I’m not much of a DIYer
anything that involves a circuit board is a bit out of my comfort zone for sure
I’ll try to get a little quick “what I know about passive stuff” after a couple projects
but I totally agree that it isn’t for everyone
the pace at which the community has grown over the past 3 years even is very impressive
we need dreamers and creators alike!
If the PCBs were at a right angle to the panel as seen in the Cadet & Castle ranges as well as Fox’s new designs, then there would be plenty of room on the circuit boards.
I’d suggest that the pots would be doubled like on the Vidiot or on some studio sound mixing desks: hi part of the pot for frequency & the lower for width/resonance/gain for example.
Well, I am at it again.
Maybe someday I will learn some electronics, but for now I am satisfied sheepishly throwing loose ideas into the wind… With the usual caveat that I have little idea how practical this is in terms of panel-size in relation to electronics necessary underneath. And the added caveat this time that I am well aware that there are currently ways to patch this up (I can do it now with my system) but — if possible to do this in such small space — this would save [me] a lot of patching, and free up those other modules, doing something that I especially anticipate wanting to do a lot once TBC2 ships. [End preamble]
So, anyway, when I edit videos in Premiere (and also working with images in my design work), I pretty much exclusively use either the Multiply or Screen blend modes. These by far look best to me, produce the nicest results (esp. in relation to simple crossfading).
Multiply always only darkens. Screening always only lightens. Multiply basically looks like adding the darks. Screening looks like subtracting the lights. From what I understand, “Screen” is basically just multiplying inverses of the inputs and then inverting the result.
I’ve sketched out a few ways a simple multiply/screen module could work, either a couple possibilities for a 4hp single-channel (presumably DIY-able) module:
.or an 8hp three-channel version:
…eh? 
How do you patch it up in your system now with what you have?
Simple multiplying can be done with Visual Cortex alone. Also have Esnho’s Triple Multiplier.
To get the screen, you basically just have to invert the signals first (like with Syntonie or Fox’s quad inverters), then run it through a multiplier, then invert the result of that. That’s where the patching can get complicated.
Honestly, since I don’t have a way to get two full color image signals into my system at present, I haven’t found the need/desire to do this too much yet. But have played around with patching this up a bit to see the possibilities. And, like I said, anticipate more need once TBC2 arrives.
I don’t know if it is at all practical (or indeed even all that useful, beyond inasmuch as more outputs always seems somewhat useful) to have access to both Multiply and Screen outputs simultaneously on the 8hp version above. Maybe it is just a switch to have one or the other? I dunno. Spitballin’ here!
Also I think Marble Index should, in theory, be able to do a screen on its own (you can invert the inputs, multiply, and then invert the output).
But I am not sure the multiply circuits on mine are working correctly, since I get different (and odd) results when using its multiply function vs. using Visual Cortex’s.
…Which was a bit of a bummer to finally notice once I started testing all this. Never have really used Marble Index much since I bought it around the same time I preordered TBC2, anticipating greater mixing needs, yet…
