200e

Another opinion from the peanut gallery:

I'm interfacing 200e with Serge/Cynthia/Modcan/Fenix/Milton and some 
older 200 series modules pretty well.  I agree that you need to have 
separate 'pitch buses' for the oscillators and MIDI is probably best for 
the 200e oscillators.  The 225e also provides some convenient outputs 
for MIDI controllers.  I use an Encore Expressionist for the 1v/oct 
oscillators and a modified JKJ Electronics MIDI-CV converter for the 
older Buchla stuff.

One thing I did that helps is to make sure everything is grounded 
together and then get a few banana to 1/8" cables.  This allows you to 
quickly get the 1/8" audio signals out of the Buchla into the rest of 
the banana world and since everything is on a common ground, you don't 
have any problems with the missing ground connection on the adapter cables.

I don't tend to mix different oscillators too much on the same sound so 
I don't have to worry about scaling issues very often but I do find the 
now discontinued Cynthia octal inverting attenuator, and the attenuators 
on several of the Modcan modules to be very helpful in general.

	Eric


>     From: "Gary Chang" gchang@calarts.edu
>     Date: Mon May 15, 2006 9:44pm(PDT) 
> Subject: Re: 4 powered boat rack mounting
> 
> Just another opinion from the peanut gallery, from someone who doesn't
> have a 200e, but has some experience with older Buchla systems...
> 
> Don't even try to interface/interconnect your Buchla system to other
> systems - you will waste many years of your life...!  
> 
> The simplest way to get external pitches to the 200e is going to be
> midi.  A device, such as an Analog Systems AS300 cv to midi converter
> will do the trick.  It will convert your CVs and gate/trigger
> information perfectly to the 200e's liking.  And vise versa for going
> the other way, back to the Frac synth.
> 
> Years ago (1876!), at Calarts, I would bring my 9 panel Serge into the
> electronic music studios at Calarts, in which a really large Buchla
> system was the central system.  To make a long story short, I found
> myself spending all my time messing around with the processors,
> contantly tweaking the rescaling of signal between the two.
> 
> It's like having two really beautiful rooms, but you are spending all
> of your time in the hallway, never really enjoying one or the other...
> 
> Of course, that's just my opinion - I could be wrong!
> 
> Gary
> 
>