Hawkeye

Hola, I also really like the effort, it is probably really hard work to develop a faithful emulation on these small microcontrollers! How is the noise level compared to the original? Is it lower? That would be a unique selling point - otherwise, for now, at least in Germany you can still get 8580s without going bankrupt! :-) (But it is true, the price will only rise - when i build my MB6582 some six years ago, the price was around 20€ each, now it is at least 25€ :-)). Many greets! Peter

Looking good! Thanks for your work! :-) Many greets! Peter

Congrats! :-)

Hehe, i only use veroboard, because that's the only PCB designer I can handle ;-). (Sometimes if something good comes out of it, someone makes a PCB. Many thanks to Ilmenator and the TPD, this one went down in history :-). Still missing: Altitude with the promised MBLoopA PCB ;-)) But Andy surely has a few suggestions, he has a lot of hot boards in the making! Many greets, Peter

Yo man, there are some Youtube reviews/tests of the DSO 138 vs other digital oscilloscopes. The consensus is: it is unbeatable for its price, but if you intend to do "real work" with it (and not just display audio waveforms), there might be a few better (but more expensive) alternatives. If you only want something for the audio range, it will be fine, though! If you want to display left/right waveforms of a stereo output, you could always put two displays next to each other and wire up two DSO 138 boards - they are not really huge and it would be still cheap. Many greets and have fun! Peter

No problem! :) There are a few known builders around, maybe they will contact you. Or you could just wait a little and browse this section (fleamarket): from time to time MBSIDs are sold. Or: you could try to DIY your MBSID, there is good documentation, there are tutorials, and it is a lot of fun! :-) Good luck! Peter

Hi. We are all interested in this ;-). Moved your request to the Fleamarket section, maybe you will find a builder. Many greets, Peter

Hola, The first step in debugging should be to remove all ICs, apply power and measure correct power supply over the board. There is a graphics with voltages to check for here: http://midibox.org/forums/topic/16673-mb6582-voltage-check/ Second, you should get the first core (the right core) up and running, including MIDI tests. Then, you could try to get the display running and see if you have any output there. If these work out, you can easily upload the testtone app as listed on this page: http://ucapps.de/mios_download.html So in short: get the core up and running and responding to MIDI upload requests, only then it makes sense to try to get the corresponding SID module running (this applies to a MB6582, as well as to a "modular" MBSID). Many greets and good luck! Peter

Yes, the 16mm bourns encoders with tactile switch (i think the voti.nl are bourns encoders) need no "flying wire" and are easier to install than the 12mm alps... Many greets, Peter

Great jam! Many greets, Peter

Hi Jerome, maybe unrelated, but probably the cheapest (money and timewise) solution: I recently added a DSO138 from china to an old sampler - total costs about 17$ including shipping, with a nice display (320x240px TFT). It works really well out of the box (see my latest video :-) - and no coding is necessary. Now, on topic, if you want to use MIDIbox :-): TK. has created a waveform output display on the small OLEDs for MIDIbox CV - these look super-awesome! The output part therefore is readily available, you'd just need to "sample" from an ADC. Regarding displays, just have a look into the MIOS supported graphical displays sections... The cutest displays are the small OLEDs, but then there is support for bigger graphical LCDs, too. Many greets, Peter

Hola, it is very useful - and you can use it for the "push to accelerate" feature... in the photo-tutorial, there is a section regarding the configuration: Many greets and have fun! Peter

Hey, great, that you say that! I really don't know how they do it, but I agree, they sound fantastic! But, I have no clue, why that is... :-) After downloading the all-in-one single cycle wave pack http://www.adventurekid.se/AKRTfiles/AKWF/AKWF.zip it was possible to load up the WAVs directly in the E-MU Ultra (newest OS). I am not sure, if older versions can load WAVs (i think so), but you need a way of getting them into the sampler. One way is using a harddisk with a FAT filesystem and to store it directly from the computer - you can also transfer samples via MIDI (and it won't take long, as these are short), or it might even work with floppies (small file size, no problem). When examining the samples e.g. in the tools/loop screen, i see no clutter (like header binary noise), so these need no conversion and you can dive through thousands of sounds! The cool thing is, that Adventure Kid provides sets of only slightly different waves (e.g. bass1-40), so you can assign a whole bunch of these similar waveforms to a single preset, using different waveforms for left / right panning, and more/other waveforms octave-transposed (up and down). Like that, a patch can contain for example six or eight similar, but not identical waves and it begins to sound properly fat :-). You can then slow-lfo detune a few of these waves, to add more substance :-). If you then route that through the famous E-MU filters, e.g. like the Peak/Shelf Morphing Filter, and add a bit of reverb, you are in sampler heaven! :-D Many greets! Peter

Well, yes! The Polivoks filter feels almost as good as playing good old summer games on the Commodore 64

Thanks for the feedback, and it is always nice to learn something new! I sometimes had similar problems with transposing and FTS sounding strange, so maybe more users would benefit from such a configuration option and vote for this feature? In the end, TK. needs to weigh this feature request against the other open requests and the wishlist and all other time constraints. If everything fails, I'd be willing to have a look at it (in a few weeks) - the option to sharpen or flatten if out-of-scale seems to be quite standard (also from the six4pix manual), so this would probably be a good (and easy) start... Many greets! Peter

Hi ilmenator, of course! The long story... :-) GAS helped me to an E-MU Ultra - it was all broken up, the previous owner let it falll on the floor or something, anyways, the acrylics section (with the label E-6400 Ultra) was missing... that's why it was very cheap... and I had to have it :-) Well, with the saved money, and because I really began to love it's user interface and its possibilities, I began to mod it a bit: a) added an Artronik 240x64px display with a white LED backlight. The contrast regulation did not work properly at first, so a small manual contrast regulator (potentiometer) had to be installed (but this was in the schems), so no problem. Afterwards, it was possible to get rid of the annoying el-foil high voltage generator... b) removed the noisy 40x40mm fan and added a silent 80x80 fan, that is driven by only 7 volts (12V and 5V lines = 7V differential). It was silent on 12v already, and at 7v it is inaudible, but there is a bit of airflow over the internal PSU, that should be sufficient... c) added a 120GB SATA SSD, that is converted to IDE with a SATA->IDE converter. The disk is formatted to FAT and has a quick-eject frame, so you can prepare samples on a PC and easily transfer lots of them to the E-MU. d) as the front-window was broken up, and it looked very messy, I did not know what to do with the "open space". By accident, i stumbled upon the DSO 138 DIY oscilloscope kit, which can be bought for around 17$ (incl. shipping) from china :-). It was a fun afternoon session to solder - it can be "preset" to audio waveform levels, so no adjustment is necessary, every time the unit is powered up... It is internally connected to the headphone output (which is still available) and to 5V/GND. The display has been separated from the main PCB, to allow installation in the available area... Now, only a 50% black smoked replacement window (covering both displays, they are bright enough) needs to be ordered from Ponoko, and I am a happy parker with a probably quite unique e6400 :-). By the way, if you also have an Ultra or any similar sampler from that era, the "adventurekid single-cycle waveforms" are just plain awesome: http://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/waveforms/adventure-kid-waveforms/ For example on the E-MU, you could build a 64-oscillator monosynth or an 8 voice 8-oscillator poly using these waveforms. Many of them come from traditional synths (or from 8-bit soundchips / arcade machines), and there are many more synthetic waveforms. They sound just awesome! :-) Many greets and have a great time! Peter

Small music theory understanding question... If notes do not match during the force-to-scale process, Is an option of "transpose a halftone up" / "transpose a halftone down" always sufficient? Doesn't it depend on the input notes? And aren't there any cases, where some notes should be transposed up and some down? Because, technically, such a switch could probably be implemented in the options without much pain, but I am wondering, if it will solve all "scaling" problems (or only solve some problems for certain source scales/chord progressions)? Many greets, Peter

Thanks, yogi! That sounds wonderful, am really looking forward to it! Currently doing a bit of daily (5 minute) piano training with the little one, but the fingers are yet too small to play one key with a single finger :-) - and using the whole hands for that job does not really sound very harmonic :-) - but then, there is enough time to improve matters... Many greets, Peter

Thanks, Jerome! :-) It was (as usual) quickly hacked together, but lately there is not too much time for nothin' :-). Literally, the kid wanted food after i hit the stop button, so no time for a second take - there are some flaws and mistakes, but in the end it is just about the fun - and you can have lots of it with MIDIbox! :-) Trying to motivate people to make more music and post it - and while we won't get (and don't want) Sony record deals, we can enjoy ourselves :-) Many greets, Peter

Thanks a lot, Andy! The red knob constantly tweaked below the mixer is the DIY stereo polivoks filter, it was recommended by jojjelito, and man, that thing is awesome! :-D Good idea with the GoPro, I tried it once, but had no proper headmount and fixed it to my head (mouth) with rubberbands :-D. I could not breathe properly, it somehow worked out, but I felt strangely lightheaded after the recording. Maybe should rethink that filming strategy :-). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV36JWecqrc Many greets, Peter

Hola, ... and... who would have suspected this... a new one, this one was "produced" with the little one sitting in her baby chair next to the synths and therefore, there were severe time restrictions (about 10 minutes in total, after a few tracks had been jam-prerecorded on the sequencer). Also, of course, it had to be a somewhat happy melody! :-D It is in a bit of a different format, it was created using only one hand, as the other hand was busy holding the camera and filming :). Hope you enjoyed it and hope to hear new music creations from you, too! Many greets! Peter

Try a direct connection of the PC using a different USB cable directly to the *micro* usb port of the STM32F4. If the *mini* usb port is plugged in, this explains why no communications is possible. Many greets, Peter

Hm, the fact that USB is not working at all is strange, and you should imho look into it, and try to get it working. Can you switch the cable? Some are "power-only", no data lines connected...What exactly happens when you connect it via USB to the computer? How is the SEQ powered? Do you have another machine (linux, mac or another windows) available for testing, e.g. another laptop? There might also be some problems with the USB MIDI device, even if it worked on another MIDIbox... do you have any other interface available? (I once tried an Akai MPD as a USB-MIDI converter, which drove me nuts, about the same behaviour as you described). Many greets, Peter

The problem seems to be nicely isolated should be possible to find, don't give up! The fault is not necessarily directly around the LED pads, but could also be on any trace leading to that LED, e.g. a solderblob somewhere near the ULN or so? It should be possible to test with a multimeter, checking resistance to ground. There should be a difference in readout between the problematic LED and the other LEDs, when measuring the resistances of the "same" pads to ground (when the LEDs are not installed). Follow the corresponding trace... and good luck :-) Many greets, Peter

Hi Jose, as long as it does not happen too often, don't worry too muchs (or we would have problems fixing it anyways, if one cannot reproduce it reliably :-))! A thing to check might be the power supply, as the TPD module will take a bit more current and it might be overloaded - if in doubt, check the 5v usb supply voltage (there are pins on the core to measure it with a multimeter) and see how low it drops under normal operating conditions (with the TPD on and the sequencer playing a "heavy" sequence). Good luck! Have a great weekend! Bye, peter