Sonic Crayon GAS!

[behndy]

it IS exciting, and something i've wanted for a looooong time.

curious tho - do you have plans to start offering a decent amount of units with each effect? or take preorders and build to that quantity? i buy lots of gear, love me some effects, but i'm never going to do the Watch Facebook Like A Hawk thing to get in on a 5 or so batch order. you make stuff that looks like i'd REALLY like. i hope you go to larger batch builds or preorder lists so i can try one.

[cloudscapes]

the facebook this is temporary. eventually I'd like to do an email list, but I don't know how. every email list "service" I find is way overkill, offering 10 times more than I need; a simple list with automated unsubscribe. and I don't trust myself to do it manually. but that's the plan.

no preorders. never. I'm against them. I will take money only when I have a physical pedal to sell right then and there.

I don't yet have the time or resources to sell huge amounts. I made and sold around 12 vibratos in about 5 weeks lately, which is my limit if I don't want to sacrifice ALL my free time. I suspect that when I have a good prototype of this new one, I'll ditch the vibratos for a couple months and build 10 of the new one instead.

I'm doing the best I can for someone who has a 40h/w job and is attempting to have al ife as well

[behndy]

lol. yeah man, i'm not hacking on you at all. i know how busy my life gets, and that's without doing something like building pedz that has a huge expenditure of time before they're even ready to be sold. i'm just pointing out that some type of preorder type thing would open up availability to people that also are busy and don't have the time to Facebook watch.

it's admirable that you eschew preorders, a lot of builders seem to get underneath pressure and behind 'cause they take orders before they're ready, but something like a no money down, first dibs on builds type of list would be awesome. of course it's your bidness and do stuff theway you want to, i'm just throwing my two cents out there. and letting youknow there's some people that'd love to buy shtuff of you if it was a bit easier.

thanks for the response!

[bigchiefbc]

lol. yeah man, i'm not hacking on you at all. i know how busy my life gets, and that's without doing something like building pedz that has a huge expenditure of time before they're even ready to be sold. i'm just pointing out that some type of preorder type thing would open up availability to people that also are busy and don't have the time to Facebook watch.

it's admirable that you eschew preorders, a lot of builders seem to get underneath pressure and behind 'cause they take orders before they're ready, but something like a no money down, first dibs on builds type of list would be awesome. of course it's your bidness and do stuff theway you want to, i'm just throwing my two cents out there. and letting youknow there's some people that'd love to buy shtuff of you if it was a bit easier.

thanks for the response!

Yeah, Behndy is onto something here. Just have a list that people can sign up for, without any exchange of money until the pedal is done, and people can back out anytime. That would be awesome. I'm pretty sure this is how Toneczar did/does it (Excane can confirm that one). I seem to remember that he had backlogs of years, and people were still signing up for them, because when their turn on the list came up, they could just back out if they wanted, and then the ped when to the next person.

[behndy]

oof. and if you're persuadable on that point, i WANT on a list like that. the Compound SPEAKS to me. i've wanted something like that for yeaaaaaars.

[cloudscapes]

oh I'm not against *other* builders taking preorders. they can do what they feel works. it's just *I* won't do. I consider it a form of debt, and it's something I'm personally against. but whatever.

I never have stock. they sell too fast. so an online catalogue doesn't really make sense except just for info. I suppose I should do that soonish.

I'm looking to have 10-12 distinct designs to be able to do this full-time. I've got 5 that are either working (vibrato, bitcrusher, this new one) or nearly working (hollow earth, compound), and a couple more I want to make (1-second modulated/resonant delay, a dirty ringmod, an advanced looper, some kind of standalone programmable CV-out lfo, a noise generator pedal, a simple-synth-in-a-pedal and whatever else).

[Haki]

Downside is people are able to back out easily or just ignore you altogether. Though with your production levels and apparent demand it's not unlikely you'll be left with a huge batch of unsold pedals. Also cuts into time better spent elsewhere.
Nevermind. I agree with with the B's, put me on a list so I'm not 30 seconds late with an email and missing out.

[skullservant]

I definitely understand having a list causing pressure, I've had similar experiences while running my noise label... But at the same time there is so much incredible GAS for Sonic Crayon

[behndy]

Downside is people are able to back out easily or just ignore you altogether. Though with your production levels and apparent demand it's not unlikely you'll be left with a huge batch of unsold pedals. Also cuts into time better spent elsewhere.
Nevermind. I agree with with the B's, put me on a list so I'm not 30 seconds late with an email and missing out.

jia. of course, run your bidness the way that makes you happy. but this. SO MUCH THIS.

[cloudscapes]

The new hollow earth has been really pissing me off.

As far as *I'm* concerned, it's 100% done. It works perfectly for me. Except it isn't. Wait, what? Yeah. There's this totally mysterious deafening noise issue that happens ONLY on other people's amps and guitars. And only rarely. I don't know how to fix that.

[kosta]

Ah, the fun of being a developer. "But it looked FINE on my screen... The hell...."

[cloudscapes]

yeah basically. coupled with the fact that I don't understand the symptoms at all, let alone any possible solution. some weird electricity shit happening between SOME guitars, hollow earth and SOME amps, even with an isolated power supply.

[Jero]

Well it's not object based (not really). Well, maybe pseudo objects. The pots are variables I define, and the InitADC and GetADC routines are there to sample any one pot and give it a number between 0 and 1023. It's a lot of configuration. After that, because pot-adc sampling isn't instant, I tell it to first initialize a certain pot's adc, then later read the value. All this without interrupting the audio, so I have a system of timers and counters.
The IDE's own pot-sampling library would be much simpler, code-wise, but also less flexible. It created pauses and glitches in the audio because it would force the entire program to wait (audio included) while it waited for the pot value.
The ADC_Input routine is how the controller talks to the external audio adc, assuming it's wired up properly. Much faster and better-sounding than the controller's internal adcs I use for pots. DAC_Output is the routine to talk to the external DAC. Both of these use SPI configuration later in the code. SPI2_Init_Advanced, SPI3_Init_Advanced.
I use two timers. One is at the audio samplerate and does the Sampling_loop. This handles the pure audio transfer/storage and anything else that requires it to change the audio at a per-sample resolution. The other is much slower, every 1 milliseconds and does UI_Functions. Stuff that isn't as crucial for speed, like sampling the pots, checking toggle switches or heavy arithmetic. On other projects (like the hollow earth), controlling/updating a display would go here too. Once every thousandth's of a second is plenty. Overkill, even. The reason why I get it to do this stuff only "occasionally" is that it uses up precious CPU cycles. Doing it in the main sampling loop every 22050'ths of a second would probably force me to lower the sampling rate so as not to bog it down.
basically:
Step 1: Configure the SPI busses. Communication lines between controller and external ADC and DAC.
Step 2: Configure other pins used by the micro. Toggle switch is here, other thing is there, etc.
Step 3: Configure the two timers.
Step 4: Prepare a 8000 sample memory array. Good for a little more than a third of a second at 22khz.
Step 5: Sample all pots and assing to POT_ variables every few milliseconds.
Continously sample and record audio, but don't play back. If audio levels reach the same peak as defined by the "detect" pot threshold, then do its thing. Different pots defining for how long it samples, how often to recheck peak detect during sample, and other factors. Switch to playback-only and vary the fade amount and pitch-bend as defined by yet more pots. And so on. All the while check for other peaks at all time to start the whole thing over.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVv99M1fqYg[/youtube]

For serious though, that sounds crazy, and awesome.

[univalve]

i always miss out in these pedals. so a list not connected with evilbook would be really great.

[Eric!]

yeah basically. coupled with the fact that I don't understand the symptoms at all, let alone any possible solution. some weird electricity shit happening between SOME guitars, hollow earth and SOME amps, even with an isolated power supply.

"Products sold as is. If you got a janky set-up, ain't my damn problem."

Of course no builder would say that...y'alls're too nice