[sdiy] BBDs in choruses & flangers

[Seb Francis]

Paul Maddox wrote:

>    Tom/Seb,
>
>> I personally *love* BBD based delays, flangers, choruses, but not 
>> attempts
>> at Reverb.  BBD's make horrid Reverbs, even the special purpose multitap
>> reverb BBDs.
>
>
> I think they work for a certain 'sound', I wouldn't say they're the 
> be-all and end-all of delay based effects.
>
I have just never been 100% happy with any of the chorus/flanger effects 
from the
digital FX I have used .. and I've used quite a lot, including high end 
stuff from
Lexicon and Eventide.  I'm looking for that ambiguous 'warm' quality 
that perhaps
can be partially attributed to low bandwidth, distortion, noise inherent 
in anlog circuits,
but also I consider that even very small amounts of 'mathmatical error' 
inhernet in digital
designs is really quite unpleasant for the human brain to hear.  Not 
that analog circuits
have less signal 'error' (quite the opposite), but there's something 
about the quality of
the error.

I also think that soft-synths and virtual-analog, while coming very 
close to the sound
of actual analog synths, have a certain unpleasant quality about the 
sound - ok you can
get away with having some in the mix of a piece of music, but make a 
whole piece with
just software and it's really quite noticeable (IMO:)  Anyway, this is 
perhaps part of
a much bigger debate ;)

>> Anyhow, US supplier here :
>> http://www.smallbearelec.com/Search.bok?category=ICs+Delays+and+Echo
>> Cant help you on a UK supplier.
>
>
> I ordered a couple of the 3101 and 3207 from somewhere in the US, I 
> can't remember where now, some effects pedal company (someone on here 
> will know who), but the chips arrived quick, quicker than I was ready 
> for, so I've not used em yet :-(
>
I just found this place ... perhaps it was from them?
http://www.visualsound.net/bbd.htm

They say these are MN* chips - not Panasonic, but using the same 
manufacturing
process that Panasonic once used.  So these must be different to the 
Shanghai Belling
BL* chips with the same number.  I guess they will be much the same.

Seb