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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : TSynth and Teensy
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| Tinine Guru  Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Oh, no kidding  I have been a guitarist/singer for the past 46yrs and can hold my own in any band but technology has opened up a whole new world. What I have on my cheapie W10 tablet, really is mind blowing: * Gig performer 3 for my VST host; paid-for but worth it. * Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 for amp/fx simulations * Jam Origin's MIDI Guitar; amazingly deciphers fretted notes (regular guitar pickup) and converts them to MIDI. * Dozens of soft-synths, drum machines, etc. * Reaper DAW for creating backing tracks (if I need backing, I prefer to create my own) It's amazing what I can use at any time whilst keeping within my comfort zone of 50% CPU usage and this is a 1.4GHz Z8350, 4g RAM, 128g storage. I purchased two of these tablets so I have a backup when gigging. |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 3490 |
The essential apps I need for my work that are older, I run under WINE in ubuntu linux. Wine has (for these few) a better backward compatibility than W10, even if you select "runs as Windows xxxx". PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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RetroJoe Senior Member  Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
@Tinine, thanks for sharing - I'll have to check out Jam Origin. I used to have a Roland MIDI guitar pickup that I was never satisfied with due to conversion lag. Let's pay a little retro homage to the electronic music pioneers that brought us to this point - the legendary Yamaha CS-80. WARNING - the intensity of the young guy in the video is set to "11"  Apropos the upthread DAC discussion, the way the CS-80 implemented patch memory (only four slots, I believe) was by duplicating a nearly complete set of "mini me" slider pots for the synth parameters, for each patch! Talk about expensive !! The Prophet 5, also legendary, is credited with being the first synth to use NVRAM to store patch parameters. If you watch the video, while I have the utmost respect for Vangelis as a composer, I also pictured him as a synth genius, sitting in a room crowded with synth banks and hundreds of dangling patch cords. Turns out, the CS-80 did most of the heavy lifting, and natively produced much of the signature Vangelis sound as heard in "Blade Runner" and many others. In particular, the CS-80's ribbon controller and polyphonic aftertouch are essential to that sound, and these expressive capabilities have not, AFAIK, appeared in subsequent synths. It would be great to have or build a standalone MIDI ribbon controller, but the CS-80's was integrated at the hardware level with the keyboard's control voltage , so would probably be pretty hard to replicate with MIDI CC messages. Theoretically, though, they are just pitch bend messages like you would get off a joystick or pitch wheel, except with much finer expression, and no "return to center". Edited 2021-03-20 01:23 by RetroJoe Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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hitsware2 Guru Joined: 03/08/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 705 |
Lest we forget the OPL-3 ( My first real music programming ) my site |
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| RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
My deeper interest in synthesis has hit me only recently. Somehow, all the "Voltage Controlled X" / gate / filter / envelope concepts suddenly made sense. That being said, I still can't for the life of me get my head around those FM operators, but I love the sound of a vintage DX-7 - it's "The Soundtrack to the 80's", isn't it? I have a Korg 01/W-FD (yes, that's FD as in "Floppy Disk") from the early 90's that I pretty much used just the factory patches on, and I only bought my first honest-to-goodness analog synth last year, an Arturia Mini Brute - turns out it's an excellent "learning synth". I took the 01/W out of storage a few years ago, and all the digital bits seem to be working, but the analog output has crapped out. Apparently, the 01/W's are prone to exploding electrolytic caps, so now I've got a somewhat unpleasant vintage synth restoration project on my bucket list. FYI, I'm still grooving (pun intended) on the Sonic Pi stuff - I've got it installed on every PC and Mac in the house just in case inspiration strikes :) This weekend I plan to get MIDI running in and out of it - fun, fun, fun !! Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
True but I was in to John Foxx (recommend his YouTube interviews), Tubeway Army (Gary Numan), Kraftwerk, etc. I believe that Numan used the Arp Odyssey which is what really got me hooked on synths. Yeah, I have purchased several pieces of "dead" but as-new equipment, knowing full well that the problem is the internal PSU caps. I have seven Digitech GNX4 floor units just because I got them dirt cheap. Changed the caps and good-as-new. Can't be bothered to re-sell them.  |
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| damos Regular Member  Joined: 15/04/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 56 |
I have implemented the controls for this project using a pair of 12-bit DACs driven by a Micromite, which monitors the 4-bit input from the Teensy and outputs the voltages for the 32 pots through the DACs to Mux1_Com and Mux2_Com. The values are set using a simple protocol on the Micromite console port: AAVV, where AA is the address of the pot "00"-"31" and VV is the pot value "00"-"FF". For the UI, I have decided to try something entirely new, and some of you may find this useful. The UI is done entirely in HTML, JS and CSS. The 32 pots appear on the web page which can communicate directly with the Micromite using the Web Serial API. This means the web page should work from any browser in any operating system that is Chromium compatible (ie Chrome, latest Edge, Opera etc) and should work on Windows, Linux and Mac. It should also work on tablets, although I haven't tested this yet. If it does, it means that you can easily create a good touchscreen UI and use a cheap Android tablet as the touchscreen. Web.zip |
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