So I finally got my new sounds card to be able to transfer all my stuff from my Rollad Vs-1880 to my computer (and into the wild)

The ESI UL24 Xl is a really nicely built external sound card. To my greatest surprise it works out of the box with pure:dyne (I would assume it works out of the box with ubuntu in general or linux). What I was looking for is a usb powered sound card to use when I mix music ~ then I realized it has a S-pdif in and out – which is also on the VS-1880. I wasn’t sure it would work to bring digital in for linux. The analogue in work perfectly but I had to play around a little more to get the 24bit digital in. For some reason you have to lower your input volume to zero in alsa mixer to make it work. I

So in short – open terminal, type alsamixer then you will see all your input and output, move to your esi (that is automatically detected normally) then lower the volume of the input to 0. Fire up audacity or other recording software, select the card as an input- 24bit 44khz then hit record.

So now I can do a little spring clean up and empty all the recording I made during the winter. Beware it’s nothing final or anything. Just jaming around with my new tools – tenori-on, microkorg xl – minikp – dark energy and the great noise making ef-101! I am posting everything on soundcloud to test their system and might be putting all these audio clip together in some sort of an album to close that chapters and start creating new track!

Here you can listen to some of the track I created! happy listening!

Bhabhabha by damaru

Forest jam by damaru

Tenori MiniKp by damaru

I created my first prototype of the mixer. It’s more an experiment than a prototype from the fact that I only attached 6 knob to the arduino to start with.

Here are some picture of the making of the mixer. I used a normal plastic project box to do the trick, to give it some sort of finish to the product. Using hand drill and bee wax and my main tool (yeah I know really professional !) I glued the knob in place.

The main part of the experiment was to link the mixer to output to the computer. The first layer is the physical knob, then the arduino chip then processing. For the processing – arduino communication there is already a library. You can load a firmware in arduino (firmata) that helps the communication. Then in processing you can load the arduino library. By the way, the default library you can download from arduino site has an error. The library is named Arduino.jar, which gives you an error if you try to load it. You have to rename it arduino.jar, without the capital in order to make it work. (using pure:dyne I got an error renaming the file, I had to rename it to something else first then to arduino.jar – the file system assuming that Arduino and arduino is the same thing it wouldn’t let me rename the file!)

Here is where you can get more information about the arduino processing http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Interfacing/Processing. Make sure to rename the library in processing ~ there was a problem at first with the arduino library having a capital letter at the beginning…

Once that is installed properly I tried an example program and then modified it to my need. I wanted to have a visual that would translate a better more the knob feeling. It’s also a very simple example of popMAtrix and pushMatrix and rotate function. Here the push and popMatrix are used to prevent all the knob to be affected by each other rotation – while it was kind of fun to rotate the whole canvas!

import processing.serial.*;
import cc.arduino.*;

Arduino arduino; // new arduino object

void setup() {
  size(470, 280);
  smooth();
  arduino = new Arduino(this, Arduino.list()[0], 57600);

  for (int i = 0; i <= 13; i++)
 {
    arduino.pinMode(i, Arduino.INPUT);
 }

}

void draw() {
  background(0);
  stroke(255);
  strokeWeight(10);
  noFill();

  for (int i = 0; i <= 5; i++) {  //cycling trough the 6 analogue input

    pushMatrix();

    translate(60+i*70, height/2);
    rotate(arduino.analogRead(i)/30); // Rotating with the analogue in

    ellipse(0,0,60,60);   // Creating the knob
    line (0,0,0,30);

    popMatrix();

  }
}

Here is a simple video demo of the mixer in action, next step is to try it out with puredata just for the fun of it and soon will be the test with the USB64! The Doepfer usb64 seemed to be quite a challenge at first (I haven't done soldering for years - I think the last time I did I was around 12 !!) but I finally got a hang of it ! Stay tune for part 3 of the DIY usb audio mixer!

So here is my first step into my plan to make my own mixer. The idea is in the next few months I want to built a complete USB mixer (I say months not to get anyone hopes to high ;) )t . This mixer will be used to play with mixxx, which by the way will paticipate in the next google summer of code, where young programmer are giving the opportunity to code for few weeks on a certain project. These events in the past has help mixx to become quite solid mixing engine with a lot of neat feature and I am quite happy that it will again have a boost of new codes. That makes mixxx my prefered software for mixing – even if it’s not as solid sometime as other pro dj software – it’s open source and really easy to configure with a diy mixer for example :).

I chose Mixxx because it’s open source, it work on puredyne really well (far better than on ubuntu and a lot less ressource intensive than on mac) and work really well with my netbook with a 7inches screen. It’s also feature full and the midi mapping is really simple and kool.

The hardware I choose is the USB64 from doepfer that offer 64 connections that talk directly in MIDI trouh it’s usb port. But I soon realize that Doepfer make dyi gear that are not aimed toward the beginner in electronic, so my first step will be to start prototyping the device with my arduino mega board a sensor shield and 6 knob, 5 fader, some buttons and led.

One of the problem with arduino and midi is that the device itself is registered by the computer as a serial device, which create the needs to have a driver or a software that translate the serial output to midi output. I will probably use Processing to receive these serial message and display them as visual entry, or I might move that project to puredata ~ we will see what make more sense, puredata seems to be built to receive serial inputs, but I am more familiar with processing for now.

Once the prototype will be created and I will have some sort of casing and figured out the interface, I will jump on the soldering an cabling of the USB64.

Stay tuned for the development of this project, meanwhile enjoy some gear porn with these pictures of the parts I will be using. To keep it simple I got some pre-assembled knobs and fader that will connect directly to a sensor board that connect to the arduino mega. It’s a solder free prototype so I can focus on the software implementation.

So – I get to electro faustus site – way kool device, electronic analogue dual oscillator, made in new york. Pretty sweet deal to make noise! And for the price no problem. I get a ef-101, get it ship to canada – get the device really quickly ~ super excited to play with it. I plug in a stereo 1/4 inche to 1/8 to fit my headphone jack into the ef-101 but to my grand disappointment I cannot hear 2 oscillator but only one. Write an email to electro faustus – no problem they’ll ship another one right away! And on top of that they sent me a t-shirt.

A week later or so receive the second device. Same story, adaptor, head phone, only one osciliator… that is crazy, I can understand it’s hand made but… Email again – the guy at electro faustus cool as ice – no problem will ship you another one. But I start to doubt about my own electronic music skill – So i brought the 2 device (and the t-shirt) to my home studio (I received the devices at my office) – plugin the MONO 1/4′ to my digital multitrack and voila!

For some reason the stereo jack wouldn’t make it happen. But now I have 2 ef-101, hum, ho well, might as well plug them both in at the same time! You might remember about brain wave music, where 2 different frequencies are played in each ears. Well now imagine this on acide – that is what came out of double ef-101. I recorded a sample of it, where I feed both device in my mini kaos pad. Sorry for the audio/video quality, I’ll upload better quality sample when I create something with it ;) but you can check it out here: