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Hi everybody, After spending my weekend on reading and brainstorming about the MBFM , I have some ideas i would like to share =) First , i will talk about the Pros and Cons of the MBFM "V2.1" on STM32F4 made by Sauraen and Evolution of Control Surfaces. By studying the way Sauraen worked about FM synthesis and especially in his try to make MBFM evolve, i learnt much. Pros : His Control Surface is visual , advanced and you have quite quick access to parameters when you understood the thing . Driven by the new CORE32 , much fonctionnalities are available. Cons : His Control Surface is Messy and unoptimized at first sight . By making the design on his way "too quickly" and without documenting "well", Community isn't aware of all this amazing work . PCB design is still "modular" Many may not understand, but i think the STM32F4 Core is kinda useless here. CORE8 (with PIC) is well know and understood by the community,and has made its proofs on the "Driving Synthesis OPL3" thing. Do we really need the "overpower" of a STM32F4 ? I think the new CORE32 is more designed to support "heavyweight" applications and UI like RGB BLM, Sequencer etc... Driving 2 OPL3 modules with 2 CORE8 sounds good enough to me. Lightweight is great =) Edit : Due to some good advices , now Really Considering using CORE32 in a second version base PCB , "horsepower" is sometimes useful =) MBSID has evolved with a Control Surface from Step A to C . I think the current MBFM (1.4) Control surface is like a "Step B" . With MB-6582 , Wilba made a full compact All-In-One version of the "Step C" surface of MBSID : Well Designed PCB in 2 parts (Base PCB and Control Surface), designed to fit in a small case, "costless" Components and DIY friendly , Easy Assembly. Everything you need to build the "sweet designed Synth" you ever dreamt of. I want to Build a full featured, nice to look and easy to use MBFM synth. I brainstormed a bit , and i thought that reusing Wilba design could be a start Based upon a screenshot of the frontpanel of the MB-6582 in frontpanel designer soft, i made a Control Surface Design "Step C" alike for the MBFM synth with some Photoshop copy/pastes. Then i opened the MB-6582 Base PCB and incorported good-sized OPL3 modules instead of the SIDs. I let you see. Some improvements could be made on the FrontPanel, like a shape for waveforms instead of numbers. But i think i didn't forgot too much. Waiting fo some advices before going further into that work =) Regards, JK

Yo! See picture. Finally decided to part with a way-too-long-ongoing project. A little history about this piece of crap... I started this project many years ago. I was gonna have a SID synthesizer, and I was gonna have the best SID synthesizer. So I bought the sexy junk in the attached picture. Full of energy, I started to put this together. This was finally going to happen. But as it usually works - sometimes life takes some turns here and there that is not exactly planned for. Suddenly, there was kids. Then a larger old house (piece-of-shit) suddenly was mine - or rather the bank's :D hehe. Needless to say, this house was the perfect for me and my family. It was located in a very nice place, and needed a lot of renovation. Actually a lot of renovation can't really start to describe how much renovation it needed. So I created the Technobreath's Legendary Box Of Shame. This is where I put all the midibox projects (well mostly midibox projects). This is the box that was gonna look at me, one day, when I was finished working on the house renovation. It was gonna look at me from the shelf there with it's big strict eyes telling me to start pick stuff out of it and finish it. Yeah... As I don't respond well to threaths, the box has been sitting there - giving me the most evil eyes you can think of - and I have just given it the evil eye right back. So this is how it's gonna be. My face is getting wrinkled, and my hair is turning gray from all those evil looks I've been giving that box. Now - gray hair is something that I usually welcome - it's how it is. One gets older and older. And with the gray hair comes WISDOM! Which brings me to the damn point! I'm getting rid of this piece of shit. It's been nothing but trouble for me. It doesn't make me happy anymore. Hehe - to be a bit serious tho. I'm selling this also because my SID build has taken another direction. I no longer have any need for a CS like this. What you see in the picture is what you get. There is obviously NOT 2x PCBs. It's a picture of front and back so you can see what it looks like. It has been put together, and put in the box. Never been used or abused. The panels obviously need a bit cleaning (finger marks here and there which will wash away). But there are no scratches or any other dings in it that I can see. It is as u see. PCB has all components (iirc - so check it yourself) soldered. The PCB is bought from SmashTV's midibox shop back in the day. The panel kit is bought from julianf (which should really speak for itself when it comes to quality - this is professional stuff!) The encoders is bought from SmashTV. I have taken away the ball inside all of them except the menu encoder, so they are smooth - not clicky. All other components - LEDs, switches and the rest is noname brand bought off ebay. The only catch here, is that I have never had the chance to test it, as I never finished that build. The stuff is located in southern Norway, and I can ship to anyone who wants it. Obviously you need to pay for the shipping. This is not included in the price I want for it which is: 99 PayPal Euros! The way I came up with this price was like this. I took a look at the current prices for these items new. Then I took away one kadam to honor the midibox community, whos concept this is. :). This means, New price today, sliced that a bit off for good measure, never added the components to the cost - so they are free. Since it's never been used, even tho it's aged a bit, it has aged very nicely, so I think that's a fair way to do it, without totally killing julianf's panel sales. I also have a large box of knobs. I believe the 6582 originally was designed with the Waldorf knobs in mind. I have various colors, and I can throw in enough of those to make this even more complete if you are interested. I need a symbolic amount of money for those. TLDR: For sale. 99 euros. Can add waldorfs, paypal. Sold as is, untested. Buyer pays shipping and any other costs related to import. Drop me a message under here if you are interested in this piece of history. Well my history at least hehe. For ithat to be as transparent as possible, I will not accept PMs on this. It's only fair that everyone can see what's going on. First one that wants this will get it. After an agreement is reached, buyer will pay immediately. I have very low tolerance for BS. Shipping will be done only when full payment is in my paypal account, and it will be shipped within a couple of days after payment. If you by any chance feels that the price is to high - please - don't hesitate to make me an offer. I want this sinking stone gone! :).

Hello I was wondering if anyone had any information on the MIDI implementation for the EUCON protocol that is now used to connect several types of control surfaces to Cubase 10, Logic 10, Nuendo and Protools 2019.5 I think these control surfaces uses Ethernet interface, which is different to the standards used by MIDIBOX but can be used alongside Mackie Control and generic control surfaces. So think of the possibilities, although in all fairness, i do not know if any one has been able to turn their hand to getting their MIDI box to control all the parameters in all the different plug ins at the same tume. so please forgive me for my ignorance. I would imagine that there would be little info on this protocol, as the manufacturers would likely want to keep this a closed platform http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/compatibility/EuControl-Compatibility However, if someone already had a EUCON compatible control surface, I can't see why someone cant' rev engineer using basic mici sniffer apps or even MATLAB Audio Toolbox? apart from the obvious legal restrictions... but hobbyists.. may bend the rules a little for personal use?

My MIDIBOX SID build is using the MB-6582 main board and a custom control surface. I'm building it inside a VIC-20 case and the control surface is built on a modified keyboard using the keys as buttons. The encoders I got push up through the holes in the keyboard tray. Due to a lack of room I'm not including the matrix. LEDs are placed around the keyboard area and my attached layout shows where I'm thinking of putting them. I went through a bunch of different layout ideas and ultimately went with whats attached. I tried to keep knobs near the edges so i can put labels right next to them. My goal is to have the chosen keycaps represent the button functions, but I'm limited by the fact that I only have a single keycap set. I'm using the old PET style keys so its hard to get extras without paying an arm and leg. Hence I'd love to have two CTRL keys, but I only have one so I'm using A for Osc knobs ENV/MISC/ASSIGN selector. While I think I tried to place everything as optimally as possible, I lack the experience of using these devices so I thought I'd see if any of you seasoned MIDIBOXers might have any thoughts, suggestions, or see any obvious pitfalls I might be missing with what I choose to do. For anyone interested, I'm documenting my progress on a blog on my website: http://www.fallenturtle.com/c64blog Thanks!

I'm building my synth inside a Commodore VIC-20 case. The LEDs will be poking out of the surface so I'm trying to figure out the best way to apply labels to the case surface. One method I'm considering is using water slide decals which are popular with people who do models and custom guitar gear. The pack of this special paper is $20 so I'm hesitant to buy some if its going fall off or look like crap. Has anyone had any experience trying to use these type of decals on a surface like the commodore cases? My concerns are: 1) while the case is mostly flat, its got a little texture, so I'm wondering if that will lead to the decals falling off. 2) If the case is matte and I'm not planning to apply a clear coat to the top, will the edges of the decals be really obvious and look bad? I'm also open to suggestions on better ways to apply the labels.

Hi guys, I've finished building the base of a mb6582 (including display) and so far everything seems to work as it should (Woohoo!). However, after reading Hawkeye's CS tutorial, I've delayed soldering components onto the control surface PCB until the front panel that I've ordered arrives. Until then, I'd like to rig up a minimum CS using a breadboard and switches/encoders for basic parameter changes (menu scrolling, etc). Is this possible, and if so how? Even with TK's instructions I'm not quite sure how to go about it.

Things are going well with my Midibox SID construction... I've finished the CORE board and I'm loading up the SID board, but I've gotten to the point where I"m looking more into how I'm going to wire up things. I have questions and google and search on this forum aren't helping me find answers (not that they aren't there, but I'm having trouble finding them). Anyway, here it goes: LCD Wiring: While both the CORE4d and my LCD use a 16(2x8) pin connector the pin mapping is completely different. I'm wondering what's the best/easiest method for rerouting the wires in the ribbon cable... My thought was either simply cut the cable in half, separate the individual wires, connect the correct wires to each other, solder, and heat shrink them. While the colors repeat twice, the ribbon wires are color coded, so that will help make that less a headache I think. The alternative I though of was to use additional connectors and headers on a piece of stripboard and do the remapping on the board, essentially creating a little conversion board. Buttons Connections: I haven't found a wiring diagram to explain which buttons connect to which pins on the SmashTV DIN board but I did find the assignments in the software code, so I figured I'll create a chart for others in the future who have this question. I do wonder if there is a best practice or something for how to wire up all the ground pins. Do I chain them in someway? MIDI Connector wires: For the 3 wires needed for each of these I thought I might butcher an old floppy drive ribbon cable into 3 wire strips. The gauge of this wire is pretty small, will that be an issue with the MIDI signal? Audio Connector wires: Do I need a specific gauge and/or shielded cable for these connections? Thanks!

Hi, some time ago I made an Arduino based custom control surface for DSI Tetra to control 95 or so parameters (via NRPN), inspired by the Waldorf Blofeld button-encoder matrix. I thought I'll drop the info here too. Here's a video of the basic operation: I also posted DIY instructions & the code on the DSI forum, here's the link in case anyone's interested. Stupid though that you have to register in order to read the forum. http://dsiforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6778

Hello everyone, I have a pretty dumb question. I have ordered 15 encoders for my MB-6582 control surface, and the shaft size is 20mm, however I'm not sure what the size of the knobs I order for them should be. I assume they shouldn't be the same (as in 20mm) but I'm not sure. I did a search around the forums to see if this had been asked before, and tried to compare other peoples builds to part sizes but couldn't find any for-sure answer. Thanks for any help!