[sdiy] PAiA

[GothGeek Sysadmin]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 01:25:39PM -0400, Steve Begin wrote:
> I'm not quite sure if this counts as DIY related, but... 
> I just wanted to know what the general opinion here of PAiA designs and equipment is.  I have a compressor and a 9700 modular (not finished yet), but I haven't had much opportunity to use either yet.
> I'm looking at their downwards expander, parametric equalizer, and vocoder and I'd appreciate some opinions as to whether I should go with PAiA or save my money for a commercial unit or what.  At this point I don't think I'm quite ready to do it on my own, but I'd like to get some more gear while I have the money. 
>

Sofar I've built the Vocoder, the Fatman, and the Theramax.

The kits are well documented.  PAIA is very responsive if you have a problem
yadda yadda and all the stuff people have said before.

Now, the Vocoder...  Its an older kit design.  Craig Anderton did it.  The
board was an older design, I had trouble with a few pads lifting while
doing mods on it.  It comes with a paper with some suggested mods that 
I *highly* recommend, basically you stuff some buffers in that minimize
bleedover between bands.  The flywires are extremely messy.  Assemble the
kit and you have a working tolerable vocoder.  Add the buffer mod and you
have a working quite reasonable vocoder, there is a mod on Hyperreal :
http://machines.hyperreal.org/manufacturers/Paia/Vocoder/mods/paia.vocoder.mod.txt

I havent tried the mod, but some poking with a scope and I think there's quite
a bit of truth to what its supposed to do.

I think its a great box if you want something to hack on, if you just want
a vocoder That Works Without Futzing With then you might want to look 
elsewhere.

-- 
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