Emerson,Lake and Palmer-Fanfarre for the common man

YouTube via romarioflazaco. Sent my way via brian comnes.

Not synth related, but if you want to a pretty impressive drum solo by Carl Palmer, here you go. The very end with reverse stick play is a great finale.

Plexus Studio

A couple of more shots of Plexus Studio. You can find other shot as well as giant sized shots of both. You can find samples mirrored here.

Previous Plexus posts (including his project Software and video).

Korg Prophecy

Title link takes you to shots pulled via this auction. I know the Yamaha VL is knows to be the stronger Physical Modeling synth of the two, however for some reason the Prophecy always stood out as a modern day Minimoog to me. Not a Minimoog clone of course, but rather a compact, powerful, mono synth with an expressive performance oriented interface. Aside from the buttons under the LCD being a bit stubby and close together, the rest of the interface is pretty nice. The buttons on the right are logical and useful for live tweeking and the modwheel with pitch ribbon just has to be played to be appreciated. The positioning of the buttons above it are also laid out to be easily accessible in live performance while adjusting the modwheel. It really is a great little performance synth and for me, it always reminds me of the modern day mini for some reason. And it sounds great. It has it's own sound.

Circuit Bent Box O Fun!

Title link takes you to more shots pulled via this auction. I love the design of this one.

Details:
Top panel:
• Five push-button switches to access the original functions of the toy (5 melodies, a/b/c, circle/triangle/square, 2 different types of weather!)
• Reset (push button)
• Dial 1 - pitch control (low groan to high-pitched frenzy)
• Dial 2 - variable glitch that causes the melodies to scrape and squawk and the voice to distort in a scary way
• 'Body contact' to activate strange modulation sounds
• Three very cool green lights (bulbs, not LEDs) that flash independently in time with the sounds

Front panel:
• Melodic mode/talking about the weather mode 3-way switch
• Power switch
• Distortion switch
• Chirping bird/'rainbow magic' noise 3-way switch
• Switch to activate cool rave sounds (works when the first switch is in the central position). This is my personal favourite.
• Dial 1 on/off switch
• Dial 2 on/off switch

Update: link to sample via the auction. Thanks goes to CatSynth in the comments for pointing it out. I totally missed it.

Theremin Patent

Here's an odd one. No title link. Image and details pulled via this auction.

Details:
"US Patent for a Sci-Fi Synth Instrument
Leo S. Theremin, of Russia

In the early 1900's a patent was issued for this invention from the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). There are 17 documents included with this patent. The drawing specification sheet of the patent has been reproduced from original USPTO documents and printed onto parchment paper. This print is sized and ready to install into an 8" x 10" frame. The additional sheets included are printed on 5.50" x 8.50" parchment paper. These accompanying documents describe the scope of this invention in formal terms. The following is an actual excerpt from the patent…

'This invention relates to sound generating apparatus or instruments of the type embodying an electrical vibrating system. It aims to provide a novel method of and means for producing sounds in musical tones or notes of variable pitch, volume and timbre in realistic imitation of the human voice and various known musical instruments...'"

Note the auction only states the "drawing specification sheet of the patent has been reproduced." What about the rest? What do you all think?

Metasonix TM-1-2-3 Pack

No title link, just this shot pulled via this auction.

TM-1 waveshaper/ring mod
TM-2 dual bandpass filter &vca
TM-3 tube oscillator with midi

Metasonix
Previous Metasonix posts

my keyboard

flickr by WillyDavidK

Korg EMX Retro Techno - Acid House Era Clonky

Another via darenager. I finally got around to watching this. Yes people I do have a day job. Anyway, I'm watching the intro and I see a salute to... MATRIXSYNTH!!! Very cool. Thanks darenager. BTW, be sure to check out the Elektron Monomachine video as well. It's gooooood...

FR-777 & TR-808

YouTube via darenager. Title link takes you to more including the Roland TB-303 & Korg EM-1, Elektron Monomachine, and more.

Jim Heintz on Software Eumulation of Analog

Jim Heintz posted the following on the AH list in response to VST emulation of classic analog. I asked him if it would be ok to put this up here and he have the thumbs up.

"This is an interesting point. Being an engineer and the developer of TimewARP 2600, I understand very well how emulations (at least the TimewARP 2600) are implemented.

It is a matter of fact that if you want more accuracy in your digital emulation, then more CPU power is required. One simple example of this is by looking at a pulse wave that is generating a 10khz signal on a computer setup with a 44.1khz sample rate. If you set the pulse width of the signal to 10% there is no real accurate way to represent it at the 44.1khz sample rate since there are only approximatly 4.1 samples per cycle of the waveform at that rate(for simplicity, let's not look at oversampling which can defiantly improve the resultant waveform).

The easiest way to improve the accuracy is to increase the sample rate which also has the effect of multiplying the CPU usage by what ever the difference is. If you choose a 96khz sample rate instead of the 44.1khz sample rate, you now have 9.6 samples per cycle, which will give you a much better resultant waveform. This will cost you however by using quite a bit more CPU.

As far as modeling components rather than outputs, the TimewARP 2600 does this to a great extent now. There are certain modules in a synth that cannot be accurately modeled by components however. Oscillators are the biggest culprit here. Because of the fact that you are in a sample based environment, you MUST keep all generated harmonics below the sample frequency otherwise you will hear audible aliasing in the signal. This phenomenon applies to any digital signal, sampled or generated. As such, if you create an oscillator in software that exactly models the circuit (saw, pulse, triangle) you will defiantly get aliasing in the output signal. To produce signals that sound and behave like real analog signals in a digital environment, you must band-limit everything to be below the Nyquist limit (which is the sample frequency divided by 2). On the other hand, many components can be simulated using the components of the circuit.

The best candidate for this type of emulation are filters, however, even in filters, you must be concerned with band-limiting. This is usually done with oversampling in filters.

One of the biggest areas of difference between most emulations an real analog has to do with the rate at which parameters are updated. Many emulations only update parameters and control cv sources at the digital frame rate, which is usually between 50 and 500hz. This of course effects the quality of the output signal. This is most apparent when you have patches that use higher frequency control sources. Audio frequency modulation is out of the question for emulations that use this scheme to update parameters and control cv sources. As a side note, TimewARP 2600 updates ALL parameters and ALL sources at the full sample frequency.

To the point that no two vintage analog devices sound the same, this is quite true. Alan R. Pearlman told me that when they were building synths they spent a great deal of there resources matching an qualifying components so the circuits would behave as consistently as possibly. There was always variations that they could not control. When you implement an emulation, there is inconsistencies go away and the resultant output is always the same for a given patch. In order to introduce "life" into the emulation, we do add stochastic behavior in certain places, otherwise the emulation would not feel right. It would not be out of the question to add features to an emulation to allow the user to adjust certain component values and thereby hear the difference, but we (at least not Way Out Ware) have not produced that product yet. If there is enough demand for it, then I would love to take a project like that on.

Best regards,

Jim Heintz
Followed by:

We have had many reviews of the TimewARP 2600, and most have been overwhelmingly positive. As it turns out, the people at SOS reviewed the first release of TimewARP 2600, and spotted several bugs that we too spotted and fixed in the updated version. It was unfortunate that they did not update the article to match the latest version of the program since the article was printed about 9 months after the update was made available. Also, I believe their ARP 2600 was from a different era than the one we modeled. That said, I have contacted SOS, and they have told me that they would review the next update version of TimewARP 2600 when we make it available. We hope to have it out soon.

For another point of view, you should check out the EM article written by Larry the O. Larry at one time had a very large collection of ARP hardware and is an expert on the ARP 2600. He found the TimewARP 2600 to be quite convincing.

We are about to release our second product which is called KikAXXE. It is an emulation of an ARP AXXE synth with a step sequencer, drum machine (ala TR-606) and a tape delay similar to an Echoplex EP-2 built in. It is designed to be easy to lay down beats and synth lines. It takes advantage of features that are present in the computer such as host sync, midi learning of beats and synth lines, etc, as well as calculating an analog style signal path for all of the audio to achieve excellent audio quality. It uses the same core engine as TimewARP 2600. We will make more info available after it ships. We also plan to have a demo available on our website similar to the demo for TimewARP 2600.

Best regards,

Jim Heintz"

Interview with Richard Lainhart

Title link takes you there. There is some good gear talk.

"Beyond all this technical stuff, I’m continuing to work on new music for Kyma and Continuum. The Haken Audio Continuum, which I just picked up a couple of months ago, is a wonderfully expressive “fretless” MIDI keyboard, possibly the first that lets the performer play polyphonically with three continuous dimensions of control. I’ve really enjoyed exploring it. The Continuum will also be a part of the new electronic performance system I’m just starting to put together, which I hope will be complete by this Spring and which will, I hope, signal a new direction for my own work. (I won’t be abandoning my One Sound music by any means; this is just something new in addition to all that.)"

Update: Link to Richard's O-Town Media where you will find his music.

How to calibrate EIII power supply

Title link takes you to the post on DVDBorn.

MOOG prodigy

flickr by kiksuu.

Backlit Lounge SF

A couple shots sent in by brian comnes of Backlit Lounge SF.

Highly Liquid MPA: MIDI Potentiometer Array

MIDI to Potentiometer

Applications:
* MIDI control for DIY filter & oscillator circuits
* MIDI-to-trigger and MIDI-to-DIN Sync conversion
* MIDI-controlled circuit bending

Features:
* 4 x Independent 128-step variable resistance output
* 8 x 5V digital logic output
* Control via MIDI notes, controller, program change & other messages
* Fully programmable via MIDI SysEx command
* Dual MIDI THRU ports
* Power and activity LEDs
* Operates on 7.5-12 VDC from batteries or wall adapter (not included)
* Regulated 5 VDC output for powering additional circuitry
* Optional screw clamp terminals for easy external wiring
* Measures only 76mm x 73mm (3.0" x 2.9")
* Fits SERPAC enclosure models 051, 151, 251, 052, 152, 252, 053, 153, 253 (available at Mouser and Digikey)

Kit Contents
* Printed circuit board
* Pre-programmed microcontroller
* All required components
* 1 x Standard panel-mount MIDI jack

Title link takes you there. Via GetLoFi.

Click on the Highly Liquid label below for previous posts.