[sdiy] The Anything Box: Laptop as module?

[Grant Richter]

This a very good idea. But once again, expensive.

I was thinking along the line of:

Any module is just a chunk of plastic and metal. Just like a laptop or
desktop is just a chunk of metal and plastic.

It would be cool to have it a truly general purpose module, with full CV
input and output support.

So you could control Reason with a Woggle Bug, or run it's output through a
Borg filter (which means you need the internal digital envelope signal
brought out).

It may SEEM unreasonable to ask for, until you think about the fact that it
is a SUPERCOMPUTER we're talking about.

But if it's so "SUPER", why doesn't it do this already???!

> From: <mikko.a.helin at nokia.com>
> Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 16:39:55 +0300
> To: <media.nai at rcn.com>, <john.l.marshall at gte.net>
> Cc: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
> Subject: RE: [sdiy] The Anything Box: Laptop as module?
> 
> With S/PDIF i/o card you could use any audio sequencer to record control
> voltages directly, but you need S/PDIF to CV converter (obviously DIY). You
> could also write easily VST plugins (SDK available from Steinberg) that handle
> the CV data streams as audio. Audio is normalized to +/- 1 floating point, so
> in 16 bit system you have to use that scale. However, I have no idea how to
> handle gate on/off data, maybe you could use MIDI for that. One card with
> multiple S/PDIF I/O:s is the Hoontech ST Audio DSP 24 with digital I/O box,
> see www.staudio.com . You need these products:
> 
> PCI card:
> http://www.staudio.com/products/dsp24/index.html
> 
> S/PDIF interface box:
> http://www.staudio.com/products/dm3/index.html
> 
> For CV conversion you need some 16 bit DAC:s and ADC:s, some oscillator, shift
> registers and logics. Maybe someone could program the whole thing into FPGA.
> 
> -Mikko
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ext media.nai at rcn.com [mailto:media.nai at rcn.com]
>> Sent: 25. October 2002 16:41
>> To: John L Marshall
>> Cc: synth-diy
>> Subject: Re: [sdiy] The Anything Box: Laptop as module?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> There are plenty of sequencers that record frequency. Use
>> frequency to
>>> voltage converters to derive control voltages. FM
>>> 
>>> There are plenty of sequencers that record amplitude. Detect
>> the amplitude
>>> to derive control voltages. AM
>> 
>> There are sequencers that can convert pitch and amplitude to MIDI, but
>> afaik, none of them can generate DC voltages.  Even if they
>> could, digital
>> audio interfaces are AC coupled.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>