Another MBFM Benchtested succesfully - %2 Back on Track With a New Design..

[Artesia]

UPDATE:

After this project and the SID one sat languishing for 10 months; due to a lack of enthusiasm to go about the painstaking control surfaces assembly. I decided on a rethink & concluded that i should dispense with making the full control set for now. Opting to edit via pc for the meantime.

So, i decided that maybe both projects should be stuffed into one box ..to save potentially wasting rackspace on empty case space ;) ..thus the resulting design below:

If i do build a control surface in the end, it will be in a sepperate box & will probably look much like the below 2u module (the matrix editing buttons need a final bit of sorting out - not quite right):

More to come soon...

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Here's the Current draft for the panel design; its 1u high 16 in wide to give an idea of size:

Click on this link to see it much bigger:

http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/2984/ymf2627bs.jpg

Although this is pretty much there... im not entirely convinced its finished yet.. any layout suggestions welcome..

Note: the forthcoming designs are indended to mesh togeather with that of my MBSEQ ...looking forward to making some other more varied designs in the future... maybe Traktor controller sometime ? ..who knows.

more to come soon.

See 2nd page on My MB SEQ posting to see how the above buttons are constructed (pay c's cool idea!):

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=5818.15

Hi,

Making good progress wrapping up unfinshed projects here...

Yet another MBFM has been brought to life... working okay on my bench.. making the usual array of sounds ..only wish i could coax megadrive type fm sounds out of it ...i expect thatll not happen :/ ..ah well.

Tho as the demos show so far.. im quite sure its capable of some very interesting sounds of its own :)

Yup.. Another great project TK :)

Well.. next up; a case & interface - but as far as midi sees it.. its already there :)

[Jaicen]

Looks good man, how many hours work is that??

If you do get any Megadrive (read: Sonic  ::)) sounds out of it make sure i'm the first to know! Especially Marble and Labrynth zone sounds. I'm considering replacing my DX27 with an MBFM so you might just sway me ;)

Gotta build my MBSID first tho ;)

[Artesia]

Not many hours work to get it to this point ..most people could probably build this in a short evening from scratch. What really took the time to build was my midibox sequencer ...theres alot of stuff that goes into one of those ..more than one would think ! i dont envythose building the big LC desks ;) ...mind the case engineering was tiresome too.. i may consider shaffer for some panel fronts in the future..

This wont be too much bother to put togeather; theres less bits to this than with the 4xsid on the way...

i'll be trying alright :)

will do some background reading on the matter soon.. though taking a guess from what i remember.. the wave table may well go a long way to getting there.. however if i recall the megadrive fm chip also used a crude method of dac audio playback for some sounds... which sounded rubbish in a great way :) sort of a really crude waldorf ppg in a way i guess... This is probably where the stumbling block will be...

Would be great to have a diy synth that worked like the ppg.. allowing the user to create & load their own source 'wave shapes' to improve on the short, simple.. built in ones usually provided...

..however would have to avoid it simply becoming a sample playback device.

The key to making it really interesting (i think i talked about something like this before).. would be to be able to not only play the small snippet from start to end ...or backwards ...etc. ...but be able to edit a table; whereby every last frame in the sample can be moved around to any order the user likes.

Then a way of making that process kick up even quicker results ...is to apply some simple maths to the order of those numbers & have it as a variable preset to see what it reveals..

And if editing on a pc... could hack in some maths into a spreadsheet program to come up with new number patterns & pasted the result streight into the playback address table to see what happpens...

[Jaicen]

From my understanding, what you're describing sounds a lot like granular synthesis, now that would be a cool homebrew project!

With regards to the megadrive DAC it apparently used two of the 6 operators to play back sample data, which is why polyphony is reduced when sampling is used. Probably why you only got the 'Oh NO!' on lemmings when you have no background music.

[Artesia]

Yes.. come to think of it; it would be similar to what i understand granular synthesis to be.

(this post is probably getting abit off topic now.. :) )

However as far as i know granular synthesis usually seems to slice up millisecond range snippets of sound & move them around in time like (grain) 'clouds' attached to a rubber band.

Whereas im proposing to allow changing the playback order of every last single bit in a 'sample' for the maximum creative potential/flexability over the standard approach of playback which usually goes from a>b or b>a.

Although if this approach is not 'understood', it could frequently result in completely 'useless' sounds. It empowers the user to -discover- genuinely useful patterns :)

As for Granular Synthesis; I'll refresh my understanding of this process soon.

If i recall correctly; this concept of audio manipulation was originally thought up by Two guys during the 70's, predating the nessursary (computer) hardware to impliment it.

To hear granular synthesis at work; listen to Two Lone Swordsmen - Blue Sparks (think thats the one). They appear to have just used some of the standard presets in Crusher-X; however its all quite pretty & fits in well with 'their sound'.

..I love Two Lone Swordsmen, in all their weirdness !

[Jaicen]

Actually Granular synthesis as a concept was conceived well over forty years ago as part of a french movement called Musique Concrete, but I guess that also is getting off topic ;)

I am a sound engineer by trade so i'm pretty familiar with all types of synthesis, I guess it's my job.

Anyway, back on topic! I'm seriously considering building an MBFM now with a minimalist control scheme. I like the idea of having a hardware synth built into a CD-Drive space so I may pursue that idea a little, or I maybe something built into a flight case for portability.

I think the complexity of programming of FM synths precludes much realtime control other than tweaking of patches. Especially when you start using wavetables. A nice compact module would suit me just fine I think  ;D

[Artesia]

:)

Thanks for correcting my misinformation.. i had the vague notion that might of gone back a little further...

The cdrom bay idea crossed my mind sometime back too (the idea of pc-sid appealed)..

Noble cause, It would be great to see a mios project built into one.

However i opted for built in control surfaces & putting everything into rackmount compatable boxes (rack ears can be added). This way i can access the controls for everything sitting in one physical space alongside exhisting commercial hardware.. without a computer.. and without ending up swaring at the mouse pointer for typical pc reasons :)

[Artesia]

hmm.. .on the wavetable synthsis matter..

Artesia kicks himself... just found out that the higher end waldorf synthsizers can indeed load user created wave tables.. and do funky things with them too..

Hmm.. guess thats the next thing on the retro buy list... :)

[stryd_one]

A Korg WaveStation A/D can do that too if you have the RAM expansion :)

I suspect the other WaveStations may do it too but mine's an A/D..

[Davo]

There are some typos on your panel ("close", not "cose" and "Operator", not "Opperator").  Otherwise it looks very sweet.  When I finish my MBSID, I'd like to make my MBFM with a front panel like yours.  You will release the design file, right?  ;D

[Artesia]

thanks for the info, glad i ended up putting off finishing this project for a short while.. otherwise it would of been plastered on the front panel for eternity. ..my dyslexic brain obviously didn't come with a spell checker included ;)

relase the panel designs... hmm ..well; id like to encourige everyone to make something unique.. tho i guess on direct request i may provide the designs. in anycase it'd be no problem people having the drilling layouts ..that i will probably provide openly :)

[stryd_one]

Hey Artesia, I do like that layout but I understand your idea to encourage people to make their own faceplate designs....

A subject I've wondered about quite frequently lately is what software to use for the faceplate designs. Obviously there is Schaeffer's FPD, but it's not so simple to use and not so graphical, so it doesn't really give you a good idea of what it will look like in the end... For example you can put the holes for the

Perhaps someone could suggest a freeware/open source application that would be good for this kind of work? Obviously it would be best if it could export files in some kind of standard format, so that those of us which have access to professional software can still use the files.

[Artesia]

Well.. i have some further thoughts on the matter.. will elabourate further when i have the time to type it out properly :)

Maybe .PDF can be used as a standard format for those of us with access to pro software. 1:1 scale printing can easily be forced within that program.

As for design software; i use Xara for everything. it does the job & is currently very affordable from what i hear... certainly not adobe prices ;)

freeware... hmm will have to look into that... maybe some other people have suggestions too ?

[Wilba]

Zoner Draw 5 is almost freeware (US$49, free trial) and I've used it to design my MB-SID front panel. If you set it up to use inches and a 0.05" grid, you can place holes aligned to the vectorboard/prototyping board holes - i.e. place a LED centered halfway between two holes. You can still enter hole dimensions in millimetres. Multiple layers allows you to set up a drilling guide layers and artwork layers and view/print them separately. It also prints across multiple pages with registration marks, making the joining of the pages really easy. At first glance you'd say it's just another vector graphics program - you have to use it for a few hours to discover all the cool features.

[stryd_one]

Zoner Draw is very good... As Wilba is aware I've been toying with it too (I Promise I'll reply soon Wilba :) ) and it comes highly recommended...It is very cheap too, I hadn't looked into how much it would cost to buy.

Free would be better.... But in the meantime, it's Zoner ....

[Davo]

What I like most about this front panel is how you managed to put all the controls of TK's prototype into a single rack unit AND make it look good.

Here are some things I'd do with the design:

• Shift the operator/instrument lights left a bit to line them up with their respective select buttons.
  
• Replace the round buttons below the LCD with rectangular ones that fill all the horizontal area there.  Look at the faceplate of a Yamaha TX802 (http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/tx802.shtml) to see what I mean.
  

[stryd_one]

I dunno, I really liked the look of those buttons below the screen. They give it a nice sense of depth, the way they spread out like that... Although I did also think to myself that they might cause confusion seeing as they aren't lined up with the areas on the LCD where the related values would be displayed...

Looks vs functionality.... I guess it's a personal thing... Me, I couldn't decide ;)

[Nu-Audio-Science]

If it is gonna match your sequencer it will look dope, That sequencer is lovely  :o