Studio Electronics SE-1 zipper noise

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

Harry,

You know, you're right that the SE-1 is no Minimoog, but then *nothing* is.
However, for many purposes, I feel it is a superior instrument to the
Minimoog.  At least for me.  I certainly know the Mini very well, having owned
more than ten of them at different times since 1973.  

The problematic zipper noise of which you speak is really only a problem with
a few parameters, such as filter cutoff, and to a lesser degree, initial VCO
pulse width.  Internally, these parameters are voltage controlled, and their
CV's go through summing nodes.  I have thought that it would be useful (and
easy) to tap into those nodes (especially the filter cv node) and attach a few
manual CV pots to add offset to the programmed CV's, so one could play with
those parameters in real time without any zipper noise.  Obviously, they
wouldn't be programmable, but they'd at least be musical.

I don't yet own an SE-1, but I do plan to buy one someday.  I'm struggling
with the decision to sell my Minimoog to finance the purchase.  For me, it's a
tough call.  I still haven't completely gotten over my romantic infatuation
with All Things Moog.

Tim Caswell (the SE-1's designer) is working on a bunch of nice upgrades for
the SE-1, to be released later this year.   One of the main improvements to be
incuded will be increased DAC resolution, specifically to reduce zipper noise.
He also mentioned the possibility that he may add a CV and Gate output, so you
can use your SE-1 as a nice MIDI to CV converter for your other gear (He
wasn't sure about it though, I think it depends on the available number of CV
mux outputs).

Michael Bacich

In a message dated 3/15/99 7:44:38 PM, you wrote:

<<
    The Studio Electronics SE-1 has unacceptable zipper noise, it is no
Minimoog, at least not for hands-on work. The ATC however, has one encoder
with not a hint of zipper noise. I couldn't hear it even on a filter sweep
with a ton of resonance... I could live with that kind of performance. Try one
out, and see if the user interface (1 knob - many switches)might work for your
sequencer.  :-) Harry Bissell
>>