Kevin on the Simple DIY Electronic Music Projects blog received a non-working 1985 Yamaha DX100 synth. My thinking here is that as it is a pretty nice synth with most of its functionality on a single PCB with connectors to the peripherals, if all else fails I could stick a Pi inside and turn it into a DX100 shaped MiniDexed DX7! But I’ve decided to have a proper look to see if I can do some “proper” digital electronics fault-finding for once to see if I can get anywhere. Armed with schematics and other documentation, Kevin goes through the diagnosis. Check out the progress so far in the pos ..read more

Chebe writes about assembling a sound synth project: I made up the SynthCube MFOS Noise Toaster kit! The project page should be this project link but it seems to be down a lot, so here’s a WayBackMachine cache. This is not a beginners project. There is a lot of assumed knowledge. There is a book, to help fill in some of the background, but electronics and enclosures familiarity is still assumed. As well as plenty of tools at hand. It’s also not a quick win, there are a few days of slog involved for the uninitiated. But, with determination it is still very approachable! The fir ..read more

via 3dprint …with this multi-part design for a synthesizer controller keyboard, Tim Trzepacz says he wanted to create a modular design which would allow designers to 3D print as many sections as they need. The parts are currently designed at a very small scale, but Trzepacz says it’s a simple matter to scale up to any required size–and he adds that the file “keyboard6.stl” is an exploded view which can be used to guide assembly, including all the parts but not suitable for printing. The design files for this novel creation from Trzepacz can all be found on Pinshape should you wish to use ..read more

Moogfest begins today and one on-site highlight will be the re-release of the Minimoog Model D, seen – and heard – in the video below. I’m digging the assembly shots, and great to get a glimpse at the love and care that goes into each synth they assemble. After more than 30 years, the Minimoog Model D returns with a pilot-production run at Moogfest 2016 in Durham, NC. Handcrafted in the Moog Pop-Up Factory, the pilot-production units built during the festival will only be available for purchase on-site in the Moog Store by Guitar Center.   Read more: Othermill-Engraved Circuit Board ..read more

Hey folks, Crow here.  As I may have mentioned in the past my first hobby is electronic music synthesizer design.  While a fair amount of my spare time these past two years involves the crOwBX project, I did manage to work out the design for a new instrument.  The two main driving forces behind this project were wanting to make a replacement machine in the style of a Minimoog 204D (“model D”) for my good friend Doug Ferguson, who lost his circa 1974 original Mini to hurricane Katrina, and I wanted to create a machine that would fit in the compact aluminum attache case as used wi ..read more

Ken Shirriff continues reverse engineering the Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer OPS “operator” chip that generated the sound waveforms. A key part of the OPS chip is an exponential circuit, which is used for frequency calculation and envelope application. Ken examines this circuit—implemented by a ROM, shifter, and other circuitry—in detail and extract the ROM’s data. Computing exponents is a key part of the DX7’s sound synthesis. The chip needs to compute exponents very quickly, faster than an algorithm such as CORDIC could operate, but a straightforward ROM would have been much too large. Th ..read more

Winterbloom is a boutique, open-source synthesizer company with exactly one engineer – Thea (Stargirl). In her latest blog post, she writes about the tools and tech she uses to run a one-woman hardware company. I am responsible for everything – from the hardware design, to the firmware, to the documentation, and everything else! Because this is a ton of work I’ve had to be very deliberate with the tools and tech that I use. This article is a look into our current tech stack one year in and some ideas I have for the future. I’ll go from the microcontrollers, the firmware, and all the way up t ..read more

HackSpace magazine issue 40, talks to Thea Flowers, a maker who has focused on electronic synthesizers. “The idea of building a standalone synthesiser by yourself is daunting; you have to do so much. So I started looking for a way to build synthesisers without having to know everything out of the gate, to build a full synthesiser entirely by myself. I started to look back into the modular stuff and saw like, this is actually really awesome. There’s so much neat stuff going on, so many unique little modules – this is perfect! I can experiment, I can play around with stuff, I can make tiny sin ..read more

She's alive! The blue cable is sending control voltage that corresponds to the key I'm pressing (1v/octave). The green cable is sending gate. It's 5v when a key is pressed and 0v when no key is pressed. These two together control the synth that they're plugged into. pic.twitter.com/g7YLjtMoNS — Peaches & Scream (@theavalkyrie) October 6, 2019 Thea Flowers writes on Twitter about her custom CircuitPython programmable board working as a USB MIDI to CV/Gate module. Which means that it’s *reprogrammable* on the fly. There are 6 output jacks on this board. 2 are continuous 0-10v waveforms dri ..read more

A new guide in the Adafruit Learning System: BLE Synth with the Feather nRF52840 and Circuit Playground Bluefruit by Liz Clark. In this project, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is used to have a Feather nRF52840 and Circuit Playground Bluefruit communicate with each other to create a wireless 8-bit music synthesizer. The Feather has 12 buttons attached to its I/O pins. Each time a button is pressed, it sends a BLE packet to the Circuit Playground Bluefruit. When the Circuit Playground Bluefruit receives those packets, it swirls its on-board NeoPixels in a specific color and pl ..read more