Giving Vintage Synths New Life In A Potentiometer Cleaning Showdown

January 19, 2022 by Maya Posch 24 Comments

As anyone who has ever owned a piece of older equipment that has a potentiometer in it can attest to, these mechanical components do need their regular cleaning ritual. Whether it’s volume knobs on a receiver or faders on a mixer, over time they get crackly, scratchy and generally imprecise due to the oxidation and gunk that tends to gather inside them.

This is your potentiometer caked with gunk.

In this blast from the past, [Keith Murray] shows a few ways in which fader-style potentiometers can be cleaned, and how well each cleaning method works by testing the smoothness of the transition over time with an oscilloscope. It’s enlightening to see just how terrible the performance of a grimed-up fader is, and how little a blast of compressed air helped. Contact cleaner works much better, but it’s essential to get all of the loosened bits of gunk out of the fader regardless.

In the end, a soak in isopropyl alcohol (IPA), as well as a full disassembly followed by manual cleaning were the only ones to get the fader performance back to that of a new one. Using contact cleaner followed by blasting the fader out with compressed air seems to be an acceptable trade-off to avoid disassembly, however.

What is your preferred way to clean potentiometers to keep that vintage (audio) gear in peak condition? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks, [Grant Freese], for the tip!

The Eerie Sounds Of Ioalieia: An ESP32/Valve/Analog Hybrid Circuit Sculpture

January 15, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 18 Comments

We’ve not had a circuit sculpture piece for a while, so here’s “ioalieia” a lovely hybrid digital-analog sound sculpture by [Eirik Brandal] to dig into.

The host of the show is the ESP32 module, which generates audio frequency square waves, which are fed into a MCP4251 digital potentiometer. From there, it is fed into a AS3320 Voltage controlled filter (VCF), from Latvia-based ALFA (which is new to us, despite them being manufacturing electronics for sixty years!) This is an interesting device that has a four independently configurable filter elements with voltage controlled inputs for frequency control and resonance. The output from the VCF is then fed into a 6n2p (Soviet equivalent to the 12ax7) twin-triode vacuum tube, which is specifically aimed at audio applications.

The suitably distorted filtered square waves then pass into a Princeton Tech Corp PT2399 echo processor chip, which being digitally constructed, uses the expected ADC/RAM/DAC signal chain to implement an audio echo effect. As with the VCF, the echo depth can be modulated via the digipot, under the ESP32’s command. For a bit of added bling, the vacuum tube output feeds back into the ESP32, to be consumed by the internal ADC and turned into a light show via some PWM controlled LEDs. Lovely.

The final audio output from the echo chip is then fed into a speaker via a pair of LM380 amplifiers giving a power of about 5 W. It sounds pretty good if you ask us, and software configurable via Wi-Fi, giving this sculpture plenty of tweakabilty.

Of course circuit sculpture come in all shapes and sizes, and it wouldn’t do to not mention at least one sculpture clock project, and while we’re on it, here’s last year’s Remoticon circuit sculpture workshop.

Continue reading “The Eerie Sounds Of Ioalieia: An ESP32/Valve/Analog Hybrid Circuit Sculpture” →

PsyLink An Open Source Neural Interface For Non-Invasive EMG

January 7, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 30 Comments

We don’t see many EMG (electromyography) projects, despite how cool the applications can be. This may be because of technical difficulties with seeing the tiny muscular electrical signals amongst the noise, it could be the difficulty of interpreting any signal you do find. Regardless, [hut] has been striving forwards with a stream of prototypes, culminating in the aptly named ‘Prototype 8’

The current prototype uses a main power board hosting an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense, as well as a boost converter to pump up the AAA battery to provide 5 volts for the Arduino and a selection of connected EMG amplifier units. The EMG sensor is based around the INA128 instrumentation amplifier, in a pretty straightforward configuration. The EMG samples along with data from the IMU on the Nano 33 BLE Sense, are passed along to a connected PC via Bluetooth, running the PsyLink software stack. This is based on Python, using the BLE-GATT library for BT comms, PynPut handing the PC input devices (to emit keyboard and mouse events) and tensorflow for the machine learning side of things. The idea is to use machine learning from the EMG data to associate with a specific user interface event (such as a keypress) and with a little training, be able to play games on the PC with just hand/arm gestures. IMU data are used to augment this, but in this demo, that’s not totally clear.

All hardware and software can be found on the project codeberg page, which did make us double-take as to why GnuRadio was being used, but thinking about it, it’s really good for signal processing and visualization. What a good idea!

Obviously there are many other use cases for such a EMG controlled input device, but who doesn’t want to play Mario Kart, you know, for science?

Checkout the demo video (embedded below) and you can see for yourself, just be aware that this is streaming from peertube, so the video might be a little choppy depending on your local peers. Finally, if Mastodon is your cup of tea, here’s the link for that. Earlier projects have attempted to dip into EMG before, like this Bioamp board from Upside Down Labs. Also we dug out an earlier tutorial on the subject by our own [Bil Herd.]

Continue reading “PsyLink An Open Source Neural Interface For Non-Invasive EMG” →

Know Audio: Mixtapes, Tape Loops, And Razor Blades

December 20, 2021 by Jenny List 16 Comments

In our no-nonsense journey through the world of audio technology we’ve so far have looked at digital audio and the vinyl disk recording. What’s missing? Magnetic tape, the once-ubiquitous recording medium that first revolutionised the broadcast and recording industries in the mid-20th-century, and went on to be a mainstay of home audio before spawning the entire field of personal audio. Unless you’re an enthusiast or collector, it’s likely you won’t have a tape deck in your audio setup here in 2021 and you’ll probably be loading your 8-bit games from SD card rather than cassette, but surprisingly there are still plenty of audio cassettes released as novelties or ephemeral collectables.

The Device That Made The Sound Of The Latter Half Of The 20th Century

"Like a travelling razor blade", a Blattnerphone steel-strip tape recorder at the BBC in 1937. Douglas Hallam, Jr., Public domain. — “Like a travelling razor blade”, a Blattnerphone steel-strip tape recorder at the BBC in 1937. Douglas Hallam, Jr., Public domain.

The first magnetic recordings were made directly on metal wires, but metal fatigues as it bends. By coating a flexible plastic tape in ferrous particles, the same simple technique of laying down an audio signal as variations in the magnetic field could be made smaller, lighter, and more robust. But the key to the format’s runaway success is the technical advancements that differentiate those 1950s machines from their wire recorder ancestors.

Whether it is a humble cassette recorder or a top-end studio multitrack, all tape recorders are very similar. There are two reels that hold the tape: the playback reel that houses the recording, and the take-up reel that stores the tape as it plays in the machine. The take-up reel is lightly driven to run faster than the tape speed, and the playback reel has a slight braking force to keep the tape under tension at all times. Continue reading “Know Audio: Mixtapes, Tape Loops, And Razor Blades” →

Know Audio: Get Into The Groove

November 18, 2021 by Jenny List 62 Comments

The legendary Technics SL1200 direct-drive turntable, as used by countless DJs. Dydric [CC BY-SA 2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons. — The legendary Technics SL1200 direct-drive turntable, as used by countless DJs. Photo by Dydric CC-BY-SA 2.5

For me, the vinyl record player is the spiritual home of my audio listening experience, probably because I’m of the last generation to grow up when vinyl was king. The 12″ album, with its full-size sleeve and copious sleeve notes, used to be an integral part of musical enjoyment that hasn’t been adequately replicated in the age of streaming.

And like anyone who became an adult while CD players were still expensive luxury items, I started my journey into Hi-Fi with a turntable set-up that sounded pretty good. Since a new generation have in recent years rediscovered vinyl, it’s once again something that should be part of any review of audio technology.

I would have started this piece with a full run-down of the constituent parts of a good turntable, but since that’s a piece that I wrote back in 2017, it’s time to investigate some of the audiophile claims about vinyl recordings. It’s fair to say that this is an area where a lot of complete rubbish is spouted by people who should know better, and that’s something I find immensely entertaining to poke fun at. Buckle up. Continue reading “Know Audio: Get Into The Groove” →

An Arduino Nano connected to a portable tape recorder

Audio Tape Interface Revives Microcassettes As Storage Medium

October 20, 2021 by Robin Kearey 37 Comments

In the early 1980s cassette tapes were the standard storage medium for home computer users; readers of a certain age will remember fiddling with audio jacks, tape counters and signal levels, then waiting for several minutes while a program (hopefully) loaded correctly. While most people happily upgraded to much more reliable floppy disks, [Zack Nelson] decided to go back in time and add a suitably classic storage medium to a retrocomputing project, in the form of a cassette interface. The cassette player he had available was a Pearlcorder L400, which uses the smaller microcassette instead of the familiar audio tapes used in your Walkman or boombox.

[Zack] designed the entire thing from the ground up: first he decided to use differential Manchester encoding, which provides immunity against common disturbances like speed variations (which cause wow and flutter). The data is encoded in the frequency range from 1 kHz to 2 kHz, which suits the bandwidth of the cassette player. Next, he designed the interface between the computer and the tape recorder; built from an op-amp and a comparator with a handful of discrete components, it filters the incoming signal and clips it to provide a clean digital signal to be read out directly by the computer.

The system is demonstrated by hooking it up to an Arduino Nano, which reads out the data stream at about 3000 baud. The noise it makes should bring back memories to anyone brought up with the “PRESS PLAY ON TAPE” message; if it inspires you to make your own, we’re happy to report that full schematics and source code are available. [Zack] is not the first one to make his own cassette interface; we’ve seen a somewhat more complicated analog design before, as well as one based on an FPGA.

Steppers And ESP32 Make This Retro-Modern Flip-Clock Tick

October 2, 2021 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Before LEDs became cheap enough to be ubiquitous, flip-card displays were about the only way to get a digital clock. These entirely electromechanical devices had their own charm, and they have a certain retro cachet these days. Apart from yard sales and thrift stores, though, they’re a bit hard to source — unless you roll your own, of course.

Granted, [David Huang]’s ESP32-based flip clock is worlds apart from the flip cards of the “I Got You, Babe” era. Unfortunately, the video below is all we have to go on to get the story behind this clock, but it’s pretty self-explanatory. [David] started the build by making the flip cards themselves, a process that takes some topological tricks as well as a laser cutter. 3D-printed spools are loaded with the cards, which are then attached to frames that hold a stepper motor and a Hall-effect sensor. The ESP32 drives the steppers via L298N H-bridge drivers, but it’s hard to say if there’s an RTC chip or if the microcontroller is just getting time via an NTP server.

[David] might not be the only one trying to recapture that retro look, but we’ve got to hand it to him — it’s a great look, and it takes a clever maker to not only build a clock like this, but to make a video that explains it all so clearly without a single word of narration.

Continue reading “Steppers And ESP32 Make This Retro-Modern Flip-Clock Tick” →