Successful Full Range with Silentway Voicecontrol

[dawman]

Ask GaryB if he still has the Creamware A8 laying around. That's a nice sounding converter considering its age and 8 i/o should suffice.

[Neutron]

sure, most of them have adat, adat is a standard that most interfaces have anyway, I guess all the motu ones for example have adat, but dont pin me down on that - just have a look

an old adat adda interface from ebay, then modded by an audio electrician would also do it, but I like the a16 for its design and z-link, so for convenience I would like to have that one modded.

I was thinking more for someone else, I have already got 2 fostex VC8 (unfortunately only consumer level output) but i have one on the bench in line for modding (and possible conversion to a module)

[tomylee]

Ask GaryB if he still has the Creamware A8 laying around. That's a nice sounding converter considering its age and 8 i/o should suffice.

what do you mean, the a8 for you? or do you think 8IOs would be enought for me? giving freq to a synt, then gate, 2 envelopes, one or two lfos, is already 8 outputs, and then id like to modulate single oscillators of my se1x, I really need the 16IOs, also the inputs cause I wanna plug it to a 16 knob analog controller

for testing and your purposes 8IOs might be enough, for my modder to know exactly what to do for the mod it would also be awesome, anyway maybe I just try it with the a8 first, I hope gary gives me his one for cheap

[Neutron]

I just tested my a16U output, I used a modular3 with an LFO going direct to the output, and amplified enough to clip.

11.4Volts peak to peak!

All you would need is +5v DC offset for 0-10V 1v/oct inputs,
could probably use directly for gates and triggers. LFOs and audio signals.

[dawman]

All you would need is +5v DC offset for 0-10V 1v/oct inputs,
could probably use directly for gates and triggers. LFOs and audio signals.

Sorry to keep jumping in but is the +5v DC offset for 0-10 1v/oct inputs an electronics device I can buy, or another formula...?

Ankyu

[tomylee]

All you would need is +5v DC offset for 0-10V 1v/oct inputs,
could probably use directly for gates and triggers. LFOs and audio signals.

Sorry to keep jumping in but is the +5v DC offset for 0-10 1v/oct inputs an electronics device I can buy, or another formula...?

Ankyu

you can buy anything, just pay the modder

actually you can even pay people to mod your life, they call it lifecoach then

@neutron, this is fantastic news! now that you tested with the lfo, what frequency did you have it running? i hope below 20hz hehehe

btw: can you set the studio levels on the a16u? the adi-8 from rme could do that

[t_tangent]

btw: can you set the studio levels on the a16u? the adi-8 from rme could do that

I think this what you are referring to

ftp://sonic-core.net/manuals/A16_Conver ... nglish.pdf

Page 5

"The A16 Ultra is equipped with
balanced inputs and outputs. TheA16
Ultra can be adapted to various
standards via the DIP switches on its
rear panel. The analog inputs can be
set in groups for an input sensitivity of
either -10dBv or +4dBu. The same
applies to the analog outputs."

[Neutron]

5v offset =

signal + 5v in to a mixer. easy as pie. if you are going to have a modular filter, you can just get a small modular mixer as well, and add a regulator+switch from its own power supply for the 5v offset.

[Neutron]

OK, I just tested the VC-8 BEFORE the output capacitors, I can get a nice DC control voltage. however there is already a 2.5v offset because the DAC chip is a single supply 5v device, and the output voltage is half of the supply.
It gives a 3v peak to peak signal before the last amplifiers.(bypassed, because they have a capacitor on the input and output)

now i have a LFO connected to it from modular3 at 0.01 hz and the oscilloscope trace is sloooowly moving up and down.

from the schematics i found it looks like the input is DC coupled, so nothing would have to be done there, i will double check by testing it though. (then you can use a ribbon controller or other VC thing to control your scope modular!)

doing this to the a16 will probably be just as easy except for one thing. there are no schematics for it, so it will be more difficult to pinpoint the right place on the circuit to take an output from.

[tomylee]

OK, I just tested the VC-8 BEFORE the output capacitors, I can get a nice DC control voltage. however there is already a 2.5v offset because the DAC chip is a single supply 5v device, and the output voltage is half of the supply.
It gives a 3v peak to peak signal before the last amplifiers.(bypassed, because they have a capacitor on the input and output)

now i have a LFO connected to it from modular3 at 0.01 hz and the oscilloscope trace is sloooowly moving up and down.

from the schematics i found it looks like the input is DC coupled, so nothing would have to be done there, i will double check by testing it though. (then you can use a ribbon controller or other VC thing to control your scope modular!)

doing this to the a16 will probably be just as easy except for one thing. there are no schematics for it, so it will be more difficult to pinpoint the right place on the circuit to take an output from.

ah I see there is an offset, my tecnician counld run into trouble messing with that? at least he told me an offset 'could' become a disaster, dont know in what case though!

the a16 does not have already coupled inputs, does it?

[tomylee]

btw: can you set the studio levels on the a16u? the adi-8 from rme could do that

I think this what you are referring to

ftp://sonic-core.net/manuals/A16_Conver ... nglish.pdf

Page 5

"The A16 Ultra is equipped with
balanced inputs and outputs. TheA16
Ultra can be adapted to various
standards via the DIP switches on its
rear panel. The analog inputs can be
set in groups for an input sensitivity of
either -10dBv or +4dBu. The same
applies to the analog outputs."

jep thats it, good to know, I wonder what voltages the a16 is outputting before the capacitors and what range it can accept before clipping at it's input stage, also with those input sensivity switches at different positions.

[Neutron]

I would do it like this

small board inside converter of your choice with buffers directly on the DAC outputs (it uses the converters power supply)
a new connector, maybe a D-SUB (like VGA_ depending on how many channels)
then a wire that gos to your modular, rack or whatever which has a new module with the amplifiers, offset switch or pot, maybe some blinky lights, and CV outputs.
(or you can dispense with the offset and have a scope module compensate)

that way you can still use it for audio with its normal outputs. so "disasters" wont happen.

[tomylee]

hm that sounds like a good idea, dont know if he meant this kind of disaster scenario, more like an modding effort distster as I already told him I want this mod be in one box, I would not use the a16u for normal converting anyway anymore.

Maybe I could have some outputs about 6 or 8 be modded to output 0-10V to be able to track analogs 10octaves wide, and let the others how they are (except for the resistor removal, which all outputs will need)

actually it would be even nicer if the voice controlling dc outputs would not have to be modded at all, but which oscillator tracks to -5 up to +5 volt? Would be nice if they could, do you know if they "understand" negative voltages?

btw is an lfo signal in a modular system (I dont have modular gear, I will have my fav synth, an se1-x modded with cv just for this matter here) bipolar or unipolar? I mean normal pots output 0-5V in most modulars, but how are audaiosignals or lfos processed ? is it all positive voltage in a modular?

and yes a switchable mod would be awesome, I just would want to have it inside my converter, for aesthetic and order reasons, it all has to be tidied up in the studio, hasnt it ? ,)

[Neutron]

making your module "understand" negative voltage is simple, you might even already have something on your modular to do it.
you just add a DC voltage to the control voltage to offset it. so all you need is a voltage source and a mixer.

oh you don't have a modular, you would need to make a converter, its really easy stuff though.

LFOs and VCOs are bipolar+-5v envelopes gates and triggers are usually 0>5v, and CV are 0-10v for musical notes, but things do respond to negative voltage, otherwise LFO in to VCO would bottom out.
maybe you can just tune the osc higher.

i think the "disaster" is accidentally plugging something with an amplified 2.5v offset (maybe 8 volts or something) in to an amplifier and blowing up your speakers

[tomylee]

i think the "disaster" is accidentally plugging something with an amplified 2.5v offset (maybe 8 volts or something) in to an amplifier and blowing up your speakers

lol

[tomylee]

thanks for the clarifications, I feel comfortable now to have this done.

Ill look into an a16u second hand and look forward to have its mod be switchable.

probably need to get modular IV too then

I will have you all informed about the progress, in the end I will supply an audiofile to show how magnificent it is to control SC modular with a stepless smooth 0-5V knob

[Neutron]

back to the question of getting scope modular to get full range, here it is
it can be calibrated right from silentway voice controller as well.

Here is a simple example of
how i got full range on scope modular with silentway.
you can use the gate to multiple envelopes without esync,

and i looked at the silent way calibration text, and it has negative values, that is a good thing because it can use the full range of the output and the hardware offset/amplifier is easier to make.

fullrange_scopemodular.jpg (116.76 KiB) Viewed 5142 times

[tomylee]

looks nice, though you dont need those modules, simply connect output 1 of silentway to the freq input with the calibration txt file I supplied

for the gate I used an inverter I guess, gotta have to look it up, just found out a mayor issue with sfp5, i cant load older projects, he asks me for the registration of several plugins like sts5000, channel, stm 2448, and when I supply them he just wont load those plugins, I load an almost empy project, but thats another thing...

[Neutron]

Oh, I wanted to do it using my own calibration, i had not seen that you posted that.

Anyways bad news for me, according to the data sheet the ADC in the fostex VC-8 "ak4522" has a digital high pass filter built in(for blocking DC ), which can not be turned off. that means i can not use it to input control voltages. CV out is the main thing, but CV in would have been nice.

oh never mind, it looks like it decodes AC which has been modulated with a VCA, so it ought to work, just means i have to waste an oscillator and as many VCAs as i need inputs,

[tomylee]

Im getting an a16 from gary, I let you know if it can be modded easily, you can get those for pretty cheap, but I would not use them for standard conversion, 18bit and not that good specs, but for voltage it should do it