Doepfer

Doepfer community!

it's me again - I've been silent for a while...

I'm interested in improving one thing:

Communicating Patches.

I've been noticing this thread and many other
threads that go:

"Take [blah]1 from [foo]2 to [bar]3"
Reply: "[foo]2 to [bar]3? Are you serious?"

Apologize for jumping in - I've been thinking
about this for a while now and think this
really can be improved with the right software.

Owning and performing on an A-100 myself,
its the modules that are the smallest unit in
the system, so its about how we represent
doepfer modules. Currently we have
bitmap / raster images optimized for the Web
of all modules.

We need "images that think". An image
of a Doepfer module should be more than
a static black box, it should "know" what
jacks, knobs, etc. are defined for that
module, so it becomes possible to
connect / link one jack to another
between modules programmatically.

I think SVG is the right thing - Scalable Vector
Graphics in XML from W3C, an open standard.
High-level XML patches could be transformed
via XSLT into SVG. All module "images" would
be generated on the fly based on context, new
modules could potentially be "designed" by
every doepfer owner in a module wish list design
tool, re-combining SVG vectors for each doepfer
user interface component to visually
draw new modules and document patches like
in a lego system.

As a first test, me and my colleague Dennis
took the A 110 VCO module image from the
doepfer website, imported it in Illustrator 10,
drew vector shapes around everything
relevant, exported it as SVG, uploaded it
to our web server, made it render in both
Adobe SVG Viewer and thru the Flash 6
plug-in. Since the module is now an SVG vector
image defined in standard XML ascii, I can take
the image from the Web again, open it
anytime in Illustrator or other vector
drawing tools, and/or print it at any resolution
without any loss or blurs...

The "openness" of SVG has another advantage
- the module planner could then e.g. become a
real web app also accessible for non Excel users,
since generating those XML SVG modules /
configurations server-side is then possible
dynamically thru standard middleware (e.g. php),
and a web form could be used for entering /
selecting the modules, causing the web app to
dynamically generate the appropriate SVG
showing the selected module(s)...

... patches could then be expressed, captured
and communicated a lot better.

A-110 defined in native SVG XML:
http://claus.packts.net/deng/examples/svg/modul_vco.svg
Rendered thru Flash in your browser:
http://claus.packts.net/deng/deng_test.php?f=examples/svg/modul_vco.svg
takes a couple of seconds to render,
the SVG could still be optimized and made
to render a lot faster, this was just our
first shot - you can zoom in and out
with the right mouse click.

Look forward to any feedback...

Cheers,

- Sebastian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Schulz" <dasfonk@web.de>
To: <Doepfer_a100@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 4:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Doepfer_a100] Odd (but cool) behavior of Doepfer A-119


> Peter wrote:
>
> > Route Z into a Doepfer A-119.  Adjust the Gain to taste (in my
> > case this meant full up) and the threshold to about 3. Call this
> > new signal Z2
> >
> > Now, route the the square wave driving the envelope through a
> > VCA, with Z2 as the control voltage and you will discover the
> > most amazing thing.
>
>
> Peter,
>
> Which output of the A-119 did you use? We´ve got the audio out, the
> envelope out and the gate out.
> I suppose you took the gate out because otherwise the position of the
> threshold pot would not influence the patch.
> ...but I´m not quite sure right now...
> My first thought was like: Okay, as soon as the joystick is moved, a
> voltage higher than threshold appears and a gate is being started. But I
> forgot that even when the joystick is kept in one position, there still
> is a voltage produced (except in center position (?)) and the gate of
> the A-119 is still open.
>
> So what  is going on in this patch??!! Indeed, really strange behavior ;-)
>
> cheers,
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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