technobreath

Yep, an external vcf is on my todo list. But I will design something discrete, I think the CEM chips are kinda hard to get.. and in 10 years when I need replacement maybe... then it is suddenly become unobtanium - not silicium :P. I use some analog vsti synths, for example sylenth1, and I just LOVE the filter. 24db/oct lowpass on a "fifth" style saw, slightly detuned and resonance added to the point of it almost sounding like harsh feedback... makes a lot of nice overtones that I just love. sounds very dreamish...! Kinda off topic :P. I have also never tried a real hardware filter of that sort, so it would be nice if I build a filter that sounds like that :D mmmm. Are u saying there already have been "built" a FPGA-SID?

FPGA? Im not exactly sure what it is, but are you talking about actually logically "building" a sid from scratch? Would be extremely cool. Would be more like a modern clone than firmware emulation... It's been a while since I had a look at swinsid, but the thing that annoyed me then was the lack of audio in for filtering... I guess this is because of firmware complexity, cost, and hardware limitations?

I took a quick peek around to get a hint on how this is supposed to work. Now I'm not a programmer at all, and this is likely to be rubbish, but somewhere on the kvr forum there was a posting about just this thing - a guy wanting a vst plugin as a midi cs for his waldorf blofeld. And there was some talk about the vst host expecting to receive audio from the plugin, and that you couldnt use the vst platform for a pure midi cs of external gear... As I said, may be complete rubbish... Of course u could probably work around that issue, if it really is so... Hehe. Well, not very contributing posting... But I must say, a vst cs for the mb sid would be vert nice, would be cool to control everythi g in the studio from the vst host. So this is really interesting. But it is up to the developers to make this, not me, as I would be totally clueless. But it is dedinetly on my wishlist too!

Hehe, i know the feeling of getting greedy. I started out with my mb6582 and planned for only 4 sids. Then I came across a couple of not so bad deals on 4 more fully tested. Then flemming here on the forum said to me he thought I would be a person that had at least one modular based sid synth, and I thought well, I kinda am, so I went on holliday to Denmark last summer with some friends and family, so I sat down in my car and drove across denmark to Copenhagen one of the days we were in Denmark, up to Flemming's place, and bought one of his stereosid setups. Just need to get it in a box now, and get myself a control surface for it. So that trip to Copenhagen cost me more than what I got hehe, but it was a nice trip, and nice to be out on flem's balcony having ourselves some smoke while talking about all the weirdos in here hehe, joking of course. So well worth it. Because I got greedy I went from Norway to Copenhagen to visit flem and pick it up myself hehe, beat that. Let us know how stuff work out for ya, hang out in the irc channel, a lot of us is messing around there every day, talking shop and harras each other, very nice hehe.

Hello! For a stereo sid setup you need of course one core8 with the right pic. I don't think the previous usual pic18f452 will work here. And you need 2 sid modules. All the info needed on how to connect them modules together will be found in the midibox.org wiki and on ucapps.de. Not having finished my own stereosid build quite yet, I can't tell u too much firmware wise. I guess there is a stereosid application that can be loaded onboard, but not sure wich, or what the differences are. And again, all info will be found on ucapps. Though it seems like a rather simple site on top, there is tons of information when you dig deep. The studying will be good for you also, since it makes u learn a lot about the platform. Good luck, and have fun with the sid. I'm off planning a case for my mb6582. When I'm done I will have 10 sids in my arsenal hehe. They have its own mixing console hehe. As for the Jacks, you can use either two mono jacks or a stereo jack. All depends on how u wanna connect it. If u have loads of channels like my 10 sids it makes sense to use a sterojack and save the mono inputs on your console for things that need preamp. And yeah, u interface the second board to a connector to the same connector on the core. In other words, they are wired parallel. Except for 1 wire. From the second SID module, you extract one wire from the loom and connect it to its own onepin connector on the core, can't remember what its name is right now. So... All cables run from connector on core to connector on first sid. Then you cut on wire off at that point, and run the rest of them to sid2. Then one wire goes from core directly to sid2, in the place of the same one you didn't bring with you from sid1. Sorry, a lot of confusing explaining here, but I believe the schem is on ucapps.de somewhere... Don't remember what to look for atm... And yeah, u interface the second board to a connector to the same connector on the core. In other words, they are wired parallel. Except for 1 wire. From the second SID module, you extract one wire from the loom and connect it to its own onepin connector on the core, can't remember what its name is right now. So... All cables run from connector on core to connector on first sid. Then you cut on wire off at that point, and run the rest of them to sid2. Then one wire goes from core directly to sid2, in the place of the same one you didn't bring with you from sid1. Sorry, a lot of confusing explaining here, but I believe the schem is on ucapps.de somewhere... Don't remember what to look for atm...

Looks very nice.

phew, nice to see it wasn't just me who was wondering about those specs :P

To me, these specs are a bit contradicting... But let me check something... I come back and edit this post :) Edit: I can't verify this as a 12VDC linear regulated psu. However, the specs says it is linear, and the specs says it is 12v output, but the one thing that isn't very clear to me is the input power. You have 230v or so in UK, right? But here's what you need to do - pop into the irc channel, and there will be a couple of folks there who can give u a good answer. I also haven't studied sammichSID too much, since I use the original modular design and also a mb6582. So I cant tell if that's the powersupply for your box. nILS and wilba can answer you much better. In general, switch mode PSUs will be much smaller and lighter than a bulky linear regulated one. And a dead give-away for switchmodes are the input voltage range - typical 110-240vac. A linear's input voltage will be way more specific :).

the booming winner link isn't working :)

I like the patch. Always been a sucker for reverbed saws... reminds me of some of my favourite music from the early 2000s :) Well, I will be following this to see where it ends up! Edit: Where are you guys from?

So what is your price? :-)

Your link to the case about the core2 is broken. I haz my own 6582, so I'm not buying yours. But without knowing any of the previous history of the core2 errors I would just shoot in there, it might be your PSUs fault...

Oh, get it... In that case its no use for me contacting them. I was just airing the idea to see if there was some easy way of doing it, but if it includes new forum licenses and paying for them, ok, then its not worth it hehe. Not that I am cheap and don't want to contribute, hehe, but I won't be the one who demand a new forum licence just because I want pic comments on my phone hehe.

Hi, Aiming this at the forum developers... It's nothing really important, but a nice feature to have. I am quite a lot on the forum on my android phone, and when I browse gallery pictures it would be nice to be able to read the comments on that picture, and also write comments to it. Possible to include this feature? Tbreath

Dont remember the dimensions for the 6582 right now, but its in the wiki section for it, so have a look there. I bought a pack of 100 for virtually nothing on eBay for my control surface, so I know its no problem getting it from there, they are all over the place. I just made sure the critical dimensions was right, and went for it. These buttons are very cheap, so just buy a lot of them if u plan to build something else sometime. They are always good to have around.

Hehe, good luck. Gonna be interesting to see the results! What's the time frame on the project?

Yeah, the 6582 is a pretty tight design... I also has been wanting to try a swinsid, but ill wait some time though, but it is nice to know there exists a diy replacement in case the real deal market is dried up and the sids in my beloved synths stop working hehe.

Now, I don't know the in depht details about RCDs, but it is a device that is meant for detecting leakage current. The whole concept of the RCD isn't useable at all with DC - as you surely know already :). But I think I get why you use that as an example, because protection circuitry in DC and the RCD is alike, but only in the sense that both are in the end current limiters, but the RCD suffers the same issues that a conventional glass fuse suffers under - they break the circuit too slow for sensitive electronics. What you want (if you need more than the typical 1.5 amp voltage regulator based linear PSU, your best bet would be to use a voltage regulator specd for in example 5 amps. would be mooore than enough for the box of yours. This most likely has an overcurrent protection built in + +. Usually it does everything you might expect of the psu when it comes to protection - exept from protecting the equipment from a short circuit in the vreg itself. Regulation will stop, and voltage will in a otherwise healthy designed psu - rise several volts, and this is in most cases catastrophic if you doesn't have any protection - aka crowbar. As I said, it basically gives the PSU time to blow the fuse before doing any real damage to the load. Crowbar is essentially a SCR placed in the direction so that when its gate is activated by a sensor - some comparator of some kind, or maybe a zener diode - not a good solution though - it will start conducting. To trigger the scr gate you need a sensor. Can be comparator comparing the voltage on the rail to a referance voltage, and if it goes beyond the limit - bzzzz the fues blows in a secure and controlled way. So - a fuse without a sensor triggered SCR to really short out the supply, the only limitation for the fuse then is its ratings :).

OMG. That is just embarresing :D First - that first sentence was meant as a quote of you :) - it looks as I said it, but... Second, I just wanted to tell this guy what it is with a fuse alone wich isn't good enough, and didn't remember where the other crowbar fairytale was at, and besides that - I can't help myself telling a good story once I start :D hehe. - I had some time to kill anyway :P hahaha

There is better ways to do this then just a fuse. Oh yes it is... A fuse will not be working as a single protection. It is simply too slow, and damage will in more than a few cases be the fact. However, it is of course totally impossible to protect the load 100%. The vreg usually have some protection like thermal shutdown and over current protection and so on. But it doesnt protect itself from short circuits. Here is where the fuse comes to use. Problem is just that the time it takes to blow is more than long enough to cause damage to the synth. Here is where a neat thing called a crowbar comes in handy. Its main component is some kind of parasitic element. It can be a SCR. The circuit is basically a buffer for the fuseblow time... It shorts the supply to ground before damage is done to the load. It keep shorting the PSU to 0volt until the fuse blow and thus turns off the entire PSU. There are many ways to design a crowbar, some better, quicker and more reliable than others. I would bet the simple circuit variants work good, but the more advanced stuff is faster and more accurate. The main difference between the simple and advanced variants, is the method of sensing the faulty condition and the method of triggering the parasitic element. Ok, this has all been said before, but i don't remember where, so sorry if this is repeat for some of you hehe.

Have you ever calculated the current demand on your box? I have not yet finished building mine yet, and that has a lot to do with the hi demands I put on the powersupply. If you have a lot of leds, and also those for backlight on buttons, it will demand a lot of power. As for the regulation u mention, the two amp rating is absolute maximum performance in the absolute best environment possible, wich is also in the datasheet. It has mostly to do with heat. It doesn't mean nothing if you have a psu rated 1000 amps if you bottleneck it with a vreg. That vreg will at all times dictate the power delivered. Though I don't know what type of regulator you use etc. it is important to follow datasheet directions when it comes to heat, input voltage and so on. Reminding you also of the bypass caps u need to use with the vreg. In general, if you have issues with voltage drops, it is in most cases related to that the load demands more than the supply can deliver. Either because it is underspecd or because of an error in the load. May work some time and stop, or you can get lucky too. Imho I don't get the thing that seems to be very common - to run delicate equipment like sids and other digital electronics from underspecd or barely just there specd PSUs. You need headroom on the PSU because of a couple of things. Running it at the limit at all times isn't gonna be stable in the long run, and that things demand more current while starting up. So my proposal is to do a calculation of worst case scenario current draw, and use a PSU that can handle at least close to it. If current draw is bigger than the PSU can deliver atm, voltage WILL drop, so says Ohm. Also running it from an old psu with no security measures like a c64 brick... Don't get it, but apparently it works for a lot of us so... Hehe I won't scratch into that too much, but purely for political reasons. Summary - using a PSU that u have to push to the limit is a bad idea, and if it works, I consider it nothing more than luck! Hehe. I don't know atm without the datasheet in front what voltage limits there are on the PIC and the SIDs, but check em out and enlighten yourself. Every day I work with searching for errors in electronic systems, and one thing I learned the hard way, is to do it right the first time, and 99% of the hassle is avoided afterwards. And when the strike of unluck is there, there is Always a logical explaination, you just gotta go the extra mile to find it. First thing is to get the system to operate within limits. If that fails to solve the problem, continue the search for the reason. U said u tried 3 different PSUs before settling on the one u found to work... It ain't very hard to build yourself a simple PSU that deliver more juice than 2 amps, but of course its confusing if you don't know how, but if u want to learn how, there is tons of experience on the subject shared among some of the guys in this forum...

I'm gonna use motor faders sometime during this year I think, and a group buy initiative is always appreciated. I don't know if u have had any contact with APLS about the price etc. but if you want to set up a group buy and so on, you would probably get more response from potential buyers if you contact alps and get some real prices rather than just hoping to get it cheaper if you order a large amount of faders. If you get some real life prices, folks have something to consider :). I'll be taking 18 faders if the price is right, and the timing is right. Right now, the little amount of money I have available the first half of this year is gonna be put into finishing the SID projects of mine... But experience tells me that bulk orders take a long time :), so I'm definetly interested, but waiting for some more solid info before I consider anything.