this is one of the most satisfying things I have ever built. Kudos to Thorsten, SmashTV and the whole midibox community. Cheers, vout