first-time synth project

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, andy wrote:

> 	hello there, everyone. I'm new at building synths myself and I
> just completed a VCO module as the first part I've built after the power
> supply. Is there a way to test if what I've done works so far?

First thing to try is checking if the output has enough AC voltage on it
with a normal digital multimeter. If that shows something sensible (for
me, sensible is around 2V) then you can route the output to your
soundcards line input. Another useful tester is a peak detector (you need
one op-amp, two diodes and a capacitor).

> 	Additionally I'm almost sure I'll need some test equipment by the
> time I really get into building other things- what is the bare minimum I'd
> need to being able to troubleshoot a circuit I've already built rather
> than just throw it away if it doesn't work right? :) Thanks for any help

I've found that a good multimeter, an el-cheapo speaker and a decent
soundcard get you quite far. I've built a VCO (and debugged it even, two
bad joints & faulty OTA) on vero board and VCF and VCA on project-board.
I'm looking for an oscilloscope right now since it would save quite a bit
of debugging time, not to mention detecting problems that I might miss now
but could be big when my modular gets to 10 modules or so.

> you can give. I'm doing this on a very limited (read: college student's)

Same here.

Antti

- Never let school interfere with your education -