A myriad of modulators(Sonosus' painfully slow build progress)

Hey everyone,

My next project is going to be a triple oscillator module using the Electric Druid VCDO.
(cross post from mail day thread)
What I’m hoping for is to have 3 of the Electric Druid VCDO chips, with one Wave CV input. Each oscillator will receive a slightly offset wave CV from the original - governed by another pot and CV input.
(end of cross post)
I’m just prototyping at the moment, no hard/fast decisions have been made yet so I’m open to ideas/criticisms.
I’ve done a hasty block diagram:

Also I need a name for it:
Wave-O-Matic?
WWWOSC?
Waveonator?
WaveOPhone?
I’m no good at making up names :upside_down_face:

Thanks
Sonosus

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Hmmm what about Tripple OZz

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3D-O-Matic?
20chrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

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Swarm (with credit to @heckseven)

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Cool!

What’s the point of having the different offsets via CV? Are you expecting to play chords, or just thicken the sound?

Most “spread” I’ve seen is usually a single value, so for 3 oscillators, there’ll be one +offset and -offset to the same value. I can see having a CV on that be useful though.

I haven’t forgotten about this. I tried out a few other layouts. I just didn’t want to distract from Cake any more than I already have.

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Yeah, I’m just planning to thicken the sound(need more breadboards and 10k resistors to prototype 3 atm though!) because just one sounds a bit too ‘digital’ for my liking - analogue oscillators have a much richer sound. (imho).

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Okay, I’ve decided that there’s too much functionality in these chips to justify having 3 in a single module. I’m going to design an oscillator module, and then also a ‘Kosmic Superspreader’.
It will have an input, 3 outputs (+,-, and mult)
a CV input, a spread knob, and CV amount knob.
Basically @BlackDeath 's spread concept, in a module.
(The name for the single oscillator will be Kosmic Mutator :grinning: )

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<3

20chr, 20, 20, 20

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Falstad prototype of the spread module completed - now breadboard, blinkylights and a pcb.


edit: all resistors will be 100k, falstad just wants them equal.

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Inkscaping in progress…
this


or this?

I think the second one looks nicer but the first fits in with the font more(Terminator Two, if anyone is interested).

Second one, unless you google “kerning” and fix the first one :wink:

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You know, you can edit the title of the topic to match changing design decisions, just saying…

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The first “A” is much nicer than the second one.
But as @BlackDeath pointed out, there is way too much space between the T and the A, and it’s easy to fix (but I don’t know how to in Inkscape, but google knows)

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Like @eric, i prefere the first one, but too much space

maybe something like this

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Fixed! Thanks @BlackDeath, I am now not quite as bad at Inkscape as I was before.

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I designed a Kosmo version of Winterbloom’s Big Honking button.

image
image

It’s a basic sampler that can be updated over USB.
I’m planning on using one of these buttons:

More info to come tomorrow when I put it all on Github.

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Build update!
Here are all my completed modules so far:

Modules from left to right, top to bottom:

  • Mutable Instruments CVpal, MIDI-CV converter. Konversion from the bargain PCB from Thonk.
  • CEM3340 oscillator on stripboard with Sam’s layout. This was my first ever module and I blew at least 3 3340s while building and testing it.
  • Simple “System 100” LFO. Built on stripboard from this popular layout. It’s a nice basic LFO for clocks and gates but not so much for modulation seeing as the amplitude changes as the frequency changes. I think I might design my own LFO to replace it - watch this space!
  • @YMNK 's arpeggiator. This was working perfectly until I changed to the new busboard - now it only tunes across 2 octaves. Debugging is in progress.
  • MS-20 VCF - on stripboard from Sam’s layout. I like it and it sounds good, but I’d like something a bit less… plain sounding. I like the sound of @sebastian 's transistor ladder so might give that a go but in the meantime I bought Sam’s funky filter so I could have a filter with a bit more character.
  • Electric Druid ENVGEN8 chip on a scrap of stripboard. I only finished building it tonight and won’t show you the back because my soldering was absolutely hideous.
  • 3340 oscillator on one of my breakout boards. Can’t say much about it other than the fact I couldn’t be bothered adding the square output along with the PWM controls so now it’s ended up like a Eurorack module.
  • Kosmic Superspreader - my detuning module on a PCB - great for adding harmonics and octaves to a sound if you use 3 oscillators.
  • Combined snare drum/hi-hat/noise hit and Noise Generator module. I don’t have a sequencer for drums (yet!) so can’t do much with the noise drum section however it’s fun to put white noise through the MS-20 filter and WahWah to make some nice Scottish weather sounds.
  • @Ctorp 's k25 glide. It’s cool to use this as a filter with audio rate signals and also as a traditional glide module.
  • K25 sub-osc. At the moment I’ve been using it as a clock divider with the arp and envelope generator - will post some sounds soon.
  • @BlackDeath 's WahWah - a really good wah effect can be made with it (need to work on the LFO situation to get the most from it, methinks). I like putting it in the signal chain before the MS-20 filter to make said filter respond in different ways.

In the pipeline:

  • VCDO - fully working, waiting for black paint to arrive for a panel.
  • Kosmodulator - ordered from JLC yesterday.
  • @Dave 's Farini ADSR - waiting for Tayda
  • @BlackDeath 's full wave rectifier, mixer, and fuzz-EQ - all waiting for 100k resistors from Tayda.
  • AI Synthesis pedal adapter - ordered from JLC
  • @lookmumnocomputer 's mini midi keyboard - ordered from JLC
  • Castor and Pollux/Big Honking Button - kind of stalled as I can’t figure out how to program the damn SAMD21 chip without a £300 programmer (yes I can buy the non-commercial version but I’d like to have the freedom to sell my own code on my own devices, thank you very much! If anyone knows of a way to program the SAMD series without splashing out, I’d be very grateful :smiley: ). I’m thinking of having JLC do SMD assembly for this - has anyone else had success with their SMD service?

Here’s a pic of the back:


And the new power switch:

Cheers

Edit: @CTorp I used a polarised cap on your glide module where it says non-polarised on the PCB… A quick look at the schematic tells me I should be OK so long as I don’t feed it any negative voltages, correct?

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Yessssss! Let’s hear it!

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Lol first I need to fix my good PC so it can run my DAW… That’s another thread in itself. I’ll try and hack something together this weekend.

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