Fozzy The Bear

Hey! Thanks SineSurfer... It's nice to see a few people have an interest in what I'm trying to achieve. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Thank you for your thoughts guys! They do indeed help me to resolve the directions I need to go in. Agreed I could do that.... and in practical space terms that would probably be the best way to go. Noted and agreed... I should still be able to do that even with all the hardware around it. The idea being that it works as a stand alone synth, but also has MIDI in out access to the outside world. Agreed... and latency may become an issue with this setup. That's something I might have to work around. Again agreed. But in this case it's not an issue for me as the objective is to replicate the external appearance of the original synth as well as increased functionality internally. studio space isn't really something that bothers me much to be honest. Very true... and what I may well do is to build another MidiBox project that is in itself a generic softsynth control surface. That's certainly a project I'll want to do later. I'm not really after that sort of flexibility with this one, just want to make it function as a synth in itself. I suppose that you could also say that about the Midibox FM or the Midibox SID projects. Yes.... I will be including the monitor mouse and keyboard ports on the back panel. But once it's setup it'll be designed to auto boot right into the chosen configuration with the software synth running. So 99% of the time, I won't need to connect them. Yes that is an issue.... But it's one I think I can work around in the software. The Mini ITX board itself shouldn't be a problem, for one thing it's fan-less and designed to run in poor environments like in a Car PC. I'm also planning on running a Flash Card, instead of a Hard Drive. So that Means that there are no mechanical parts to break down. The only time I should need to connect a DVD Rom is for initial set-up of the system and drivers. So once it's in and running it should be pretty reliable. Thanks!! :D I think I need it with this one! LOL :frantics: I do very much appreciate your thoughts on this. They have driven me to justify how I'm doing it, which is very useful to me. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Thanks for the welcome and thanks for the quick reply. The only real quandry I'm in is over the keyboard. I do have a few MIDI keyboards but non I want to rip apart right now. So I'll give it some thought and as you say read read read... :D If I go the rip a keyboard apart route then I may well follow your suggestion of hunt on ebay for somthing that outputs MIDI. I do have a lot of spare parts lurking and have some physical keyboard hardware laying about with no electronics so it might be cheaper to try and press some of those parts into service. Thanks for the tip on the switches... just need to track down some cheap rotary encoders now. The case and hardware part of the project is no real problem. The front panel and all the woodwork I can cut on the 3 axis CNC machine I built, so that shouldn't be any problem. Not really keen on making it an expander... So I have to figure out the best route to get the keyboard functional. Either as we say, rip apart a cheap Yamaha or similar, or figure out how to use a Midibox Core as a keyboard switch to MIDI encoder. If I get stuck with the front panel controls and can't find the answers in here then I'll be sure to ask. I've no doubt it's all been done before. It's just combining what other people have done to make it function. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi Guys, Just thought I'd run this project idea past you. It's not specifically a question, just a set of "what if" type thoughts, that I'd be grateful for your opinions and suggestions on. First of all about me.... I'm not a total electronics noob, but I'm no expert in the subject either. I'm a self taught musician with engineering and some software skills, and I'm currently pretty broke, which is what made me seek out solutions and what led me to find the Midibox Project in the first place. OK... That aside, the idea I have is to construct a hardware synth, with a software underbelly. I know it's been done by other people and I am reading as much as I can from the forum and the documentation and I think I should be able to do this with the Midibox core and all the help available on here. So here's the plan: I fell in love with the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, back in the 80's.... But I've never been able to afford one. Even more so now that they cost WAY too much as collectors items. Even if I did afford one, vintage synths are unreliable and unstable at the best of times. SO! I figure, build an affordable and reliable replica!! :D Here's the components I'm thinking of using... Midibox 64E... Plus enough input boards to give me all the pots and switches (in this case rotary controls and switches) of the original synth... plus a few extras... LCD display instead of the LED display on the original synth. Inside the replica Prophet 5 case, will be buried a Mini ITX Motherboard to run the software synth (not entirely decided which of the available software emulations to run yet), with a good sound card plugged into it, to give good quality audio output... Plus all the Midibox parts to run the front panel. I figure, use rotary controls rather than pots, so that whatever patch I set the software synth into, the front panel will immediately mimic the correct positions of the controls. Now... this is the point where I run into snags... Obviously the keyboard of this synth has to be functional (it's not just a midi expander module) So I figure that either I have to use a second Midibox Core to handle the input from the switches on all the keys (the original synth was not velocity sensitive so switch on or off inputs would work fine as a key interface), or I have to bury the guts of a cheap MIDI synth inside to provide the key input in midi form that can then be fed to the Midibox hardware and merged with the front panel controls before being sent to the Mini ITX PC Board for the emulation to deal with... Any thoughts you guys have on this would be useful. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)