MBProgramma: hardware synth patch programmer (MBNG variant with a defined hardware set)

[Phatline]

hopefully the whole hardware thing and synth remote....get something rolling called -preset morph-....

 

Planed Feature: "Morph" function to fade smoothly between two snapshots"

 

i love soundmorph, i could jam the whole day arround, and then i make a snapshot/save Preset,

on gigs the croud dont give me the time to jam the whole day...

>>>some crossfade between  sounds is "doing less sounding much killer feature"

with the possibity to exclude some CCs from that morph - like:

LPF-Cutoff, Fiter-Env.Ammount, >>> - for all the filterheadz out there who still got to have controll over the sound while morphing.

>exclude the morph Controller from morph fade, morph the morph may end in endless cc traffic sessions...

Select the "to be morphed CCs" by hold a "shift"(morph)-Button, now all LEDRINGs are blank by turning a Encoder the dedicatet Ledring lit up > that indicate that this CCs will be morphed....

Next to the MORPH-Button is the Morph encoder, and next to the Morph Encoder is one of this Dispays, that shows on the left the actual Preset, and on the Right the GOAL/Destionation Preset. 2Encoder and one Button should do the job...

Edited January 24, 2015 by Phatline

[FantomXR]

I think it's not released yet but I have a beta-version, which is not tested at my side yet.

 

Check that out:

 

It's not exactly what you wanted, but it's a great feature anyway! :-)

[Phatline]

i cant test it, i dont have controllsurfaces with ledrings on it.

 

looks like the "morph assign" feature that the nordlead/rack III has - the NordRack III has a LEDRING Interface:

When you press & hold one of the Morph Assign Knobs (Velocity, Keyboard, A.Touch, Wheel) all Ledrings are turned off, and then by turning one or more Encoders you assign it to the pressed Morph Source (e.g. a CC).

The Ledrings inital Position is "middle" if you turn it left, the Morph Source is substractetd, turn right and you add a Amount of Morph.... in the Nord Rack Case you have then  -64 +64 of Maximal Morph Impact (not 127)

Since the Nordrack has "Dual-Colour" Ledrings, this ammount of Morph is indicatet by a differnt colour (Grenn is the morph Factor, red is the CC amount before the morph additon) this could be simulated on the MB-Side with a blinking LED, or with a "show morph" button.

 

that meens techically:

the morph CC is addet by the ammount off the morph factor

the morph Factor is set Holding the Morph-Assign-Knob  + by turning the Destination CC, the result is a int from +-64, for example we turn "+32"

now release the Morph-Assign-Knob - now we are in the normal "Perform-Mode"

I now turn the Destination-CC to 64. (=Ledring-Value)

when i now turn the Morph-CC, to 127, the Resulting Destination-CC-Value will be 96.

 

a cool feature, but only when you see what it does by indicating it wih differnt colours, or some blinking...otherwise it is confuzing...

[Hawkeye]

Yes, I think, the morph function will be great!

When MBNG supports it (it is still on the wishlist, i think), the Programma, which is nothing but a MBNG, will do it, too! :-)

 

Many greets,

Peter

[FantomXR]

NORD does in generally work exactly like this and they have just single color LEDs. I don't think it's confusing. I worked with this for many years on many stages. Never hard problems :-)

[Phatline]

i had in mind that it was dualcolor...just switched on - uuups you are right > single color

(me to many years... it was a nightmare to get that mexico encoders replacements...)

[FantomXR]

Hm... I can't remember this :)

[Lamouette]

Awesome project !

 

It will look really fat with 64 encoders  :rofl:

 

If the fun it to switch between the different synth, why not an encoder and an oled on the top, side to side, on the OLED is show the actual synth,bank, and patch. 3 buttons under the encoder, each for synth,bank, and patch, push on the button, turn the encoder and you change directly what you need quickly. just an idea  :whistle:

 

i will follow this ! great work !

[Hawkeye]

Thanks, man! :-)

 

We are currently in the process of finishing our first units (still need to install a few more OLEDs) - and then another synth should be adressed as the next Programma target. There are also nifty features like an external joystick (for vector mixing patches) and a few faders for easy envelopes (in an external box) in the making.

Many thanks for your suggestion! Easy synth switching is also on the list! :-)

 

Unfortunately, work hit us really bad this year, so it will be a long ongoing project, but that is part of the fun! :-)

 

Many greets!

Peter

[jojjelito]

Hola, back from a hellish project at work.

I'm posting some hardware to Hawkeye, hopefully this week when I have a nice holiday break. There's some platform features like synth/bank switching that could be added, plus layout for approx a gillion synths we have.

It will take a while, but in the end this will be nice :)

Edited May 11, 2015 by jojjelito

[Hawkeye]

Thanks man, that sounds A+, me was already worried :-) No progress without hardware deliveries ;-) :hyper:

[jojjelito]

The LED sliders look amazing! Each contains a standard 2x3x4mm LED. You can see that they look very nice, for instance in the thread over at Muff Wiggler about the clarke68 Eurorack panel for the Serge Resonant Equalizer from CGS https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119325&start=all&postdays=0&postorder=asc Plus, you can see some pictures of the NV panel for the Klee sequencer in that thread, or Jon's TTSH Arp 2600 clone all over the internets. So, a crafty person could fit white, blue, green, yellow, amber, red, pink, UV, aqua or whatever color LED in there. Bright Components at Ebay.co.uk has all sorts of colors and LEDs that fit. For tactical reasons I stuck with green, since it follows the LED rings. YMMV, plus it's all up to future builders.

[latigid on]

The big BLM will also use these sliders, I have a bunch of white LEDs to go in :)

[tffshtt]

WANT!

Looks awesome... (+Alpha Juno is my favorite synth).

 

May I suggest a Yamaha FB01 as the next target?

 

One *might* say: "FB01, HÄ?!...what the Hell for?"

Ubiquitous, cheap, small, extremely flexible, YM2164 chip, best FM synth for sequencing (huge MIDI buffers / instantaneous MIDI messages).  This simple dB7 mod (bottom of thread) solves the treble roll off issue and puts the icing on the crispiest FM cake there is. 

...just impossible to program, unless you have a PC

 

Cheers on the most excellent work!

Edited May 19, 2015 by tffshtt

[Hawkeye]

Thanks, man! We are currently proceeding only slowly, as all hell broke loose this year :-).

But - the hardware will be completed (additional displays on the way) and there will be new synth targets, just need more time :-)

 

Many greets,

Peter

Edited May 20, 2015 by Hawkeye

[FantomXR]

Meanwhile:

 

 

 

I'll post the layout as soon as the new PCBs are tested.

[Hawkeye]

Awesome! :) :laugh:

Now if we could just find a PCB layout trace master, that would be willing to integrate a quad-OLED wiring with Fairlightiis MBLRE 8x2 board :ninja: 

Am currently wiring up the OLEDs manually and it is wire spaghetti deluxe. Of course, that adds to the coolness factor  :afro:  , but it is some work...

 

Hehe, have a great day!

Peter

[jojjelito]

That way it will scream hand-built and hardcore assemblage, but there won't be many MBProgrammas out there unless there's PCBs and a building guide later on. Their loss in the mean time. I don't know shit from Shinola, but it's going to be a good device :)

Edited June 25, 2015 by jojjelito

[FantomXR]

To assemble the OLED PCB you definately would need a very good soldering iron, because the pitch of the OLED-foil is 0.7mm. I have a very good soldering iron with an SMD tip... but anyway it's pretty difficult. I think there is no option to solder them in an reflow oven. There are also no FPC connectors for this pitch... unfortunately.

 

But the first step is done: The OLEDs are working. With that said any kind of combination is possible and an adaption to the LRE should be pretty easy.

 

BTW: I also created an encoder board where you can put LED rings on it. See here:

 

 

And of course the space between the OLEDs is exactly the same as for the encoders. That was my goal.

 

The encoder board has no shiftregisters on it. So you would need a DIN and DOUT module. Maybe I'll add this!

Edited June 25, 2015 by FantomXR

[Hawkeye]

Great job, Fantom! :smile:

[fundamental]

You're welcome. The first time I see a design with unlit knobs that looks slick. I guess I have to set up a big knob bulk in next months if folks want to copy your project. Had no time with the case bulks and bothering Albs with petty 15ish knob orders didn't seem right.

This may be a little late, but a knob bulk order sounds like a great idea.  I'm building a SEQV4 with RE160F-40E3-20A-24P encoders and looking for knobs now.  A set like this would be perfect now I think:

 

 

I would be up for buying quite a few extra so I don't have to worry about sourcing these again in future projects.

 

Thanks,

 

John

[DrBunsen]

I am so very impressed D:
 

 

* synth patches to be loaded from sdcard and dumped to the synth

* synth patches to be stored on sdcard

YES!!  My Roland MKS7 can has user memory!!

Now this brings an interesting thought to mind - if you hooked up some CV outputs you could have a patch memory programmer for an analog modular synth...

One other thought - would it be possible to have a minimalist version with say two groups of [ 4 encoders + 1 OLED ] and a page/menu system to access different voice parameters?

[Hawkeye]

Thanks! Currently working on the MBLoopa, because this fruit is lower-hanging, the Programma will probably take some more months to be complete :-).

 

As it is just a feature enhancement of MBNG, everything is possible, Programma is just a name for a certain hardware set. For your variant, you might need to reconfigure displays/LED rings/encoders and build your own labels in Photoshop - i did so for a Moog Little Phatty a while ago, and it was a completely different synth with all that control! :-) 

 

If you want to start with a smaller box, a good setup would be to use just one MB-LRE8x2 board, or an equivalent (maybe built by FantomXR) and a few label displays. It won't have all the bling of the 64-encoder/1024 LED/24 OLED box, but it will surely be more fun than a displayless commercial controller.

 

I will have to add a configurable bitmap display-label loader/bitmap switching support for the .ngc config files (that would reload display labels on bank switches), currently, it is just dumb/hardcoded. If TK. approves, it might find its way into MBNG itself... unfortunately,  I have no experience regarding modulars/CV, you'd need to ask jojjelito - if you want to try it now, the MBNG framework already does support 32 CV channels output via Aout modules, and it can save and recall patches (but i don't know, if it would send CV/Aout updates from recalled patches already or if it only does output via MIDI)...

 

Have a great weekend,

Peter

Edited June 28, 2015 by Hawkeye

[FantomXR]

Hi Peter,

 

yesterday I had a conversation with a friend / colleague of mine, also musician. We talked about the moog-series... and also the little phatty. It sounds interesting what you build for it.

 

Do you btw have a picture of your complete MBprogramma? 

 

I'd like to help you. What do you need regarding the displays in detail?

[latigid on]

I was scratching my head a bit yesterday with this also: what would you like to do with the Programma? Is the idea definitely to use the LRE8x2 boards with the LCDs somehow stacked above? Or should the bullet be bitten, and a new encoder board designed (preferably one with better current sinks and perhaps SOIC chips and/or LEDs)? This way the LCDs could be mounted to the PCB which avoids all kinds of trouble.

 

One thing is the fabs start to get quite pricey if you go over 300 mm board size. Could an option therefore be to design an LRE4x2 with integrated displays? The cost would then become quite a bit lower as the quantities increase.

 

I certainly support your project but I don't think it's the MIDIbox I need right now . What I am interested in is an MBCV 2 which would use the same LCDs. I wonder then if there's a solution that would be applicable to both projects. Already it's gonna be a bit of a nightmare to try and arrange the LRE8x2, 4xGLCDs, 20x2CLCD, buttons and an encoder to the same panel height. It may even call for a single PCB akin to the Wilba SEQ.

 

Sorry for the semi-off topicness!