MonoMiK EMS VCF test

YouTube via MusicMiK. You can find more previously posted here.
"The next filter is completely developed now, it's an EMS-style diode ladder filter.
A lot of the circuitry surrounding the filter core is the same as on the transistor ladder filter, just some levels are a bit different and the resonance control works completely different."

Roland CR-78 test

YouTube Uploaded by MusicMiK on Jan 4, 2012

"Yep. Keeping up the trend "repair one CR-78 every year" :) Just a test after fixing some usual battery leakage damage."

Tiracon 6V board set brought to life

YouTube via MusicMiK
"I recently got this board set from an internet auction for an interesting price. The seller told it's unused - which really might be true, as i didn't see any traces of screws or so on the boards.
It's just the digital board, analog board with voice boards and the display board. The power supply without the transformer was also included but not used here, everything is hooked up to the lab power supply currently.
The EPROMs were still okay (sure, i first dumped them :), some chips were broken, and in some places, there was a mechanical damage.
All in all got this far in 2 days and i think i will get this back to life as a usable synth again."

OpenSoundControl breadboard feat iPhone

YouTube via MusicMiK

"Another quick hack...

Saturday afternoon - started to implement a chip driver for the ENC28J60 and basic IPv4 stuff. Sunday evening, ICMP (ping) and ARP worked fine, and even if the job used up most of the time yesterday and today (Tuesday), i had a working simple TCP socket this morning.

This evening, it took about 2 hours to hack together UDP support and some simple OSC message parsing.

So all in all - IP and OSC are really simple to implement, all this should also be no problem with an AVR MCU, and if i optimize memory usage, even a small ATmega168 or so might do the job. Everything is coded in C++ and with all the display stuff with graphics routines and lots more of garbage in the firmware, i currently get about 37KB code size on the ARM7TDMI used in this setup.

Imagine what's possible. Sure, OSC-MIDI is easy going. But how about controlling your home using the iPhone? Turning on and off the lights, studio gear, anything. I think, i will soon throw away the remote controlled power outlets and make a 19" 1U rackmount unit with some OSC features to control power of my gear.

Maybe the MonoMiK even gets more than MIDI. USB is quite sure, Ethernet would be also interesting now. A true analog synth with Ethernet? Why not? :)

Sorry for the blurred overall image, my camera can't re-focus during video and i set the focus for the details."

CR-78 Restoration

YouTube via MusicMiK.
"Okay, no new synthesizer modules, as i'm on holiday and just was at home today with a new toy - a CR-78 from a friend which needed a repair/restoration.
Just a short test video here, the full restoration story follows soon, for now, there is just a bunch of photos created during the day:
http://www.mik-music.org/tiki/tiki-br..."

Korg Poly-61 repair session

Published on Dec 9, 2012 by MusicMiK - now MiK-Music

"Getting lots of questions about repairing the Korg Poly-61, most of them related to the digital clock/synchronization of the DCOs, i decided to create a video about this.

It's not only Poly-61 specific, i also tell you something about equipment you should have, some simple safety measures and an introduction into general debugging techniques before it comes to the Poly-61 specific stuff.

Originally i thought this wouldn't be very spectacular as the Poly-61 worked last time i used it, but i was surprised to find a real defect during creating this video :)

Sorry for the focus problems and some other minor glitches, this was a very spontaneous idea and due to the usual lack of time, i didn't have an eye on perfection here. It took lots of hours to create this - making it better would eat up several weekends i think. I hope you understand that i prefer to do lots of other, more important stuff.

And after some very bad experience here at YouTube, i want to add this disclaimer - not meant for the ones who give positive feedback and thus keep those videos online, but meant for those with a destructive nature only being able to criticize the work of others:
The meanings and processes i show and describe here are my personal meanings and ways i work. If you have different meanings and processes, i will not try to convince you of my way to do stuff and expect you to also tolerate my ideas - so i will simply delete insulting comments.
If you think, i'm doing it wrong, simply make it better. I just try to help."

Building a phaser part 4 - 6

Note if you want to see these in order starting with Part 1, click hear and scroll.

YouTube via MusicMiK
"This is a simple project - i will build a clone of the Small Stone phaser as a floor effects unit with some modifications to add some more control over the sound.

Dur to the simplicity of this project, i decided to document all steps, starting with making the PCB for it, ending with the tests. So not all videos appear at once, but i think this should happen within 3 weeks or so. Make sure to come back and see if new parts appeared with the time.

This is part 4 showing mechanical work on the enclosure."

Building a phaser part 5


Building a phaser part 6

DIY Synthesizer Demo

YouTube via MusicMiK. http://mik.k5000.org/
"This is a little demonstration of my DIY synthesizer. Due to video length limits, just a very very small subset of the features is shown.

The synthesizer provides 2 VCOs, 2 12dB state variable filters, ring modulator, noise and an extremely flexible routing system with 26 VCAs to get everything together. It consists of about 1300 parts and is completely built onto veroboards."

VCO synchronization made visible

YouTube via MusicMiK. Be sure to see the others here.
"Did you ever wonder, what really happens with VCO sync? Here you can see it.
I made this video during development of another VCO, my synchronization master is just a provisoric square oscillator, which produces a very unclean signal. Besides this i don't have the audio equipment in the lab to create a better audio on this :) But the main syncronization effect is visible and hearable.

Schematics might be released soon, after drawing and final check."

Desoldering an IC from a PCB

YouTube via MusicMiK
"If you ever wondered how you get an IC desoldered an easy way if you don't care about the IC but want to protect the board, just look here.
Not perfect, but maybe informative enough."