Digital DIY synths and DSP stuff... and drums

[Ben Stuyts]

On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Roman Sowa wrote:

> What kind of 16-bit converters?
> AD1877, AD1859, AD1851 from Analog Devices
> Sound Quality - 1851 low noise, 1859 low distortion
> 1877 - you ned no better ADC
> unles you make heavy in $$$ digital mixing console

Aha, so none of the combined a/d and d/a's are any good?
I see some of them are single +5V supply. Very convenient!

> AN1x tweek
> I ment playing with this as it is. No mods. Kinda minimalist for a DIYer
> but if you asked me what I would do with spare 1k$...

Well, next thing I want to have is some sort of drum box. Nothing fancy, but  
something with lots of rhythms/instruments would be nice. The Yamaha RS8 or  
RS20 look nice, and aren't too expensive. Especially the RS8 look good value  
for money. Again, probably as digital as it gets from power supply to  
output...

(Insert wobbly vertical lines here.)
Long time ago I built a full analog drum computer. It was published in  
Elektuur (of Formant fame), somewhere in the early 1970's. It had a tip-touch  
panel to select the various drum patterns for each instrument separately. I  
never got the front panel to work well, so I finally replaced it with a ton of  
mechanical switches. The drums were based on a gyrator circuit. Quite complex  
as I remember, all discrete's. I think there were 200+ transistors in that  
thing. Only the sequencer had some 7400 stuff in it. The cymbals always used  
to sound more like a gunshot... In the end, the sequencer died too, so I  
connected it the instrument pcb's (yes, each instrument had a separate pcb,  
the snare even had two) to the parallel port of a Comodore Pet 2001. So that's  
how old I am. B-) I still have a recording somewhere where I used it  
(softly!) in a blues rhythm for a song I did with some classroom mates in  
highschool. I don't think I have it anymore. Haven't seen it in 10+ years. It  
probably got lost during moving.

Is there anybody else out there who built this thing? I can't recall the  
exact name. Something like Elekdrum? Elektrom?

> And Ben, if you have AN1x, please open it and make some pictures too.

Good idea, I will put some pictures up soon. (Will do the Zoom 1204 too.)

Best regards,
Ben