Experiment Board no 2

Published by Priscilla Haring-Kuipers on 2018-09-042018-09-04

All the experiments on this board have been done:
 

• The Wub – a smaller version of our Wobbler advanced lfo – is working!
• The chord oscillator works and we are still busy tuning it. This part needs more production optimising. The pulse output is still suspiciously quiet.
• The symmetry knob of the LFOs needs some rethinking. The parts that were used for this in Fenix 2 aren’t easily available anymore. Using the original parts might become a problem in the future for manufacturing and repairs.
• We are very happy with the phaser. It has the same awesome sound of the Fenix 2 (it is almost an exact copy).
• Our Wavemultiplier is working as expected. It is almost identical to the Fenix 2 version, with some minor timing differences.
• The Ladder filter also made it in one piece from Fenix 2 onto this board.
• Our Input en output modules are also very close to the Fenix 2. We used the new Alfa 3280 reissue chips in the output (coming out soon). We really like these chips and hope that Alfa is going to make buckets of them.
• The screen module turned out to be too much of a hassle. The chip we had in mind with the Apple overstock screen would probably take us weeks of development to get it running and the quality of the screens was dodgy at best. Luckily, we found another option that uses the same Apple overstock screens already tested and mounted to a module and connected to chips that we alredy use elsewhere in our Fenix – so we can stick to one toolchain.

Playing with filters, phaser and LFOs on the chord oscillator of Experiment Board no 2. All part of development for Fenix IV 🔥 #chords #fenix #syntonovo #TiNRS #audiodesign #dev #workingonit

A post shared by This Is Not Rocket Science (@rocket_not) on Aug 31, 2018 at 6:58am PDT

To make Experiment Board no 2 work we went through a lot of analogue troubleshooting with master builder Bert Vermeulen and we have learned a lot about the design history of the modules in the Fenix 1 and 2. We got to know more about how these systems grew into what they eventually became. We hope to take Bert’s ongoing insight another step further – mostly a digital step.

We are knee-deep in designing Experiment Board no 3. Which is where the fun starts. Here we deviate a little more from the earlier Fenix and add more of our own audio philosophy. Our delay line will be on here: new, revamped and tuneable. Our digital multimode oscillator with at the very least FM and wavetable synthesis is being built.  A new inverted state variable filter and a digital-analogue hybrid sequencer with three channels and 8 steps is being squeezed into suitable routing space. We are also developing a mathemagical noise box. Meanwhile we’ve started playing with the design of the case.