I have had a Sample and Hold for a long time... It is, as you see above, a homemade module, built around five years ago to the design published by the late, great Ray Wilson of 'Music from Outer Space'. [musicfromouterspace.com is down today, so I can't add any links.] I decided - for reasons I'll explain in a moment - that I need a new Sample & Hold.  There are a number of reasons why you might want a Sample and Hold ('S&H') in a synthesiser, of which the two most common seem to be:     1) the generation of random sequences by sampling noise (or some other ..read more

Some weeks ago I noticed a flurry of discussion of the PT2399 device on various Facebook groups of which I'm a member. The PT2399 is marketed as an 'Echo Processor', offering the ability to generate a delayed version of an audio signal and - thereby - to form the core of a simple echo effect.  What is most interesting about the device (which is available in a 16-pin DIP) to me and millions of others who dabble in audio all over the world is its price - you can have them for around fifty cents retail if you shop around. You won't be surprised to hear that  - in consequence of the ri ..read more

I was sitting here at my computer yesterday, quietly building envelopes from a bunch of straight-line segments (no, I can't tell you why).  Suddenly, the quiet was broken by a familiar and evocative sound - the rising rumble of a group of beating piston aero engines.  The rumble rose to a dramatic, unmistakable roar and sure enough - as I looked out of my window - Avro Lancaster PA474 of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight thundered over my house at 12:26 on a heading of 170 degrees at 825ft (according to the flight track I just retrieved from RadarBox). Interestingly, the same t ..read more

Yesterday, after a request from Giannis in SV-land, I uploaded my EAGLE Library for inductors and transformers wound on FT37 and FT50 Toroidal Ferrite Cores to a github repository. I had published this library many moons ago to the CADSoft EAGLE Library page, but it no longer appears on the Autodesk EAGLE Library collection. Perhaps it got lost during the transfer of ownership of EAGLE or perhaps they just don't like my little library ? Whatever the reason, it is now online again and available for anybody to use. The library was originally created and used in several of my projects, including ..read more