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Skiffy 656 Now Available!

At long last, I finally finished the Skiffy 656 design and is now initially available!

We’re doing a phased launch so it will be available on our direct store first and will be putting on our Etsy store a bit later on. This is in part because I need to take better product photos of it but need to get out my big backdrop to do so and am waiting to do all that until I have a queue of products I need to photograph.

Anyways! While it is basically like a Skiffy 642, just wider, it does have a few small changes. The were additional clips to better secure the bottom. It’s also wide enough to accommodate 2 4HP cutouts along the back. Folks will be able to pick from a solid back or to have 1 or 2 4HP cutouts. Eventually we also hope to have our internal linear supply DIY kit as an option assuming it passes our testing and meets our requirements.

Note that while we currently have it available in wood, acrylic will be an option as well coming soon. Folks that are interested in an acrylic one can contact us for more information. The main reason we don’t have acrylic as a product yet is, again, the need to cut, build, and photograph one. I’ve had request for some acrylic colors as well that I’m evaluating whether to offer normally and would need to do product photography for those options as well.

Thanks for everyone that has been waiting for the Skiffy 656! I hope you like what we’ve come up with!

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WaveBoy 0.62 Firmware Released!

0.62 of the WaveBoy firmware is now available! This version primarily rolls back some of the state save changes to try and mitigate an issue where some WaveBoys were getting stuck at the splash screen which required either manipulating the state files on the SD card directly and/or reflashing the WaveBoy.

Not wanting to have just a bugfix release, I managed to add in a new wave manipulator, Wrinkle! Wrinkle is a bit like a wavefolder which uses sine or cosine along with a weight to add wrinkles to a waveform. It’s rather fun to use!

Because of the potential for stuck WaveBoys, we do recommend everyone upgrade to 0.62 at least if you are running firmware 0.57 or newer.

The latest firmware is available on the online WaveBoy manual here. Enjoy!

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SkiffyPower

I get asked somewhat regularly about why we don’t offer power supplies with our cases. It’s not because we haven’t wanted to! It’s because a fully built power supply requires certifications, tests, and acceptance of risk. We find the 4HP power options to be suitable for most applications, although essentially all of these supplies are using tiny switching power modules. These are both flexible and, properly designed, easily good for audio application. But they can be a bit pricey.

Recently, I decided to look into if I could make a power supply as a kit. It would be based on a pretty standard bipolar linear supply. I’ve actually already designed an active bus board, meaning a lot of work I have already done.

Active bus board

The bus board expects a bipolar DC supply. In my case, this comes from an external linear unregulated supply. The unregulated supply requires AC mains voltage and isn’t suitable as a kit, though for those curious, I am happy to share the design.

I have a design I’m pretty happy with in the bus board, so all I need to do is figure out how to come up with the -/+ 15V or so needed to feed the circuit. It took looks of circuit sims and calculators and things, but I ended up coming up with this:

It is mostly the same as my active bus board except it has a barrel jack to provide 24VAC which is then half-wave rectified and filtered to feed the linear regulators. This includes an RC filter which actually I don’t think is strictly needed, though this has the added benefit of dropping the voltage as the load goes up which has an added bonus of requiring less heat dissipation for the regulators.

I designed it to provide around 500mA or so, which is plenty for say the Skiffy 42 minus edge cases where some power hungry modules are being used. It may not be enough for the Skiffy 642. That is why I added a screw terminal though. With the power AC supply, two boards can be linked together to share the same AC input.

I still need to design the PCB, test it in the real world, among other things. But this could be a design we are able to offer as an option for some of our cases. It is not a design that can scale up to huge power hungry racks, but that wasn’t really the point of this particular design. Also of note is that it does not provide +5V by itself. I was thinking of making a smaller board that could be plugged into one of the 16-pin connectors for that. The reason being, nearly all modern modules that need +5V seem to generate it themselves. That is what we do for our first module, the WaveBoy. If it’s rarely used, it makes sense to save on the part count for the default use case.

It remains to be seen if we’ll end up doing this. If you have thoughts or opinions, do let us know! We’d love to hear from you!

– Tim

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WaveBoy 0.61 Firmware Released!

I forgot to make a blog post about 0.60 (sorry!). That version was mostly bug-fixes. This version adds in a realtime delay module which I’m very excited about! It’s not just your typical delay but leans into the whole variable clocked DAC thing that defines WaveBoy. It also has some minor bugfixes and now allows for disabling the screensaver (though we highly recommend leaving it enabled to prolong the life of the OLED display).

I’m incredibly excited about the delay! My band-mate has been having an absolute blast with it!

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SonicState Featured the WaveBoy In An Article!

I am just floored! Paulee, one of the frequent contributors to Sonicstate asked me for an interview about the WaveBoy. So of course I said yes and the article just came out this morning! It even hit the front page! I never thought our tiny synth company would have made something as prestigious as Sonicstate. It was an incredible experience. Of course I recommend folks give it a read as it covers some of the history and design decisions I made. Sonicstate in general, for those that don’t already read the web publication or listen to the podcast and watch their video content, has some great content. It’s one of my go-tos for synthesizer info and I recommend it! Not just because we’re featured, but that was an incredible honor for us!

Sincere and deep thanks for interviewing us, but also for being such a good source of synthesizer news and information! Thanks also to Paulee! Of note in addition to their Sonicstate work, they also have a YouTube channel that covers some great content. I learned a ton of information about the Amiga soundchip for instance. I had no idea it was as flexible as it is or that there were a lot of audio applications for Amigas. I kinda just thought Soundtracker was the thing. A bit of shame on me given I grew up on trackers and the Demoscene.

For folks interested in the WaveBoy, it’s available now as both a fully assembled version as well as a kit. They are made to order and given the above article, we may be busy cranking a lot of these out. So thanks for your patience while we work to build all these!

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WaveBoy 0.59 Firmware Released!

Yes I know it’s only been a few days since I released 0.58. I hit my 0.59 goals faster than I expected (though I’ve been rather hard at work at it). This version builds on the foundation of 0.58 which is another reason it was easy to add the wanted features. In brief, the features and changes are:

  • Realtime Bit/Sample Crusher and Envelope Follower,
  • Improved V/Oct Performance
  • Attenuation for LFO and Follower
  • New Volume Attenuation Mode
  • Improved Knob Ramps

This release itself is a good foundation for what I want to do in 0.60, which is to expand the Envelope Follower a bit. I would like it to support internal audio as an option with being able to route the output either to the Step or Audio outputs. This simple routing enables being able to use other things with the follower. You can run the follower with external audio on CV with the envelope on the audio out while using the LFO on the step output, for example. Or you can use the realtime bitcrusher on the main audio and have the follower operate on the incoming audio and sending the envelope out the Step.

This is technically easy enough to do without making many internal changes. It’s handling the UI behavior in a way that is sensible which will take some thought and why I decided to release 0.59 since things seem to be in a good place.

And yes, I promise, I will get back to the feature that is the WaveBoy’s namesake (the Wave mode). The above features were ones I was getting requests for, including from my band-mate.

You can find more details on the features and changes in the manual.

If you want to pick up a WaveBoy, we have both the assembled and kit versions available!

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WaveBoy 0.58 Firmware Released!

While I didn’t quite get all the features I wanted, given some of the refactoring, I felt like it was a good time to cut a release. The changes include:

  • Sample Streaming from SD (no more 64k limit)
  • Sample-Rate Reducer (“Skips”)
  • Free-running LFO Step Mode, with optional Gate/CV control

There have also been some internal changes and a few potential compatibility changes, though these should be minor. The Wave mode no longer has alt-audio configuration options. Instead those have been moved to a new Step output menu (which is also where the LFO can be enabled and configured).

The sample metadata files now have an additional Skip setting. This will automatically get added to the files on save for existing patch sets.

I am already beginning work on 0.59. I would like to start work on the realtime audio tests, which include a real-time bit/sample-crusher and an envelope follower. So stay tuned for those!

Until then, Happy Synthing!

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What to expect in the WaveBoy 0.58 firmware

I’ve been working quite a bit on getting enough materials in hand for both the DIY and Production editions of WaveBoy and this has caused the firmware to take a bit of a back seat. I recently started working on a number of things for the next firmware release (0.58) and thought I might go through some of these. Of note there isn’t any guarantees all of these might make it in though that is generally the plan.

Streaming Samples

Something I have been wanting to work on for quite some time is to see if I can stream samples directly off the SD card in “realtime.” I recently gave this a go, initially using a naive implementation. This worked most of the time, but not all of the time. This is because reading just a few bytes off the SD card is usually fast, but when it’s not, it’s slow enough to where updates to the DAC get missed and this causes artifacts.

You can see in the above that weird slope in the middle. That’s not supposed to be there. The beauty of the simple solution is that loops were easy to manage. But it’s not really a solution if it doesn’t sound and work the way I want. Another limitation was the sample rate could not go as high as with the previous solution.

So plan B has been to use a simple set of 512-byte buffers where one is being read while the other is being written. This seems to work very very well. Not only can I play files of several megabytes in size without any discernible artifacts, I can also support higher pitches similar to the original solution. All while taking up far far less SRAM (which is fairly precious).

The one big issue at present is looping is now more difficult to implement, but certainly doable. The looping will end up being moved to the buffer routine such that the read-routine that sends data to the DAC can remain simple. I not sure if 0.58 will have looping functions or not. That would be a regression from how things are today but only until I sort out how to do at least forward loops.

LFOs

My band-mate has been wanting more modulation options for his guitar-centric Eurorack. While he’s been trying to figure out what LFOs to get, I realized it wouldn’t take too much work to setup an LFO mode on the Step output and would like to have at least a basic LFO in 0.58 (even if it’s just a triangle).

Envelope Follower and Realtime Bitcrushing

Another thing my band-mate’s been trying to sort out is an envelope follower. Specifically an asymetric one (where the up and down slopes can be independent). This, I think, is doable by using the CV input (since it’s bipolar) as a sample source and then output the enveloped on the Step out (which at some point I’ll probably rename to simply “Aux” or something similar).

But if I can do that, I can also do realtime bitcrushing. I find the Sampler’s crunch is really fun and the variable rate DAC seems like a great solution for adding an interesting flavor of bit-crush and sample reduction. As with the follower, the audio would be sampled via the CV in, mangled, and then sent out probably the main audio out.

What’s Not Making It

Folks may notice something glaring lacking from this release. The Generators feature, which allows for generating full Wave patches (all 16 frames) using Manipulators and/or algorithms. This is coming! But the above features I thought were a bit more in reach and I really wanted to improve the sampler. Yes, this is partly selfish since I tend to use one of my own WaveBoy’s as a sampler to augment drums among other things. The 12-bit variable clocked DAC gives it a nice LinnDrum-like sound that I really like.

Also a sequencer/tracker is something I’d like to do. The Sampler updates help realize this by freeing up more RAM for things like pattern storage. Of note this is not a near term feature necessarily (in part due to needing to figure out how to work with the limited size of the display as well as its overhead in updating the display).

I’m not sure when 0.58 will come out but I’m actively working it! That’s all for now! Of note both the DIY and Production versions of WaveBoy are now available for purchase if you want to pick one up!

For now, Happy Synthing!

Tim

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WaveBoy 0.57 Firmware Released!

I missed writing about 0.56, oops! So I’ll mention the new features from both:

  • Save States
  • Wave Mode Dual Audio Output Option
  • Auto-Screenaver
  • Pitch Knob Range Configurable
  • Bufixes with tuning, UI

If upgrading from 0.55, folks will need to grab the updated SD card image for the update config.txt. Upgrading from 0.56 to 0.57 does not require any changes, as the firmware will attempt to update things as needed. The wave patch format changed slightly and will get updated when saving a wave patch.

All these features are good, though the dual audio output is a standout. It replaces the Step output with a secondary audio output that follows the wave frame but can either be detuned or set to a note offset (for doing fifths or having a sub-oscillator for instance). While this does make the WaveBoy a bit less GameBoy like with this mode, it does make it more flexible and adds its own sort of color to the chiptune / 8-bit / lofi landscape. It’s very fun!

The other features are mostly quality of life improvements. The save states in particular is quite nice. WaveBoy will now save the configuration of the Volume envelopes as well as the last UI screen and mode that were used. This way you can pick up where you left off in between sessions.

Lots more features to come for sure but 0.57 really makes WaveBoy a very capable module. There are still some in stock at the time of this writing! More will be coming though with the tariff situation, our plans are a bit on hold for the moment. So if you want one, now might be the time to get one.

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Angled Stands For the Akai MPC One

Folks that follow my band may recall we are experimenting with going DAWless. Or I guess in the case of the MPC One more like PC-less since it is sort of DAW-like in places. At any rate I recently picked up a used MPC One to see what all the fuss is about. While I don’t use it much for Sampling, oddly (I use the WaveBoy for that, of course) it’s been fantastic as a MIDI and CV hub of sorts. I do quite like it, even with the bugs (of which there are many).

One downside of the One over the other MPC options is that it sits flat on the table by default. That makes the screen a tad harder to see but in my case it was also running into one of my computer monitor stands. When I’m using the one, I’m often not using the computer, but it was making my desk a bit cramped. So, over the weekend I decided to design some simple stands to lift the MPC up a bit and angle it forward.

And this is what I came up with! I’m super happy with how these turned out. So much so that I thought others might like these as well, and have now added these to our store. I rather like the frosted clear shown above, but I will offer the stands in other colors as well.

These are made using PETG plastic with a 0.8mm nozzle. The PETG is for a bit more durability and so the sides can have a nice textured finish on them since PETG works very well with textured print beds. The 0.8mm nozzle is for strength, but also helps add clarity to the transluscent color options. The stands also come with optional threaded rods and nuts to secure the sleds together. This is optional but can be helpful when wanting to move the MPC around as it keeps everything together. Finally they are laser cut adhesive cork along the bottom to prevent scratching and add a bit of grip.

I love my own stands and hopefully other folks find these useful as well! As always, if folks have any questions about these, or any of our other products, don’t hesitate to reach out.

– Tim