Category: Studio Nebula

I recently finished a MIDI to Control Voltage converter I’ve been working on for awhile. Here’s a photo of it before I installed it in my synthesizer’s cabinet:

(That’s a flickr-hosted photo so you can click on it to find a larger version.) I thought I’d put this photo up not because it’s a stellar example of my DIY skillz–it isn’t–but because I was amused at how it inadvertently ended up being a little showcase of circuit-construction techniques. On the right we have a PC board I laid out and had fabricated by BatchPCB. You may recall having seen this PC board on my blog previously. If you look closely at the photo above you’ll see that the chip labeled “HDAC” has been removed from the board. That was the quad 16-bit digital-to-analog converter I was going to use for pitch CVs. I don’t know what happened but I burned up two of those chips (at about $25 a pop) before giving up. I don’t know whether I made a layout error, whether my power supply was bad, whether I had overlooked some key piece of information in the spec sheet, or whether I just plain had bad luck. In any case, after the Magic Smoke came out of the second chip I decided to try a different DAC. read more

Mid-July already? Inconceivable. It’s been busy around here. Here are some random bits of recent news:

I’ve been mired in the AudioUnit version of Audio Damage’s new product. Actually it’s not entirely new; it’s a reissue of Ronin, one of our earliest products. We shelved Ronin several years ago because it pre-dated our current methods for building plug-ins, and this meant that updating it for AU was more trouble than we felt it was worth at the time. We never felt entirely good about this decision, however, so recently we decided to dust it off, give it a face-lift, bring it up to date, and do the AU port. There’s a screenshot and Chris’s usual flamboyant commentary here. read more

It was announced late last week that Cycling ’74 has discontinued Pluggo and related plug-ins. Since I had a hand in the creation of Pluggo, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect and reminisce a little. My own involvement with Pluggo ended six or so years ago when I left Cycling ’74, but I was there at Pluggo’s conception and birth.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by the decision. According to Harmony Central, whose memory is better than mine, Pluggo was originally released just over 10 years ago. 10 years is a long sale lifespan for any software product. Pluggo was a particularly complex product since it not only contained over 100 plug-ins but was also based upon the Max/MSP runtime engine. Getting this runtime engine to run within various plug-in hosts as a VST, RTAS, and MAS plug-in was a pretty remarkable feat of engineering in the first place. Maintaining it across all of the changes that have taken place in the hosts and the operating systems during those 10 years must have been something of a nightmare. (To put it in historical perspective, consider that the first release of Pluggo listed Mac OS 7.5.3 as a minimum requirement, and that I did much of my work on Pluggo on a “Wallstreet” Mac laptop which had a 266MHz G3 CPU.) read more

Yeah, it’s been sparse on this blog lately. That’s because the blogger has been stupid-busy. The kittens have some sort of digestive ailment and are quarantined to main-level bathroom, with forays into the kitchen for exercise. Yes, this is rather a PITA, but they should be all better in about a week.

Paper Jade should receive a shipment of rather exotic paper today. I’ll post more details once it’s available for sale in the store. It’s taken so long to arrange to get this stuff that I don’t want to jinx anything by even mentioning it by name until I actually have it in my hot little fists. read more

Tracie and I are leaving for Japan early Thursday morning for a much-needed vacation. This time I’m not committing to blogging regularly, or even at all. On our last excursion, blogging started to feel more like a burden than a pleasure, so this time I’m not forcing myself to do it. I probably will put up an entry now and then, but I’m certainly not going to do the sort of daily summaries that I did (or tried to do) last year. I have it in mind that I might try to write about the small, wondrous moments that make visiting Japan so magical–moments like the one I tried to describe here. I realized after the last trip that my attempts at broad coverage were leaving out the most interesting details. This time maybe I’ll try just writing about the details, even if these accounts prove to be oddly lacking in context. Or maybe I won’t write at all; this will be a vacation, after all, and I really need a vacation. read more

It’s a question that comes up on virtually every gear-oriented mailing list: “should we have a sub-list for buying and selling stuff? Or a website or something?” Someone decided that there should just be one such site, so they put it here. At the very least it might be easier to wade through than eBay.

UPDATE: Everything listed here has been sold.

This is probably about the worst time in recent history to sell gear. Not only are we in the post-Christmas, pre-NAMM lull, the economy is Bad and heading towards Worse. Nonetheless, I have some gear that I’d like to sell. To wit:

Studio Electronics Omega 8

• Very good to excellent condition. The only reason I won’t say “excellent” with confidence is that I haven’t yet pulled it out of the rack and don’t remember whether there are any scratches on the chassis. The panel is pristine.The panel is pristine except for some marring around the mounting holes, which isn’t visible when there are screws in the holes. (This is why I didn’t notice it when I first put up this description.) The bottom of the chassis has some scratches from mounting/unmounting but the rest of the case is more or less like new. I’m the second owner, I think (I bought it second-hand from Analogue Haven). I have the manual, such as it is.
• $2900 SOLD

Elektron Monomachine

• Excellent condition with power supply, original box, manual, and intact sticker sheet. I’m the original owner.
• $800 SOLD

LinnDrum LM-2

• Very good condition, even without considering its age. The panel looks basically new. The only glaring cosmetic defect is that the former owner had removed the screws from the bottom front edge of the case (to make it easier to change sound chips, I imagine–it has ZIF sockets for several sounds) and I used silver screws rather than black ones to replace them. I’ve cleaned all of the potentiometers (even though they didn’t need it) and it has a brand-new set of RAM backup batteries. As far as I know it’s in fully operational condition but I honestly don’t know how to use all of its features. Obviously I’m not the original owner.
• I have a half-dozen or so extra sample EPROMs, none of which I’ve tested.
• No documentation, but I think there are some basic operating instructions online somewhere.
• $450 SOLD

I’ll try to get some photos up of all of these. If you’re interested but absolutely have to see a photo, write me and I’ll get busy. Yes, I’m being lazy.There are photos available here on my flickr site. read more