Wiardgroup

holy baby jesus that sounds like a fantastic piece of
work..and god bless them vactrols
Ti_
--- Grant Richter <grichter@asapnet.net> wrote:

> After years of design and months of work I have a
> kind of working prototype of the 
> Envelooper MARF. It works, but not perfectly yet. I
> am still getting the bugs out. This is 
> targeted to the Frac-Rac format.
> 
> MARF stands for "Multiple Arbitrary Function
> Generator". One of the shortcomings of 
> modular synthesis is the lack of complex controllers
> for modules. To generate a complex 
> control function now, you have to sum together
> multiple envelopes and LFOs. The 
> Envelooper allows you to draw complex control
> functions visually, with enough points to 
> reproduce the effect of summing multiple envelopes
> and LFOs. It also stores pitches like a 
> sequencer, and you can draw an envelope in channel 4
> for each pitch.
> 
> The Envelooper is designed to support true
> "gestural" synthesis where a single key press 
> or button push can produce control signals for a
> complete musical gesture. Multiple 
> gestures are stored in different Banks and can be
> selected by voltage control. Using a 
> black and white keyboard, you can select and trigger
> gestures with just the keyboard. The 
> Envelooper also has a "Loop" switch that sets it to
> free running loop without needing a 
> gate or trigger.
> 
> The Envelooper is modeled after an ADSR envelope
> generator. For the Envelooper, each 
> segment of the A, D, S and R is four 256 byte pages
> stored in a PROM, for a total of 1024 
> bytes for each envelope. Four 8 bit outputs are
> produced simultaneously with a channel to 
> channel skew of an inaudible 1 microsecond.
> 
> Each ADSR segment has an independent "playback" time
> control from 1 millisecond to 20 
> seconds. The shortest total envelope time is 4
> milliseconds and the longest is 80 seconds. 
> The ouputs are calibrated like the Mini-Wave to 1
> volt per octave. Two steps = 83.3 
> millivolts = a semitone. So the table programmer in
> Wave 256 can be used to program 
> pitch information using actual note names.
> 
> The Wave256 software used to program the Waveform
> City and Mini-Wave is also used to 
> program the Envelooper. The waveforms in a "Wave"
> are set up like this for the 
> enveloopers four outputs; A1, A2, A3, A4, D1, D2,
> D3, D4, S1, S2, S3, S4, R1, R2, R3, R4. 
> The programming rules are as follows; A(ttack) pages
> start at -128 and end at +128, D
> (ecay) pages start at +128 and end at 0, S(ustain)
> pages start and end at zero, Release 
> pages start at 0 and end at -128. Following these
> programing rules produce envelopes 
> with no audible "splice" when the device switches
> from one segment to another.
> 
> The four outputs are mapped two different ways for
> East Coast and West Coast patches. 
> For East Coast use, output 1 controls the pitch of
> the VCO, output 2 controls the 
> waveform, output 3 controls the VCF (Boogie) and
> output 4 controls the VCA (Borg 2). For 
> West Coast use, output 1 controls the pitch of the
> VCO, output 2 controls the waveform X, 
> output 3 controls the waveform Y  and output 4
> controls the lowpass gate.
> 
> 8 bits has a fair amount of zipper noise, for
> pitches we want this quantization, but it is a 
> problem for VCAs and other inputs. One of the little
> known things about Vactrols is that 
> they remove zipper noise. So running an 8 bit signal
> through a Vactrol smooths out the 
> steps into continuous function. The VCO will have
> Vactrols or the equivalent on the 
> waveform X and Y inputs to remove zipper noise. The
> Borg and Boogie filters are based on 
> Vactrols and already remove zipper noise.
> 
> I just wanted to post a little note to let everyone
> know that Wiard R&D will continue to 
> produce ground breaking designs not available
> anywhere else. For those REALLY 
> interested I have posted the test PROM file in the
> files section called adsr4.256 Use the 
> Wave256 software to view the segment designs. Please
> note this is just an experimental 
> file to test ideas, NOT the final file which will
> ship with the module.
> 
> 
> 
> 



 
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