ilovefuzz.com

Haha don't worry Kev, the BQ won't pass you by! *smile*

Not a lot of BQing this weekend or last weekend.. or next weekend.. September got really busy for me, got nearly a month of work in orders ahead of me, which is awesome, but it slows me down on my quest. It's really close to ready though.. there's some things I'd like to tweak or make better or more powerful but they might be longer term goals and for now I nearly have 8 patches that work great with all the controls and with no terrible eccentricities.

this is awesome Ryan.

Got some more BQing in this weekend...

One thing, the Spin chip has an output pin to drive an LED that lights up when the processor is overloaded.. it's kind of a neat visual indicator of your signal when you're using gain since that constantly overloads it. My plan is to use a clear amp jewel with a 10mm diffused LED underneath it. Underneath the 10mm LED I put a 3mm LED in a colour like blue or green etc. When you have the gain knob turned down you just see the normal white glowing jewel... when you turn up the gain knob you get a colourful flickering of the jewel that flashes with your playing. Little bit of fun!

Ok more important code stuff.. I had a couple patches where one of the 3 controls was a gate knob, turn it down for no gate, turn it up for lots of gate. I can't help but think that it's kind of a waste of a control and would be better off as a different parameter. Say on the pitch shift patch, it has Gain, Pitch, and Gate. But I think it'd be more useful with Gain, Pitch, and Dry.. then you could use it as a true pitch shifter or a harmonizer, both sound cool. So I made it so that as you turn up the gain knob you turn up the gate.. I think it's better and nobody is gonna want the gate off with high gain anyway, too noisy. That's one of the cool things about digital.. a pot can control more than one parameter at a time.. so no gain, no gate, lots of gain, lots of gate.

So the pitch shift patch loses a gate knob and gains a dry level knob, and the notch filter patch loses a gate knob and gains a Q control knob, and the chopper patch loses a gate knob and gains a something control, haven't decided yet. I'll do every patch with this gain+gate control.. it's a pretty unobtrusive gate too, can be very subtle but powerful. The gain control on every patch will go from none to high, so all the way down you get a unity gain signal, no gain at all, turn up for high gain with unobtrusive gate.

Here's the patches with a bit more description. These patches and sounds might seem kinda random but the theme here is just effects that I think sound cool and are fun to play with distortion. Fun and cool sounding digital distortion effects:

Patch 1 - Resonant frequency boost with controls for Gain, Frequency, and Frequency Boost. This sounds kind of like a cocked wah vowelly sort of frequency boost and it's full range from high to low frequency, not just midrange sounds. Expression control for Frequency.

Patch 2 - Sweepable full-range high pass and low pass filters with controls for Gain, HPF Cutoff, and LPF cutoff. Each filter sweeps from full frequency to no frequency, so you can basically dial away all your bass from the bottom up or all your treble from the top down.. sounds like the filter sweeps you hear in electronic music lots, taking away all the frequencies smoothly as you rotate the controls. Expression control for HPF but I might change it to LPF... both are cool... maybe LPF is more musical/better suited for guitar...

Patch 3 - Sweepable deep notch filter with controls for Gain, Notch Frequency, and Notch Width/Q. This slices a deep cut out of your signal at a frequency you set, tuned for the guitar range so it sweeps through the mids and highs in an audible way.. sounds more dramatic with gain and can really change the sound of the signal and make weird/interesting filtered tones. Expression control for Notch Frequency.

Patch 4 - Bit crusher and sample rate reducer with controls for Gain, Bit Depth, and Sample Rate. The Bit Depth knob goes through 6 levels of bit crushing, from 24 (no crush so you can use the sample rate reducer on a clean signal) to 16 bits, very crushed hard. (You're thinking, no, it's gotta be 8 or 6 bits to be really crushed hard but trust me, 16 bits is really messed up and awesome sounding). The sample rate reducer limits the maximum high frequency of the system.. so as you turn down the sample rate, you're turning down the frequency bandwidth of the signal from the top down. It's more than just a filtered sound though, it sounds broken and weird and cool, especially with some bit crushing, and especially with some gain. Expression control for Bit Depth.

Patch 5 - Pitch shifter with controls for Gain, Pitch Frequency, and Dry Level. This can shift up or down one octave and it does it fairly cleanly although it has a warble to it at certain frequencies. It's really cool sounding and fun though, maybe not super-audiophile shifting, but it's cool and fun for sure. Mixing in some dry level makes for harmonizer sounds, awesome for octaves and for weird detuning chorus kinda sounds and weird chords with one note kinda sounds. Expression control for Pitch Frequency.

Patch 6 - 1 second delay with controls for Gain, Delay Rate, and Repeats. I'm gonna set this with a pre-set dry level so it'll be tuned as a cool lead distortion with delay kinda sound. I think I said this would be 2 seconds at first but it's 1.. 1 is lots for now and I'll work on more. This can be a totally clean delay you mix with your analog dry signal, or turn down the treble and add a touch of gain for a great analog sound, or fuzz it all up for a cool distorted delay sound, infinite repeats with that cool digital Matrix-y sound. Expression control for Delay Rate... maybe Repeats would be cooler?

Patch 7 - Infinite reverb with controls for Gain, Reverb Decay, and Dry Level. This is a cool sounding fairly full-frequency range reverb sound that can go from a really short decay to an infinite decay that will even oscillate at full although it needs some tuning. You can add dry signal to make it sound more immediate, or have no dry signal for pure reverb sounds, very haunting and scary.

Patch 8 - On/off tremolo with controls for Gain, Rate, and a yet to be decided control. 100% on/off tremolo, as choppy as possible, with lots of gain.. awesome chopper fuzz sound. The third control could be for depth or shape, maybe add a sine option to the chopping... I had been thinking this could be a multi-modulation patch but I'm still sorting out one modulation, let alone how complicated it is to add another and interface it and be able to point to it etc.. so for now, chopper fuzz. I think we'll just call Patch 8 'mod' and down the road it could be a phaser or a flanger.. all modulation sounds awesome with high gain. Expression control for Rate.

And that's the BitQuest! as of right now.. so close to being ready for prime time...

TL;DR and who could blame you this is crazy long: It's really close to being ready! Time to cook up an ILF run I think...

Why do you need a dry level when you have analog mix on the pitch shifting patch?

the analog mix doesn't go through the fuzz circuit, so you need a dry level to bring in a fuzz tone to harmonize with...

Ryan man, you've really outdone yourself with this one. What a Swiss Army knife of awesomeness you've going on! The patches all seem so vast and different that you could sit and spend hours with it

Ryan wrote:the analog mix doesn't go through the fuzz circuit, so you need a dry level to bring in a fuzz tone to harmonize with...

Ah makes sense now

ohmanohmanohmanohmanohman I really need to start saving

With patch 2, are the LPF and HPF in series? If so I'm guessing there would be no wet signal if you set the LPF cutoff lower than the HPF cutoff, but at the same time you'd be able to make awesome bandpass filter settings too.
Also personally I think expression control of LPF cutoff would be more useful but I'm sure it would be cool either way.

EXCITED

dude this is gonna be too much fun to pass up on

I am so glad I preemptively sold stuff to fund this!

wow....

Sounds just great!

patch 1: heh, ryan finally does that wah-wah pedal

personally i might prefer to have the LPF and HPF as separate effects, both with a resonance control instead (maybe dropping the trem patch)

oh, and the bit crusher sounds particularly awesome
should be patch number 1!

Can't wait for this. SOOO excited!