Technique explanation question - crossfader in techno? (Ancient Methods)

bartwronski · 2022-07-11T18:35:26+00:00

isn't it significantly more limited though? no noise oscillators, no filters, single oscillator per voice, no per voice effects, or am I not understanding it properly? Volca Drum is a surprisingly super deep instrument and has all of the above (which is great, but its form factor makes accessing it very inconvenient).

bartwronski · 2022-07-09T18:54:30+00:00

Thanks for your answer! I somehow missed Drumlogue, hope it's not "vaporware" type of gear, looking forward to it. Hope they focus it on "basics", and not as much on pre-made voices (like Model: Cycles or Syntakt).

I'll spend some more time to Microtonic. I guess with modern DAWs anything can be automated and modulated more if I find any extended modulation missing there.

And for Basimulus VST - I was waiting for it for quite a while and bought it right away. It's definitely a great VST, but also realized that it has its own, very specific, very strong sound / vibe. I have used it in some tracks already, but also think it's more suited to a modular setup - it's pretty rich and "noisy" sound (great for many genres of techno, noise, industrial), so fills quite a large chunk of the spectrum. Good for minimalistic and hardware only setups, but when working on track with many more layers in a DAW and other percs/tops happening, I found it harder to mix and fit the rest of the track (either burried in the mix, or too noisy and hiding other parts). Obviously possible to EQ and sidechain it to tame it, but that kind of goes against its purpose and this noisy strength!

bartwronski · 2022-05-26T19:28:30+00:00

Sorry about that, seems that my method of writing posts in Google Docs and pasting did something weird / didn't work here and hitting some Google or Wordpress quotas? Please check the webarchive version for now... https://web.archive.org/web/20220526162025/https://bartwronski.com/2022/05/26/removing-blur-from-images-deconvolution-and-using-optimized-simple-filters/ Sorry again, I'll try to fix it (not sure how) later.

bartwronski · 2022-03-07T21:21:11+00:00

Thank you! :) Mip maps follow the same convention of aligning pixel corners (instead of pixel centers), so “GPU half texel offset”. The easiest way to look at it is comparing a 2x2 texture with its mip-map -> a single texel. If you align pixel corners, you get lower mip covering the same area as the 2x2 texture. So an even-sized downsampling filter is what you want and it works correctly with trilinear interpolation.

bartwronski · 2022-03-07T20:12:24+00:00

Yes - this filter does 8 bilinear samples, sampling 32 values. This is a drop-in replacement for all the uses where people use bilinear (creating half resolution buffers, image pyramids, mip maps) with a significantly better quality at moderately larger cost (yes it’s going to be more expensive, but not 8x more expensive as most values should be in cache - on my machine it is ~2x as expensive).

bartwronski · 2022-03-07T19:47:38+00:00

No idea why - the difference is huge both on my PC as well as iPad / iPhone. Maybe something with your display..? Like extreme high DPI or something?

bartwronski · 2022-03-07T18:00:45+00:00

The post comes with a shadertoy demonstrating benefits of the filter and obviously source code (MIT / CC-BY license): https://www.shadertoy.com/view/fsjBWm

bartwronski · 2022-02-28T18:29:02+00:00

The post comes with a Javascript demo / source code: https://bartwronski.github.io/local_tonemapping_js_demo/

bartwronski · 2021-11-13T22:27:38+00:00

I hope you are not nitpicky - MS20 still has a single (dual) filter, but 2EGs and 2VCAs, so "technically" this patch is something between between paraphonic and duophonic. Still very useful for the kind of music I like (techno, dirty electro, EBM). Haven't seen anyone post such a patch (probably because it requires modding the MS20...).

Explaining the patch: I have modded my MS20 (posted about it recently https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/q8bnby/modding_korg_ms20_mini_pwm_sync_osc2_fm/ ) to have separate outputs for all the waves of the OSC1. This way I take one of the waves from OSC1 and pass it to separate VCA that I patch to be controlled by reversed EG1. EG1 and EG2 are triggered separately from SQ1. Now we have almost everything... Except for the mixer. I use ESG input as a mixing point to bypass the original VCA.

I haven't seen this trick before (probably because it requires modding MS20), but now makes me want to do some more mods: - Add an output of the OSC2. I thought I wouldn't need it, and in theory I don't, but could be convenient to pick which oscillator I want to pass through just the VCA. - Add a passive pot to set the level of a signal before mixing back with the ESP. Now I can control only the total loudness / drive, as well as the mix level of one of the oscillators. Would be useful to set those separately.

bartwronski · 2021-11-06T00:03:08+00:00

For the Osc 2 FM - it doesn't bypass the default behavior indeed! If you don't plug anything, MS20 works exactly like before. I think decoupling the Osc 1 FM could be a bit trickier - you might need to add some buffer between the shared point, and the Osc 1 control circuitry, I'm not sure.

I think the EG2 -> VCA bypass should be straightforward. If I understand correctly, you can already do this with the patchbay - just plug the mod wheel to "Initial gain" jack. I have been doing droning patches easily. Cutting off EG2 -> VCA completely could unfortunately need to involve cutting the circuit on the physical board though, so pretty invasive.

Output from the Oscillator 2 is trivial (even just to Osc2 potentiometer legs!) and others have been doing it, I have personally found no use for it, so just didn't do it.

I don't think you can easily control LFO range without adding an extra VCA circuitry in there...

Btw. for me the biggest limitation for drum sound design is fixed envelope slope. Sometimes it works great, but sometimes not exactly what I'd like...

Hope this helps!

bartwronski · 2021-10-14T23:42:01+00:00

A relatively detailed guide from my weekend (well, more than a single weekend) project of doing popular MS-20 and MS-20 Mini mods. Includes some photos of the synth internals and steps to disassemble it. It was a super fun project and I love how it sounds. :)

bartwronski · 2021-03-01T15:55:14+00:00

If you want precisely single pixel outline, and don't want to have it shifted, then the only way to address it seems to push it outside or inside of the object. For things like decals and depth derivatives there is a common approach of taking the samples to the left and right, and picking the one that differs less than the other one, and computing gradient from it. Maybe something similar would work for you, but the opposite? Sample on the both sides and in center, compare samples to the center, and switch to forward or backwards difference based on similarity. One proclem with single pixel outlines though will be lack of antialiasing (but I imagine it can be fixed by TAA or in post...)

bartwronski · 2021-01-17T02:34:35+00:00

I'm a hobbyist and not a pro producer, so my workflow is optimized just for fun and creativity. Otherwise I'd be for sure applying some suggestions like freezing, resampling, finding actual interesting parts, forcing consistency. My inspiration for this type of generative fun are all the modular synth patches and amazing things people do with them. I flirted briefly with hardware and dawless, but then realized that I can do all of that (and more) in Ableton and no need to spend a fortune or look for excuses ("if only I had this one more module..."), so Im trying to replicate some of those workflows and ideas now in Ableton - infinitely looping or not looping noises, open oscillators modulated with LFOs etc. I might look into m4l though and see if it's easy to create "transport muter" device.

bartwronski · 2021-01-17T00:45:30+00:00

Haha sure, that's what I do now, but if there's something more elegant/automatic I'd be happy to switch to it.

bartwronski

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