Make Noise - New Spectraphon Module

[elxsound]

ill have to have a look at finances
should really be saving it, my son is 30 in september and will probably want some sort of gift

Then, please ignore me! Unless it’s the deal of the year, I think more lower priced Echophons will become available soon.

The Echophons are 20hp and mono. It seems MN is in full stereo-mode hot off the release of 34hp Spectraphon.

It doesn’t surprise me that some might be more willing to trade out Echophon for Mimeophon as a way of squeezing in Spectraphon.

[Stefken]

ill have to have a look at finances
should really be saving it, my son is 30 in september and will probably want some sort of gift

Give him a few Behringer modules and get yourself the Echo.

[foosnark]

After some disappointing attempts at creating tables yesterday, understanding has dawned.

Whatever the actual mechanics, think of it like it's a linked set of bandpass filters. Slide is the frequency of the lowest (and the others are all multiples of that), and Focus is the bandwidth of all of them (low = wide, high = narrow).

If your bandwidth is wide enough, those filters will overlap, and a single real partial is going to land in multiple filters. Combine that with too low a Slide setting, and you get those growly inharmonic sidebands that I showed in my post above.

Here's the method I have figured out:

- Monitor Spectraphon's Sine output first, and tune it to the same fundamental as what you want to capture.
- Then, patch the sine output to its own input (same side), and monitor the odd/even mix output. A spectrum analyzer can be really helpful here (I use Melda MAnalyzer).
- Set the input gain a little lower than the "Eurorack level" marking on the panel so you're not saturating it.
- Turn Partials up all the way (the manual says it, Walker said it in his video, I wasn't doing it yesterday but now I'm a zealous convert).
- Start with Focus at about noon, and Slide at minimum. Turn up slide and you'll hear a harmonic sweep. When you start going too far past the fundamental it will get quieter, so find the spot where it's at its loudest.
- Set Focus as low as possible but where you don't get extra harmonics. The Even output should be silent if the input is a sine and you have it dialed in right.
- Then patch the real source into the input and have fun.

Of course, wrong settings give very cool results too, but they can get in the way if you're trying to capture an array.

I found on mine, 100Hz is near 1 o'clock on the Slide knob, and that was also a good setting for Focus to not have too much false 2nd harmonic going on. 400Hz is about the max of the Slide knob.

100Hz dialed in on Freq and Slide:

100hz.jpg

[Stefken]

Thx for the input.

I guess what you are describing here is a method to capture a source with as much 'fidelity' as possible (as opposed to creative mangling) ?

That is : match the fundamental frequency of the input with the slide knob, widen the 'bandpass filters' to have it pass pretty much the full spectrum without creating extra inharmonics, and have the partials generation fully open.

(Walker also mentioned the capture is normalised afterwards)

[foosnark]

Yeah, it's just setting the analysis to line up with the incoming spectrum. It's easy to be deceived, until you start wondering why your supposed squarewave is full of even harmonics.

Also I just tried it with a regular oscilloscope and my ears, no spectrum analyzer. My input was a squarewave from a Shapeshifter wavetable. I matched the sine frequency on Spectraphon to it, then dialed in Slide and Focus until I got as close as possible to a square. Then as I moved through the wavetable index I was happy to see Spectraphon had no trouble following the timbral changes -- the only difference was the polarity was inverted.


I'll keep playing with it (when I'm not supposed to be working ::cough::) but I suspect I might be able to do it now without tuning Spectraphon to match it or using any kind of visualization, now that I know the trick for getting Slide in the right area.

[vurt]

taking notes, for the eventual arrival.

[Shabdahbriah]

taking notes, for the eventual arrival.

Me too. Thanks foosnark! Good stuff, and well explained.

[foosnark]

I suspect I might be able to do it now without tuning Spectraphon to match it or using any kind of visualization, now that I know the trick for getting Slide in the right area.

Well... not quite. At least for now I've found it's better not to cut corners At the very least, the tuning part seems important.


I managed to fit Teletype/Just Friends/Sweet Sixteen (which are all connected on the back through i2c) into the Pod60. That and the 0-Ctrl can sit in front of the main case, Strega can hang out with Minibrute 2S and I'll either keep West Pest as a couch synth and occasional studio guest, or resell it.

So now I can put Akemie's Castle back in the main case and have room for Xaoc Rostock and maybe a Zadar, if I decide I want one. (That's dependent on how Bitwig 5 MSEG's do for me, but I'm unwilling to mess with the beta.)

[ghettosynth]

Great post with the details. This is the kind of thing that should be in the manuals and is a pet peeve of mind with Make Noise. Then again, the knobs should just be labeled with what they do.

If anyone else is trying to figure out whether or not they want a Spectraphon, I just want to point out that a toto washlet lid with constant e-heating and a handy remote comes in at about $30 less than spectraphon. I get it, not everyone values the gentle oscillating warmth and the feeling of cleanliness that a toto washlet can provide, but there it is.

[foosnark]

Some more details...

I kind of felt like SAO was weird for having two knobs to move through the array, one coarse and one fine. Surely if we wanted finer control we could just use attenuators and wiggle smaller voltages, right? But after messing with it more this morning I think I get it now.

1024 frames in the array is a lot to navigate with one knob. Dialing in a specific frame even with Focus takes a very small movement.

I captured a table of Shapeshfiter's 2Tone6 bank, at the default clock speed. It turns out there are some individual frames in the array where a specific harmonic drops out, only to reappear in the next one. I think this is because Focus was set low when I captured it, but it could also be because of the clock rate; regardless, the partial at that frequency just wasn't detected in that frame. When you modulate Slide, you're pretty much not going to notice it unless you intentionally move slowly over a short range, and it will interpolate enough to smooth that out pretty well. But with Focus, you can hear the sudden difference.

That's not the weirdest thing though.

The weirdest thing is there are areas in my array where Spectraphon will produce noise, without any modulation, just sitting on a single entry in the array. Kind of a soft crackling. There was no (or extremely little) noise in the source material, and it should have fallen into one harmonic or other, and I would think it shouldn't be capable of that kind of motion in what's effectively a spectral freeze. Looking at it on a scope, it's a set of a couple of dozen specific frequencies (inharmonic to the other ones, but they move correctly with the main pitch so it's neither fixed nor related to aliasing in some way), but their amplitudes are jumping around randomly or psuedo-randomly. My best guess is there's some bug in the reproduction side of things. Honestly though, it kind of sounds cool. And again, you probably won't notice it moving through the array with Slide, it's in very narrow sections of the array.

[Shabdahbriah]

[...] My best guess is there's an undocumented feature in the reproduction side of things.

{ftfy}

[Stefken]

Looks like someone is a MN fanboi ….

[foosnark]

I mean, the noise is kind of cool, I could find uses for it. And the company is living up to its name

[vurt]

i hope mine is enjoying its world cruise.

[ghettosynth]

i hope mine is enjoying its world cruise.

LOL! I hope so too. Maybe it will have fantastic stories to tell you once it arrives?