Wiardgroup

Hi All,

I have been rather slow on deliveries for the last several months. 
I apologize to anyone who has experienced an extended wait.

Wiard will be ordering another 200 faceplates this coming week. 
They will be printed as 20 each of 10 modules (8 existing and 2 
new ones, one not yet selected). It has taken some time to 
accumulate funds for this second large production buy. I have 
had to take a consulting job to get additional funding into the 
business. This has prevented me from working on the modules 
full time. Nick Liebrecht was not available for some time 
because of school conflicts.

Currently, Nick is back to work on his usual schedule building 
sub-assemblies. The consulting job has become part time while 
we wait for prototypes to be constructed. So I am able to devote 
more time to Wiard. During February we will be building up back 
stock on sub-assemblies and working to reduce delivery times.

The Electronium has been put on hold because the assembly 
house is not willing to give me an open line of credit. They are 
very friendly about it, but they have zero risk management. They 
consider a musical instrument company too risky, even though 
Wiard has a perfect credit history. Welcome to the Future of 
Electronics.

The Envelooper therefore becomes the next release. The two 
options I have investigated are the use of an FPGA or a purely 
analog solution. I am more inclined to the purely analog solution, 
because it is more challenging. Digital techniques actually make 
things too easy. It is more interesting to consider how very 
complex envelope shapes may accomplished with just a 
capacitor and logic gates.

The purpose of the Envelooper is to have a muli-segment 
envelope generator that loops. This idea is inspired by the 
Buchla MARF which blurred the line between what is an 
envelope, and what is a sequence. One thing it has to do is 
provide classic ADSR functions. The trick will be to get an 
evelope generator that behaves EXACTLY like an ARP 2600 
ADSR (Tangerine Dream), and then add a bunch of wack 
features for making looped envelopes. The module will have two 
identical enveloopers.

The three modes I have defined are:

1. ARP 2600 style DADSR (classic ADSR with delay)
2. MS-20 style HADSR (classic ADSR with hold monostable)
3. Moog Satellite style (externally controlled AD envelope 
multiplied with auto-repeating AR envelope, sounds like echo)

These will have the usual output pulses from various stages and 
at the end. Cascading the two enveloopers in the module to 
make eight section envelopes is also being considered. I would 
like to set the time ranges so very long loops are possible. This 
may require an internal jumper be set.

Looped envelopes will be setup by patching, not a switch like the 
Envelator. This is a more versatile arrangement. Each 
envelooper will have Gate in, Trigger in, End of Delay/Hold Pulse 
out, End of Attack pulse out, End of Release (recycle) pulse out, 
3 positive going outputs, 1 negative going output and voltage 
controlled Decay (for Olivier). This uses all 10 jacks with no 
Multiple (sorry).

I expect to start prototyping shortly, after production buys are in 
progress. Any comments or other input is appreciated at this 
time. One request I frequently get is a switch module. The 
Mixolator will already behave like the ARP 2600 switch. Just drive 
the Z input with a 0 or 10 volt signal and use X and Y as your 
inputs. It just doesn't have the horrendous thumping of the ARP 
2600 version.

Thank you all again for your patience and generous support. The 
period after Sept. 11th was very scary for a micro-company like 
Wiard. But things are looking much better for the Springtime.

Keep your Love real and your Sounds synthetic,

Grant Richter