The Holy Grail ? (second reprise)

#142

Yep, my idea is a sort of utlrashort wavetabeling but on a single cycle basis. I still wonder how it will soudn though.

Maybe the best solution for one not as softwaresavy as me would be to edit some audio tests togheter. It would however be a hell of a lot of work before one get anything resembling a steady tone, wouldn't it?

Still, With my audio workstation it could be done because they can cut and paste 99 copies at a a time. So I can first build an example of 4 different individual waveforms, copy that complete section for 99 times, again copy those 100 x 4 = 400 waves times 99 agian whic is almost 4.000 cycles. Hey, that could already lead to a few seconds of audio, providing the oringal pitch was not that high, say A 440 Hz. Ergo: Testing the concept myself should actually not be difficult at all!

About the Axoloti: I msut confess that I have done diddely squad with it until now. It's summemrtime and I am buzy with loads of other stuff. Heavily customizing motorcycles for one (No, not cliché Custom Harleys! Pulleeze! see: http://www.brassee.com/motorcycles.html ).

It's hwoever just a matter of time before I start. Sooner or later the compas wil automatically turn towards it again. At the latest when Winter draws in again.

Until that time I am of course still game for more Axoloti banter anyway.

#143

Nice bikes, Marc, I especially like the styling on that ZÜNDAPP, but then I'm a real sucker for 80s styling!

Never heared of any of those bikes to be honest, but to be fair, I've never been in a position to get too excited about them cause every time I did, I'd see some clown on the road put me off getting one. Would definitely love to own one though.

Totally love your logo as well. I was thinking of something elongated like that for my own logo if/when I manage to get a business up and running. It will definitely have that sort of stylish and futuristic 80s vibe to it whatever I come up with, there is no doubt about that.

Bring back the 80s I say!!!

A time when telephones were telephones and looked stylish. A time when TV's were something substantial, used analogue "ray-gun" technology, had a real-glass screen, and totally dominated your living room. A time when the hardware you bought was built like a tank and looked futuristic, and didn't spy on you. A time when the design of vehicles actually had the design imprint of the individual designer rather than boring samey-samey Bezier-curved crap we have nowadays. A time when women looked like women, had feminine looking hair, and looked hot and classy at the same time with their red lipstick and blue eye-shadow!

A time when I bought one of these for less than three hundred quid (and see, even that looks futuristic) :sunglasses:

OK, so how many of you still have yours?
I'm not selling mine!

#144

.. The Max Headroom 80s...

#145

I have actaully been watching the first Max Headroom movie a few weeks ago.

Yeah the 80ties where alright in many repects. To me they where also the period of exiting new technology. Alas they where also the beginning of the end becaue of Raeganomics and stuff, when pure greed began to outphase neccesity (again). But let's not go there.

That you do not recognize these bikes is not strange, Axoman, Google their names and you'll get pictures of machines that look totally diffently. You are however spot on when it comes to describing 80ties styling. S lot of ugly stuff has been dreamed up in tha tperiod as well but at least it still had character. Basically the principle of styling goods to give them an edge over other stuff with similar specs became important, especially for goods that where oriented towards defining ones individuality and for having fun, as motorcycles had become by then and musical instruments of course have always more or less been.

It is also the last period in which rock and pop really where innovative. Even if oen does not like hiphop much, it still was the last really new style as far as I am concerned. On the other hand the same sort of sample maniupualtion led to the first succesfull integration of the Musique Concrete idea in popular msuic. Enter stuff like the Art Of Noise. which nicely brings us back to Max Headroom ("Is that a spoon"?).

Hey, I in term never heard of that Amstrad set. Neat. It probabaly never hit the Eureopan market. We where all into the Tascam Portastudio, which probably was the first incarnation of the concept anyway. My first setup was a Fostex A8 1/4 ich 8 channel multitracker. A little bit more proffesional but still a sort of advanced comapct cassette recorder specwise.

Those where the days, eh? When we all thought we would go in a flash. And then the wall fell and everything would become much better but in reality got even worse. Oops, I just went there again.

Max Headroom, Max Headroom. Must focus on him!

#146

The Amstrad studio could be found in France too...
The 80s were also the terrifying 80s of "Spitting Image".

#147

5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Graveyard topic

#148

Ok, guys ... please settle down....

This forum is primarily for support of Axoloti...it is expected to be a friendly, open and welcoming place for everyone.
We love the fact that many users enjoy the supportive nature felt here.

In the lounge we all things to wander a little further away from Axoloti, to allow discussion things like DSP to be discussed more generally, however if this starts causing friction between users we will close it down.

please also remember the written word is easy to misunderstand, especially for non native english speakers, so be particularly careful with things like 'humour' ... if its possible it might be misinterpreted, simply do not say it.

If you have a problem with a post or a user, report it , either via the report icon on the post or my PMing @thetechnobear and/or @johannes ... do not start commenting on it.

this was all covered by the guidelines you were given when you signed up to Axoloti, so if anyone abuses this, we will give you a 'timeout' from the axoloti forum to reflect.

#149

I personally did not take it that seriously. It was more meant as a bit of drole jousting, Sir! So if any offence was indeed taken I hereby appologize.

#150

no worries, I do recognize on both sides it was a bit of jesting...

but please, lets generally, keep the 'drole jousting' off the forum - whilst some members may enjoy it, others might find it a bit intimidating, a bit too 'boys club' ... not something we want to encourage here.

lets keep it to discussions over Axoloti, dsp, patching with intelligent, helpful, thought provoking discussions.

anyway, lets get back on topic...

have you moved further on your quest for the holy grail?

#152

On a far more serious note though.

One would hope that a thriving community is not only about hard practical problem solving and software exchanges but also about getting into contact with likeminded people. OK, the Lounge may actayully be intended to ge tsoem of the unavoidable "noize" out of th eway but what about the wider plane of conceptualization? It actually unnerves me a bit how difficult it is to keep exchanges like these alive, especially when even the moderator poors doubt on thier relevance, may that be at a moment of perceived conflict.

Not that this is anyhting new to me. I've actaully been pleasently surprized by the overall depth of focus in this group. But still things do not seem to go very deep when one expresses more esoteric but below the surface just as relevant throughts.

Conceptualizing and thus scouting the outer reaches of music (in this case), especially those of synthesis (ditto), is just as much a scientific endeavour as creating the actual hardware and software itself is, even if it is by its very nature a less well defined region. Of course we already stand on the shoulders of giants in that respect but as long as we have not found a medium to make all this more accesible to the majority there is still a lot of work to be done.

In more general terms: Keeping a fresh perspective on stuff enables evolution of the spieces. As many direct remarks throughout the forum confirm it can and should actually take Axoloti beyond it's original confines.

So in that respect being asked to pipe down actually stings. As long as I have not found the time to dive directly into the system it's the best I can contribute but I'd even want to continue with that after I have become a qualified user.

So again: I'd hate to think that this community is only about problem solving and exchanging software solutions. If that is indeed all there is I would actually be forced to agree that this whole thread makes little sense, even after the bad jokes have been banned..

#155

Water under the bridge, brasso, hopefully just a misuderstanding!

#156

Hi @brasso,
I bought a second hand S2 Turbo thursday... 16kg, it is heavy, i had to wash and clean it because the former user was a smoker :smoking: and its surface was sticky and smelled cold tobacco :mask:...

I opened it to dust and clean its internals (especially the rotary) and checked the CdNi battery :battery: ... surprisingly no acid leakage yet, but i will replace it before a fatal leak eats the circuits. If some other axonaut plan to buy a S2 turbo, he must check as soon as possible if the battery leaking in this 20 year old gear.

Well, it still smells :smoking:
but it is totally functional :smiley: including the :floppy_disk: !

It is really nice to use this as a master keyboard for the Axoloti:

  • 7 sliders for CCs
  • Attack and Release velocity
  • Polyphonic Aftertouch

Now @brasso I understand why you use these derated italian synths to build your Starship One.
Thanks for pointing me to this one.

#157

I would also dislike to think that it will turn into yet-another-philosophico-theoretic-blahblah-DSP-forum.

We share a common DSP platform, the Axoloti.

The Axoloti allows to share practical ideas by exchanging patches on the forum (and through the library).

Most of the time it can seem technical and problem solving oriented ("how can i...?", "how does it work ?") simply because we all need technical help when technical problems arise.
It's great for beginners (and others) to know that they will find practical help on the forum.
BTW, I thank all the people that helped me when i started a few months ago (@Sputnki, @toneburst, @thetechnobear, @johannes, @mtyas, @lokki, @jaffasplaffa ...)

But it also have an aesthetic dimension ("why do i like this sound ?")
and a practical creative dimension ("what if i combine this patch, with this one ?...")

I really love that practical aspect of patch sharing.

I'd love to see some of your ideas in form of patches... even if they are not perfect, it will provide a living idea of what sort of grail you are looking for.

#158

Hey, Marc's gone very quiet :thinking:

Anyway, good luck with the S2 renovation, ST. I used one of those back when they were available (though only for a few minutes). I was in a music shop just browing around and saw one, so I started playing around with it. Then of course the salesman appeared thinking he was going to sell me one. I remember him demonstrating a bunch of sound effects, sirens, rain and thunder etc. It certainly looked the part as well. To cut a long story short, I ended-up wanting one ... real bad ... but of course the cost was prohibitive!

#159

holidays maybe.

Renovation done and static RAM added with low self discharge batteries.. now it will last 20 years more.

The internal sounds and demos are kind of General Midi stuff. :
The good things/ideas in its synthesis engine are:

  • the envelopes : multi segment with loop made of two multi segment sub envelopes:
    • a multisegment envelope for the attack decay sustain portion
    • a multisegment envelope for the release portion
  • The double filter (which sounds really great for a digital filter of this era, maybe it was designed by the ELKA team).

For me, its flaw - as a synth - is that, as far as i see, editing, saving and sharing patches for this synth is almost impossible:

  • you can"t use sysex => no software editor, no sysex dump.
  • the floppy disk format for saving sounds and setup is proprietary (1.62Mb) which can't be read or written by a USB floppy disc (only some floppy disc driver under Win XP were able to do it).

It's a great master keyboard for the Axoloti :smile: attack and release velocity (with spring contacts), and polyphonic aftertouch with a Fatar keybed

#160

Sounds like it's a well-made beast then!

#161

Hi Smasho,

Sorry for not getting back to you on this one but I have been on holdiay and I make it a point to leave all media related devices at home.

Congrata with going for the S2. It's nice to have at least one convert :slight_smile:

Fun fact: In 2015 I actually visited the region where allmost all Italian keyboards came from. It is called La Marche Italy. The only clear proof one could still find was the derelict GEM factory. It's big shame this industry died. Somebody has however recently bought the brand name and knowhow. So never say an Italian brand is totally dead.

Marc

#162

Like I said before. I'll have to get around to it first. Already dreading the moment when I have to work out all the complications of installing Axoloti does obviously not help but the main reason is that I am alwys working on a lot of stuff in a sort of intermitent, semi-paralell way. Some of you have seen my website. It still only shows the top of the iceberg. It only contians the stuff that got finished up to a certain standard and is (possibly) consumable for others.

I could give you a "still to do list" that would be as long as my arm, inlcuding a section about the status of my electonic instrument projects, but I conciously refrain form that because explaining everything on it would in itself alrady be an undertaking.

The good news however is that I normally always finish what I start (even if it might take 10 years or so to do so). I'll expect the winter will bring a new bout of music related activity. Ice winter stalactites hanging form my metal workshop's walls (think Transilvanian castlle surroundings) often help to drive me into the music laboratory (It's alive, I tell you!) providing autumn has not already done so. Sigh! :pensive:

#163

As far as I am concerned the S-series only has one problem: It's user interface is way too cryptic.

Not buying one at the time is understandable. Good worksations could burn quite a big hole in your pocket. By now they are however very affordable.

#164

Yeah, editing is cumbersome.

As far as file / preset management is concerned. Floppy's might be oldfashioned but if stuff works it works.

The S-series strength are actually it's synthesizer sounds. The typical nineties sample pool is good enough but layering rather obvious samples on top of each other becomes boring quite quickly. The way to get the best out of such machines usually is to use the layers to provide basic waveforms and then do your best (or worst) with al the other facilities. It's the classic less is more thing.

So my first tip is. Us the triangular cursors to the left of the display to select and mute the different layers in the preset user Performances. Pressing an arrow once selects a layer, pressing it agian mutes it.

By listening to the individual layers you really get a better impression of the quality of the sounds and their possibilities.