--- In
ComputerVoltageSources@yahoogroups.com, "Grant Richter"
<grichter@...> wrote:
>
> Gary Chang told me about the MARF built into the new Buchla triple
filter. As always, very
> smart. Building a complex envelope generator into a module is
relatively easy now using an 8
> pin PIC or something. Maybe control voltage recorder/loopers/random
sources?
>
The sheer beauty of the Triple Morphing Filter is how it tricks you
into programming it - it remembers the Frequency, Bandwidth, and Gain
knob settings, associating them with the particular STAGE (1-8) that
you select (you are always in a stage, signified by one of eight leds)
- change the STAGE (button toggles through stages), and you can store
another setting - return to that STAGE, and the three knob values
return to where you left them - no save function necessary, just eight
buckets there to remember what you did the last time the stage light
was lit in that position.
So, entering data is a familiar task, like that of programming a poly
synth with patch memory without the write button - just go and tweak
this stage's gain, then toggle to another stage and tweak that stage's
bandwidth, etc.
Then, in the display, it asks you, "how shall I dish your remembered
crap out? - one stage per trigger?, all stages in a single trigger?
Timed? Stepped? Smoothed? Perhaps a stage randomly selected when
pulsed? Or a continuos loop? Next thing you know, the filter is
spewing like a phoenics teacher and you are still just messing with
it...! A truly fantastic module.
One side note regarding the TMFILTER versus something like the PSIM -
its elegance is that it can't change into something else.... (Imagine
your cell phone rings, but first, you have to remove it from your car,
where it has been doing the ignition management while you are driving,
and then you must reprogram it to be a cell phone once again....
Hopefully, if this group succeeds, we may see many encarnations of
devices that utilize microprocessors in dedicated duties in modules -
not just programs that utilize generalized interfaces that we need to
reprogram each time that we go to do something. We really don't have
practical use for a Swiss Army Toaster/Coffee Maker/Answering Machine.
Personally, I like toast enough to have a toaster.
Gary