The glorious guts

It occurred to me today to take some shots of blarps innards, as you may see it's getting a bit packed in there! I'm glad I partialy built the enclosure as it has made the final boards/panels easier to work on. I added an XOR chain, 4011 "pseudo ring mod" and am halfway through adding a final pair of 4 bit shift registers. I am onto the final quarter of front panel and after finishing the shift reg's I'll be adding some 4018 AND gates (possibly diode summed inputs so I can turn shift reg bit outs into sequencer oneshots) and a couple more AREGVCA's.

I haven't posted any schematics for these but they are all findable on either

Electro music forum

Or the MIGHTY MIGHTY

TSOL (the sound of logic)

However if anyone ever wants any advice on getting into building any of this stuff feel free to get in touch if you think I can help.

BLARP, half finished!

Sorry it's been a while, I've been continuing with the machine started in the last post. It's turning into a monster project and I'm getting limited time. The beastie has acquired the name "Blarp" and is shaping up well. I've gone for a sloping panel as a compromise between ergonomics whilst both standing and sitting and despite it getting pretty cramped inside it's still small enough to be pretty portable.

For those into cmos/lunetta (!) it already contains, 2 x 4015 shift registers, 6 x 40106 oscs, 4 x XOR gates, 1 Kludgey area, 2 x 3 channel passive mixer each with jack outs (Jacks to be mounted in a flat panel at the top of the console), 2 x AREGVCA as designed by Richarius, 2 x 4069 LFO ala scott gravenhorst (modded for 9v), 1 x 4040 divider (only 5 outputs/divisions utilised). Also since this picture was taken a week ago it also now contains, 1 x passive LP filter controlled via LDR, 4 x 4093 gated oscs, 1 x 4046 VCO, and a 4 input resistance summer/CV mixer.

Not 100% as to what the final modules are to be as yet, I may include another shift register, another VCO and I'd quite like some form of active filter in there...but then I'd like more AREG's...a Sequencer, more oscs...more logic gates, a pseudo ring mod.....the list is endless!

New machine beginnings and considerations

So reflecting on this last year I've learnt and built a lot, and I have a large rats nest of a synth/noise generator pinned to a board. A lot of this has been built in the fashion it has due to getting the gig back in November. This was a brilliant experience but it locked me into building the way I was just to keep everything compatible and to get stuff together quick. There are a few issues to building that way however, the primary one is that everything is patchable including all power connections. I did this so that if I wanted to power starve any sections/modules I could...however I've never found anything that interesting using this technique...so all in all patching power just adds more cable clutter that isn't really necessary. Having everything on one level makes it larger horizontally and vertically - requiring longer patch cables whereas designs with circuit boards and front panels split the size between 2 levels allowing for more compact design. There have been some things I have been happy with though, I'm happy to keep using trimmer pots rather than fullsize ones, this keeps the cost of building massively lower, also the use of header sockets and small breadboard style patch cables is a method I will continue to use for the same reasons.

So to the new design idea. The picture shows the beginnings and first modules of my new modular noisemaker that is as yet unnamed. I want this beasty to be pretty portable and robust with the front panels being very patcheable. Just to put this in scale each panel above is 47 x 72 mm. As it stands I've built 2 x 4015 4 bit shift registers and 6 x 40106 oscillators, but for those in the know it will probably end up with, 4040 divider, 4011 pseudo ring mods, simple AREGVCA's, XOR's a plenty, 4069 LFO and some sort of active filter that I haven't quite decided on yet I may also consider a 4017 based sequencer. I have a few ideas about the enclosure design, mainly that it will have an angled front panel so it is good to use either standing or sitting and will have everything firmly attached so hopefully I can pick it up and go places with it and arrive with it in one piece!

Sunvox 1.6 is here

Possibly the best early xmas present ever, Sunvox 1.6 is here and it's rocking. Raise a glass to Mr Zolotov. Download and find out more here

Finishing off

Been one of those good days where I get to finish a few bits off. I've packaged up the matrix mixer and even found 16 matching knobs out of one of my many scrap boxes of parts. I've also made a new reclining upright unit for my ghetto modular boards. It leans back around 25 degrees from vertical and provides a more ergonomic platform that also takes up much less of a footprint. It's again made from fibre board so my modules can be pinned to it.

I also posted the schematic for the matrix mixer at TSOL, but thought I'd post it here in case anyone's interested.....typically my schematic is a lofi affair eschewing CAD or other schematic software for a good old index card and pen!

Matrix Mixer update

Just a quick update as I've managed to finish the wiring on this tonight and have a bit of a play as it is now functional although uncased. The play consisted of a couple of bits from my CMOS synth stuff being patched through the mixer and my homemade spring reverb and a zoom multi effects unit being patch into the mixer as both outputs and inputs, so they can self oscillate/feedback.

Very rough and ready but has shown me the possibilities, here's the rough jam.

MATRIX01 by concretedog

Matrix Mixer WIP

Just a quick post to show my current WIP project. It's a 4 x 4 passive matrix mixer. A matrix mixer is a mixer that allows you to create 4 different mixes from the same 4 inputs to 4 separate channel outputs. The beauty of this is when you begin to send outputs back to inputs. I'll hopefully find time to finish this this week and post some audio.