monokinetic Posted February 6, 2019 Report Posted February 6, 2019 As you probably know, the AOUT module is set up to support 1v/octave scaling, and that has been fine for me when I was using it with a Serge modular system. But I have been wondering how I could use my AOUTs with my Buchla-ish modular synth, which uses 1.2v/octave scaling. I contemplated building an opamp based solution, boosting the voltage a bit. But this seemed a bit of a hack to me, so I spent a bit of time understanding the opamp based outputs from the MAX525 DACs. I realised that by tweaking a resistor value I could get the AOUT to put out 1.2v/octave. I've tested this for a bit with two different oscillators (258r and 259r) and it seems fine for my uses. I'm no electrical engineer though, so if this mod blows up your rather expensive equipment I'm afraid you're on your own... That said, for any other Buchla users who want to use an AOUT to output 1.2v/octave, just change RY to 1.8K on any channels you want. That should give you the extra bit of gain required, and then you can trim it to 1.2v/octave. FWIW I usually use the MBSeqV4 app, then use the nice new calibration stuff to get things super accurate. I'm able to get submillivolt accuracy over the whole voltage range. Top voltage is obviously a bit higher in this case, almost 13v from my measurements. That seems to have been fine in my system, but YMMV. Also, I have set my AOUT so that V1-V4 have this tweak (1.8K for RY), and I use them for controlling Buchla oscillators. V5-V8 use the 2.2K resistor for RY still, and I use those channels for modulation CVs and to control the Serge oscillators which run at 1v/octave. All in all I'm most happy with this system and am glad I don't have to mess around with adding more circuitry. Hope that helps someone in the future! Quote
Rowan Posted February 7, 2019 Report Posted February 7, 2019 Very cool. I’ll have to give this a try. Quote
latigid on Posted February 7, 2019 Report Posted February 7, 2019 It's a good fix and totally okay from an electrical perspective. You're essentially multiplying by a different number as the DAC doesn't give the correct range by itself. Quote
Rowan Posted February 7, 2019 Report Posted February 7, 2019 I’ve noticed that you are talking about the original AOUT module here. I would like to try this out with an AOUT_NG so I’ve tried to reverse engineer what you’ve done here to apply it to the AOUT_NG. I’m coming up a resistor value of 4.7k to replace the 15k resistor in the op-amp negative feedback loop to increase the max output voltage to 13.81V. I’ve based my calculations on Vref being set at 2.048V. Any thoughts on this? Quote
Zam Posted February 8, 2019 Report Posted February 8, 2019 Hello There is no mystery to calculate opamp gain, feed the resistor you need for the correct output range. Best Zam Quote
latigid on Posted February 8, 2019 Report Posted February 8, 2019 Maybe TL07x op amps have a limited voltage swing. Check that the output can reach 13.81 V with (I assume) +/-15V power supply (from the data sheet it looks like it should). +/-18V might have more headroom but is pushing the maximum specs. Quote
Zam Posted February 8, 2019 Report Posted February 8, 2019 Hi Oops yes you'r right, I don't take attention to the requested output voltage value, IIRC TL07x are not rail to rail Datasheet need to be checked.. Best Zam Quote
monokinetic Posted February 8, 2019 Author Report Posted February 8, 2019 Hi folks, nice to know this info is of use to some! @Rowan I'm afraid both of my attempts at building an AOUT_NG failed so I gave up on that path. But yes to what Zam wrote, basically all I did was recalculate the opamp resistors. Don't know why it didn't occur to me years ago, but that's life :) Good luck with your builds! Quote
Rowan Posted April 12, 2019 Report Posted April 12, 2019 I finally got around to trying this out last night with an AOUT_NG and got it working. After testing a few values I settled on 10k as the replacement values for R9-R16 and could achieve 1.2V/Oct tracking. I suspect if the values was a little higher e.g. 12k, I would have been able to calibrate the module to 1V/Oct and 1.2V/Oct with the trimmers. Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.