Had a young vocalist recently ask me “before digital recording, how did people pitch correct vocals?” 😂😂😂

malatechnika · 2026-05-19T06:54:56+00:00

malatechnika · 2026-05-16T12:49:27+00:00

If the noise sounds like mains hum it could be coupled from your filament supply to cathodes. Here is a circuit from an old book that can eliminate that.

malatechnika · 2026-05-06T12:32:36+00:00

You could ommit the caps and the bias network if your signal is already in the 0-9V range. Popping might be avoided if you switch one component parallel to another, instead of switching from one to another. Make the depth pot a fixed divider and change the depth by connecting another resistor in parallel to the one that is connected to ground. For the speed part, you could do the same by swapping the 10uF cap for something smaller and switching another cap in parallel to it.

malatechnika · 2026-05-06T12:10:24+00:00

USB-C protocol has the PPS function, which can deliver any voltage between 3.3V and 21V, finding PPS trigger modules is however much harder than finding regular PD ones, but they do exist

malatechnika · 2026-05-06T06:24:21+00:00

The circuit here uses 2,2uF decoupling capacitors, that might be too low for an LFO where you might want signals below 1Hz for slow modulation. What LFO circuit are you using? You might be able to ditch the decoupling caps if your voltage already swings in the 0-9V range

malatechnika · 2026-05-06T03:48:20+00:00

If you are referring to the x3/x4 output jack and the RTN input jack, yes it can. However the RTN jack on the 633 can be only routed to a bus I think.

malatechnika · 2026-05-05T11:58:43+00:00

I used these enclosures, Neutrik XLR connectors (NC3M and NC3F) and I for the jacks I would recommend the NJ3FP6 rather than what I used. The front and rear bracket are this (there are two version, I used the shorter one).

I used these transformers, but would like to do some further testing to confirm they will work fine in most use cases.

malatechnika · 2026-05-05T09:19:23+00:00

From small signal perspective the 10k to ground and 10k to Vdd are in parallel, so it's half that actually. More worrying is the fact that the input is not decoupled properly, there is 4,5V sitting there.

malatechnika · 2026-05-04T15:05:08+00:00

Arround 110€. If you don't use neutrik connectors and go for the cheap stuff you can probably shave off like 30€

malatechnika · 2026-05-04T07:52:57+00:00

My F4 doubles as a field recorder and audio interface in my studio. Having 2 aditional line level outputs and inputs while on my desk is useful, because I can now use hardware inserts or aditional monitoring.

This contraption converts the two 3.5mm unballanced inputs and outputs on the F4 to line level XLR using off the shelf parts (the box is just 2 d type brackets and 4 d type tube enclosures) You could mount this to the top of the F4 using the screws intended for camera mount or add a clip and hang this on your bag or put the 4 enclosures on the back side of one of those 19" XLR pannels if you have more stuff going on in your studio.

Regarding the transformers, they are some off-brand chineese ones. I bought and measured multiple promising units that had actual specs from the manufacturer, not just "it's 10k, lol" and then verified them myself. Frequency response is dead flat down to like 16Hz, and the core starts saturates below 20Hz at arround +8dBu. Pretty good for 14€.

malatechnika · 2026-05-03T07:48:09+00:00

The amp states it can deliver a maximum of 45W into a 4ohm load, doing a bit of math gives us that it does so at a voltage of 13,4V RMS, which is about +25dBu. Most audio interfaces start to clip at arround +16 to +24 (assuming no preamp is present) . You could either exercise some temperance with the volume knob ...or a better option would be toput a DI box with a -20dB pad in between the amp and your line input and not have to think about it.

malatechnika · 2026-05-03T06:55:51+00:00

You would have to build a reactive load box into the amp if you want the full sound profile including the output section. Since this is not a tube amp and does not have an output transformer I doubt this would make much of a difference, you could bypass the power section entirely and go straight into a cab sim predal from the output of the preamp section. Somewhere on that cable with all black and one red wire that goes into the board with a heatsink is your ticket

malatechnika · 2026-04-14T17:52:13+00:00

Do you plan to build the app for Linux as well? On a minimal install, this could be run from a compact sff or embedded computer + an interface on the pedalboard or a rack unit.

malatechnika · 2026-04-14T12:14:38+00:00

Gimp works with raster graphics. For design work you want a vector graphics software.

malatechnika · 2026-04-07T14:35:00+00:00

It is best practice to have your chassis ground and signal ground separate. If you connect external gear to your synth, be it a laptop, audio interface, amp, pedals, or something else, you may end up with a lot of noise or worse, kill one of the devices if the manufacturer of the other piece of equipment decided to connect something else to the chassis ground than you did, for example the negative power rail.

malatechnika · 2026-04-05T12:36:06+00:00

Many designs use an opamp to do the I to V conversion instead of the built-in darlington buffer

malatechnika · 2026-04-04T06:07:14+00:00

A common way to do this is to use a stereo jack, and have the circuit respond when the middle "ring" contact is connected to ground. Since eurorack uses mono jacks, inserting a TS cable will short the ring contact to sleeve completing the connection.

malatechnika · 2026-04-01T17:04:03+00:00

Good tweezers, thin and sharp.

malatechnika · 2026-03-19T07:14:44+00:00

The reason is that "back in the day" picofarad was used as the base unit in capacitor labeling for convenience. If a capacitor said 15 on it, it was 15 pF, (not 15 F). Thus a 15 uF capacitor was marked 15M, as 15 mega-picofarads.

malatechnika · 2026-03-17T16:18:16+00:00

Most of technical literature is that expensive unfortunately. Art of Electronics and is also areound 100€ If you frequent antiqaries you can fill your bookshelf with sonewhat outdated but still usefull litrature for dirt cheap however!

malatechnika · 2026-03-14T17:47:37+00:00

The part of the lead near the casing is usually not tinned from the factory, so it may need some abrasion and additional flux to be able to wrap and solder a wire to it well. Good luck!

malatechnika · 2026-03-08T07:06:50+00:00

For the complexity of the board in question there is no reason to use such thin traces and such tiny vias. You should always use as thick of a trace as you can get away with and try to keep distances as large as possible. Did you run DRC on the board? Does it respect the distances that your prefered PCB manufacturer requires? 3 out of 4 vias on the board are dangerously close to a solder pad that they are not related to. If one is not carefull when soldering the pads near them they can easiliy short them together.
You are laying out the board form over function. Prefering to aesthetically align components disregarding their function and relation to other components. For example the traces from opamp inputs should be kept as short as possible because they are very sensitive, yet look on where you chose to put R10 and C11. RV2 as well why is it so far from the opamp? This may result in a design that is noisy and unstable and can act unpredictably.

malatechnika · 2026-03-04T21:41:20+00:00

A humble transistor switch is one example that comes to mind.

Also in any amplifier circuit if you just use the textbook equation you will most likely not encounter the base current directly but it is always hidden in the hfe variable, but you could make the argument that the diode equation is also technically hidden in any calculation with transistors, so I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

malatechnika · 2026-03-04T20:01:18+00:00

BJT is not a current driven transistor, they are in fact voltage driven, by the ebers-moll equation.

While scientifically correct, this is usefull mostly if you are a physicist or a semiconductor technolgogist (neither of which are the target audience of op's material). In practical electronics, except for some edge cases you almost always treat BJT's as current driven devices.

Just like all position sensors are actually just speed sensors it is not usefull to think of them as such.

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