You’re right @Rik_bS but I was sure I basing what I wrote on something I read on here. I guess it’s an interpretation of this:
Discontinued:
Polar Fringe (replaced by Chromagnon)
Visual Cortex (replaced by Chromagnon, and other future Automata instruments)
Navigator (replaced by Chromagnon)
Shapechanger (replaced by Chromagnon, and other future Automata instruments)
Cyclops (replaced by Chromagnon)
It’s part of an older but important post. It’s towards the bottom, under “Discontinued”.
Here’s the link:
DWO3 is pretty impressive for LFO duties, so we have been leaning on that. And the Video Headroom Systems Baja feels indispensable. VH.S also has an envelope follower coming out, as @Vdot mentioned. There are LZX designs for these functions on deck, but we don’t have a timeline laid out.
+1 on the Syntonie Animate & Expander combo although the Animate will go a long way too.
A Square output can be sent to a clockdivider to get fractions of the tempo/LFO speed too.
We have new voltage source modules in development. Lfo has been talked a lot. And gone through some very different at times panel concepts. Something more video rate will be happening first. Things that have been mentioned include easing curves. Phase relations. Timeline™️ vibes.
As far as lfo. Yea. It’s kinda like this.
Dwo. Benefits from static cv offset input for very slow stuff. Gives you all that video rate rizz. (Also hard to sacrifice a video rate to do lfo mode)
Syntonie. Gets you lfo only at price reduction from dwo. Ample waves and more with expander. Listed range is 100 seconds. Not sure if you can cv a higher voltage than 1v (normalled to cv input) for extra low low. 4 phases
Baja. Goes slowest with or without patching. Smallest footprint. Single waveform. 6 phases. Ribbon pwr only
I keep putting off Bajas because early simple translations to 5v weren’t instant success
Ease curves, phase, great things to consider. We do have good options in the audio realm, it’s just the voltage conversions that get in the way. Ornament and Crime Plus meets most of my needs, if I can just get the tuning right. If I can get a really precise 1-5V sawtooth into OCP > Hemispheres > VectorMorph, I can map that onto any function curve and phase. I imagine the newer, sexier versions of Disting would also go quite a ways down that path as well.
Anyway, it would be epic if some app-based digital CV magic made its way to the native LZX voltage standard. Custom function curves would effectively enable simple timeline operations, i.e. random access value mappings. (OCP Hemispheres does this) Add a CV digital delay line or two, and Bob’s your uncle. (Disting does this)
DWO is great, I don’t see it as sacrificing video rate to do LFO. I see it as a versatile option that saves rack space. Driving the FM input into negativland gives me all the slow LFO range I need.
any digital module with open source firmware - all mutable instrument except beads, and a lot of others, o&c - should be reasonably easy be update to use 0-1v instead of 5v…
mutable ones that I can think of that would be useful for video - ie mostly modulation would be tides (both versions), frames, peaks and stages
doesn’t really need huge amounts of coding skill either… just work out where the output values are being sent to the pins and adjust… and build and reflash… probably a bit hit and miss, at least to start with though…
Changing the scale should be a trivial programming task. Greater changes have been made to the firmware for Mutable Instruments modules. As for updating, see the update instructions for the Parasites firmware.
However, I sold all my digital MI modules and I no longer have any space in the one cabinet in which I could cleanly power them.
I now use a pair of Sensory Translators as my “programmable” modulation sources. I feed them with sine waves with varying amplitudes, generated using CSound, tuned to the frequences of the Sensory Translator bands.
So much easier for me to program and update. I’m sure the technique could be adapted for Aural Scan and other sine wave sources.
I have no modules that can produce such complex signals. I usually want slowly flucturating CVs. While Marbles can generate 4 of them, it’s 18hp wide. That’s a lot of panel space for only 4 useful CVs! So I use a pair of Sensory Translators to get 10 fluctuating values. I can also generate any other complex signals, and they can change at any time. Even better, I can sync them with a video signal to get 3 video-rate CVs. I generate the video signals using FFmpeg, of course.
I’m now starting to experiment with more complex audio/visual generative techniques, This is done by writing code that generates filtergraph and/or command files (via the sendcmd filter) for FFmpeg, and score files for Csound. I’m also writing code to generatively edit the video in post-production. I may someday write more code to generate audio synched with the video.
Various examples of these techniques may be found via my Vimeo account.
I’m just saying, if you are good with Csound or whatever, something like Expert Sleepers ES-9 is a much more direct approach. Your use of fine-tuned sine waves through dual 5-band envelope followers is a clever approach. But you can easily just generate the control voltages directly. ES-9 is not cheap, and it “only” has eight outputs, but it is cheaper than 2x Sensory Translators, and I think it’s overall a better solution. I’m planning to go down that road eventually.
I have several problems with Expert Systems modules.
The first is that they’re not class-compliaqnt. Even using Windows 10, the driver didn’t work.
The second problem is that I don’t have space for a computer in or near my video rig. I might be able to set up a Rasperry Pi running Debian and Csound, but that would require a class-compliant soundcard.
So I use a pair of LZX modules instead. You can probably guess which video player I use to provide the audio and video.
I use a computer running Ubuntu in another room. I use to create or prepare videos I can play into my video synth. The last time I used a computer and the synth in the same room was 2015.
You’re right, this is drifting off-topic. I was simply responding to Agawell’s post about custom MI firmware by describing how I avoided that. I’ve done that and said more than enough now.
Your settings may vary.
It depends a bit on each unit and their calibration.
That said, setting o&c to 1v is fantastic, I used it a lot before having the syntonie lfos.
Having weird waveforms in audio range oscillators and feeding them to diver is a simple and nice patch.
I’m sure the technique could be adapted for Aural Scan and other sine wave sources.
