FAQ

q. What is your inspiration for this?

a. This is one part BBS, one part Jamaican Sound System, one part cyberspace node.

q. why does it show everything i type twice? lliikee tthhiiss?

a. Some microsoft operating systems come with a broken telnet client to work with microsoft's broken telnet server. Use Putty instead. (Or ssh)

q. how come i can't connect to it right now?

a. Either someone else is logged in, or new software is being developed/uploaded. I improve it when I have extra minutes in my office.

q. how come there's no web interface?

a. a web interface would be good, because multiple people could control the setup at once. i'm working with a flash-designing friend on this, so if we don't get too distracted playing D-Zone, maybe you'll see it someday.

q. how do i work this?

a. here are some sample commands:

  • to turn up the drum machine: vol 4 60
  • to turn down the SID Station: vol 3 0
  • to enter a middle C at the beginning of the measure: mel 1 48
  • to enter a low G at the middle of the measure: mel 9 43
  • to turn up the cutoff filter on the Mono/Poly: pot 5 255
  • to slow down the LFO on the Mono/Poly: pot 2 10
  • to put a kick drum at the beginning of the measure: drum 1 1 1
  • to generate a "four on the floor" techno beat:
    drum 1 1 1
    drum 5 1 1
    drum 9 1 1
    drum 13 1 1


    q. how can i build my own?

    a. part of my assignment is to document this, so I'll do that after finals week ;)

    q. what kind of hardware is running this?

    a. a Lantronix Xport is hanging out on the web, taking telnet requests. Its serial output is connected to an Atmel Atmega32 microcontroller board, called the "Cockroach," designed by Simon Schiessel. The c.roach has three main peripherals attached to it:

  • a Maxim MAX3100 UART - this has a 74HC245 driver attached to it to drive six simultaneous MIDI outputs
  • a motor controller board - a pair of 74HC595's are used as output expanders to drive a bank of 8 LMD H-Bridge chips. These H-Bridges are connected to motorized pots from All Electronics. The pots have analog to digital converters built into their shafts, so they can be positioned. The shaft pots are connected back to the Atmega32.
  • the mixer. I chose to save money by building a mixer instead of buying a MIDI-controlled one. I used two xxxx volume attenuator chips, buffered by 2 quad TL084 op-amps.

    q. what synths/equipment are you using?

  • Korg Mono/Poly. Since it has no MIDI, I'm underutilizing a Future-Retro 777 as a MIDI-CV converter. (I would love to see a web-ified FR-777, but it has 40+ knobs. I'll need to build a more serious robot.) A.k.a. MP-4, the MP is one of the wildest synths of all time. The Chemical Brothers are known to use two of them live. Its "Effects" are completely unintuitive and crazy.
  • Elektron SIDStation. You know it, you love it.
  • Korg ES-1 Drum Machine. Not a bad unit at all.
  • An old Digitech delay unit. It's been custom-modified to reduce noise...this enables infinite feeback...enjoy.
  • Boss SampleTrak ST-224. Weird little ASR-X wannabe, only made of plastic. Underutilized for its effects....try sending it some notes with the "no" command to hear some Tribe Called Quest breaks :)
  • Simmons Rack Mixer. It has MIDI, but only for changing patches. I made 64 patches...every possible combination of sending three synthesizers to two different effect units. That's how the effect routing works. This saved me lots of time, but was a pain in the neck to program all 64 patches. This is the worst part of the setup.

    q. what other synths are you planning to put up?

    a. If everyone's really nice I'll put up my Roland Juno 1 (it whoops the 106's butt *any*day), or Elektron MachineDrum.

    q. why didn't you just do this with software?

    a. some of these synths are impossible or unsuccessfully ported to software. For example, the SIDStation's filter has never been fully understood. Also, not many people understand the Mono/Poly's guts well enough to implement it. It's just Frequency Modulation and a special kind of waveform synchronization called Soft Sync, but it's elusive and obscure.

    Also, this music-making device is even more accessible than a home computer filled with plug-ins. You can go to the library and use this for free, in fact. Furthermore, this system is limited---it's selected according to my (shifty's) criteria. So, you don't have infinite choice when you're making the music. You have freedom within a framework, but all the music you make will have my influence on it, because it's my personal design. I invite you to experiment with it, to put your own personal reflection onto it.

    Finally, if someone else would like to make one of these Web Sound Systems with all software plug-ins, then go for it! What's most important here is the medium of web-based, collaborative composition using only free software you probably already have on your computer. i would personally love to see a page of links to other peoples' sound systems and to play with them, to see how they built them, what sounds they included, what's important to them, and to react, through music, to their configuration.

    q. how come i can't get any sound from the SIDStation?

    a. some of the patches have really long attack times. Try "pc 3 0" to reset it to the first patch. Also, there isn't much boundary-checking in this system. Sometimes people enter bad parameters, inadvertently causing complex MIDI commands, like sysex, to be sent. This sometimes hangs the SIDStation and I have to reset it manually.

    q. how come i can't get any sound from the Mono/Poly?

    a. Ha ha ha! when playing with the MP their first few times, many people manage to randomly twist the knobs into a state where it makes no noise. Sometimes it's hard to get it back to reality! Since you only have control over a few knobs, it's hard to do that in the web setup, but you probably turned the filter cutoff down too low. try "pot 5 255" to turn it all the way up.

    Also, the MP is currently getting its CV from the FR-777, another boutique synthesizer like the SIDStation, which doesn't have the most tolerant MIDI implementation in the world. I sometimes have to manually power cycle it, too.

    q. What is connected to the Ext. Audio In on the Drum Machine?

    a. Currently, an algorithmic music generator designed by the DSP Music Syndicate. However, at this time, the Ext Audio In sequencing doesn't fully work. You see, when triggered externally via MIDI, the ES-1's audio in envelope doesn't work the same. To get around this, I'll have to make some special cases in the main sequencing software...maybe on Christmas break!

    q. why does it sometimes drop characters when i'm typing?

    a. that's a really good question that i'm investigating. i've narrowed it down to something to do with the Xport connected to the Atmega32. I believe the uart receive library is either too slow to handle bursts of characters from the Xport, or perhaps the command line shell in the AVRlib is too slow to respond, because it works fine when a serial port is connected locally to the Atmega. I definitely want to fix this!