Just updated the design of my synth control panel, I was using a Teensy 4.1 with an extra 8MB of RAM to store framebuffers for the 240x320 displays, but to be honest it was not a good solution for stability and the displays kept crashing or displaying other pages. So I tore out (carefully as it was soldered in) the Teensy from the board and fitted 9* Waveshare Zero stamp RP2040 boards under each of the displays and these are fed from MIDI to display parameters. I’ve yet to see how fast it all reacts to a program dump and upload into the displays, plus it’s bi-timbral so it needs to be able to switch from a lower to an upper display and back again.
So the 8 voice board has finally been inserted into the synth filters/adsr/VCA etc. It sort of works, one voice is dead, another has a missing saw. But at least it’s in tune.
So I’m getting somewhere with my filter board and polysynth. I was almost at the stage of abandoning the filter board altogether but I realized my issues and fixed a few broken connections and a missing ground and it burst into life. This was just a quick unison test of the PWM, 4 voices go left and 4 right.
Something I’ve been working on for a couple of days is updating the patch management of my new synth build to include performance management that calls up either a single patch or two patches in whole, dual or split mode. Of course this includes creation of new performances, saving, overwriting and renaming of them. It’s nearly finished, I just need to add deletion of a performance as well. It will hold upto 128 performances made up from any of the 999 patches, the performance stores the patch numbers, mode and split point and a split transpose so you can move the left hand octaves higher or lower.
Don’t judge me too harshly, sound design is something that comes out of necessity rather than sitting down and just creating sounds, so I made 4 quick ones.
Hi Don, it’s just A3 glossy paper laminated with a heavy 175mg matte laminate, it creates a very strong piece of panel which I then cut out carefully with a craft knife, the edges have to be as accurate as possible as this is a 4 part join. It’s stuck down with pritt stick.
Software Front Panel Designer (free)
Printer Epson L8180 A3 photo printer
A3 generic glossy paper
A3 laminator on highest setting of heat.
A3 matte 175mg laminate sheets
kraft knife and lots of snap off blades.
Pritt stick
Just add that when printing a 19" rack front panel an A3 sheet leaves a gap of about 5mm each side when printing. When you chose borderless it’s dimensions can change dramatically, well on my Epson printer it does, so I print to A3+ glossy paper for a rack front and cut it down to size first and then laminate it with A3 laminate, it just about fits in the pocket to give you a rack mount front panel.
