Berlin Modular (ancient thread)

[xh3rv]

Re: Where is Bazille writing things? Since my brother the MicroSoft field engineer has been paying for my alcohol the past several days, I asked what the best way was to figure out what kinds of file I/O calls are being made - he said check out an app named process explorer, it's impossible to figure out otherwise.

[xh3rv]

double post, no text

[Urs]

I checked out Karplus-Strong sounds... and they are amazing! I'm surprised how realistic it sounds from what looks like such a simple algorithm (could be wrong though). Then again comb filters do sound similar too.

Anyways something like that would be very cool in bazille... or maybe at least one of the modulars.

Karplus-Strong Synthesis is "exciting" a delay with a filter in the feedback path with random noise.

The comb filters in Zebra are based on delays that are being pre-filled with noise, sawtooth or square waves, and they have a damping mechanism in the feedback path.

While the binary code generated by the software development tools may essentially be the same for both methods, it is obvious that comb filtering and damping pre-dates the discovery of Karplus-Strong Synthesis. "Comb filtering" is also a more general term and doesn't make things stupidly more complicated than other fancy names. As all of these principles such as the various forms of physical modeling are being *discovered* all that's left for their explorers is to *invent* fancy names. Which allows them to harvest yet another trivial patent for something that couldn't be patented under the name that already exists for the same effect of physical laws

That being said, I can not yet think of any audio rate application that would make me want to implement Zebra-like comb filters it in Berlin Modular. At the moment I merely see a lot of time being spent on many things yet to explore in the realm of subtractive synthesis

Cheers,

Urs

[right angle]

so how close is bazille to your vision of a final version in terms of GUI... It looks a little like just cannibalized zebra parts right now, and a lot of gray.

I'm not sure yet. I like the idea of using pure vector graphics on this one. Not sure though.

I like the vector graphics idea!

On a possibly related note, I'm an unemployed graphic designer who's good with Illustrator...

[mcnoone]

I'm an unemployed graphic designer who's good with Illustrator...

+1

[Urs]

On a possibly related note, I'm an unemployed graphic designer who's good with Illustrator...

Apart from the non-existing budget for external designers, Illustrator doesn't help though. I work with an ui-design tool that I developed myself:

http://www.u-he.com/img/BazilleEdit.jpg

Anything fancy apart from squares and arcs has to be developed as parametric shape components. Gradients I think are out of question (unless I finally switch to OpenGL or so).

The actual workload isn't really the design. I'm relatively quick with that. It's merely about creating the tools to get there.

[right angle]

On a possibly related note, I'm an unemployed graphic designer who's good with Illustrator...

Apart from the non-existing budget for external designers, Illustrator doesn't help though. I work with an ui-design tool that I developed myself:

http://www.u-he.com/img/BazilleEdit.jpg

Anything fancy apart from squares and arcs has to be developed as parametric shape components. Gradients I think are out of question (unless I finally switch to OpenGL or so).

The actual workload isn't really the design. I'm relatively quick with that. It's merely about creating the tools to get there.

Oh, well, gradients are cheap eye-candy anyway... a real designer would never use them.

Honestly, I was only half-serious about soliciting work from you, as I figured you probably had the UI production worked out already. I didn't imagine you had created your own design tools, though - that's pretty cool.

Also, sad to hear that there's more out-of-work designers lurking around KVR.

[whiterabbit5000]

Sorry about throwing comb filters and physical what-not into the already complex project.

I think I had a sudden feature-request relapse. I believe you are right in focusing the project and not watering it down with modules that don't quite fit the philosophy... but I still can't wait to see what goes in that expansion slot! Fun times ahead indeed.

P.S. Urs, Whhyyyy! Why did you have to expose me to the incredible and expensive and addictive world of euroracks!

[Urs]

P.S. Urs, Whhyyyy! Why did you have to expose me to the incredible and expensive and addictive world of euroracks!

The Doepfer stuff isn't all that expensive and.... it is *very* good. I'd recommend to look into building a basic synth on 4-6 Doepfer modules and then take it from there and look into Livewire and stuff...

[Polybius]

Someone do a faithful remake of "Barnyard in Orbit" by Perrey & Kingsley with this synth, and i'll buy 2 copies

So get crackin'

[porfiry]

As all of these principles such as the various forms of physical modeling are being *discovered* all that's left for their explorers is to *invent* fancy names. Which allows them to harvest yet another trivial patent for something that couldn't be patented under the name that already exists for the same effect of physical laws

I guess I kind of touched a nerve with the Karplus stuff. Wasn't aware of the patent issues...even the wiki page doesn't mention that at all, although I eventually found some of the more obscure info floating around out there in the toobz.

The main thing I was wondering about were simply whether a BBD is essentially the same thing as a comb filter, which I guess you're saying it is. The reason I was wondering about it in the BM context is that Doepfer offers BBDs with several different numbers of "stages." I was digging into some threads at Muff's Modules the other night and heard some really unbelieveable sound samples, and thought, "wow, since I totally can't afford to start building an actual modular yet..."

That said, it's not like I'm terribly deprived of gnarly metallic percussive sounds, with something as awesome as the comb filters in Zebra.

I did answer my own questions about S&H, lag generators, etc. through a combination of the Synth Secrets articles, things said in here about similarities to AR envelopes and low-pass filters, and of course experimentation. And that's nice, because now that I'm getting my mind around those things a bit, I've made a few patches that make me feel pretty good. Anyone who'd like to click the link right down here may feel free to share the vibe, or criticize me relentlessly.

Be careful turning knobs, because a couple of these will happily descend directly into chaos!

Naughty Bazille Patches

[ludwig]

love to play with that self-modulating sequencer.

some instant techno sequences there. you just have to tune for those sweetspots between utter chaos and stability. it would be cool to be able to pinpoint these sweetspots and then be able to jump through these fixed conditions.

ah, i'll post a sound example to illutsrate:

http://rapidshare.com/files/263747307/s ... etspot.mp3

definately a synth i will use A LOT.

thx

Can you upladed the patch for this self-modulation sequencer trick?

[whiterabbit5000]

[quote]The Doepfer stuff isn't all that expensive and.... it is *very* good. I'd recommend to look into building a basic synth on 4-6 Doepfer modules and then take it from there and look into Livewire and stuff...[quote]

I guess the Euro is meant to be affordable... but not with my dream set-up.

Maybe I should consider Doepfer stuff, especially if I ever expect to get a basic setup going. It's just so easily overlooked because there's like 1,000 modules in the A-100. Thanks for the advice.

and keep up the good work on this awesome synth!

[suthnear]

The main thing I was wondering about were simply whether a BBD is essentially the same thing as a comb filter, which I guess you're saying it is.

Nope. A bbd is simply an analogue way of achieving delay effects. The 'bb' in bbd stands for bucket brigade and it's named for the queue of people who move water from one place to another by passing buckets between them. In a similar manner, the 'buckets' in the bbd are capacitors and the signal passed into the bbd is moved from one stage to the next at some predetermined rate. The slower this rate, the longer the delay between the signal entering the bbd and it emerging. Add a feedback loop and you have the classic analogue delay.

Comb filtering occurs with all delay effects - regardless of whether they are analogue or digital - when the delay time is sufficiently short that there is no appreciable gap between the signal and the delayed version. Adding the delayed version of a signal to the signal leads to wave interference patterns with parts of the signal being amplified and parts being attenuated. Because the delay time is fixed, this is completely regular and so you get a series of valleys/spikes in the signal and this is where the name of the effect comes from.

For karplus-strong synthesis in the analogue realm you'd want to limit the number of stages in the bbd as far as possible. I think this was the intention behind doepfer making the a188 available with 128 stages. Know, though, that with so few stages you can't use the bbd for delay effects. In fact, even chorus is tricky because in order to get the 20-40ms delay times conventionally used for chorus there is too much clock noise in the signal as the oscillator used to set the bbd's rate moves down into the audible frequency range.

[auricle]

From a thread on Muffwiggler, it seems the sweetspots for stages are 256 and 512 stages. Some people have mentioned that the 128 sounds too 'thin'.

Here is the thread with a couple of videos demonstrating a Doepfer BBD 256 and 512.

http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewto ... hlight=bbd