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Software configuration and performance of the UCA202 + Beaglebone Black

The Beaglebone Black comes out of the box with a completely functional Debian installation. I used apt-get to install ecasound and some ladspa plugins and I was off and running. I found that with a delay ladspa plug-in I could run with a buffer size of 128, here’s the ecasound command line: ecasound -b:128 -i alsahw,1,0 -o alsahw,1,0 -el:tap_stereo_echo,300,70,0,0,0,0,0 That’s a 300 ms delay with a lot of feedback. I measured the round trip latency at 15.4 milliseconds, which is pretty… Read More »Software configuration and performance of the UCA202 + Beaglebone Black

Hardware for Live Effects

I mounted everything in a small equipment case: The Beaglebone Black, UCA202, and a powered USB hub are mounted to the top of the case using industrial strength velcro. To mount the mixer I removed the rubber feet and the drilled holes in the bottom of the case and used the existing stand mount holes on the mixer.

Architecture for Live Effects

I already had a Mackie 0402VLZ4 mixer and a Beaglebone Black, so the only thing I needed was a way to get audio in and out of the BBB. The cheapest option was the Behringer UCA0202 which can be had for about $30. The audio from the microphone goes into channel 1 of the mixer which is panned hard left, then from the left output of the mixer into the audio interface. The audio interface output then goes back into… Read More »Architecture for Live Effects

HW Design (Mechanical)

Here’s what it looks like put together: You can see the Arduino shield, with connections to 3 pushbuttons and the slider on the top of the box. The cable coming out the right side is the usb cable and the midi connector is on the bottom. Here’s a view of the left side: You can see the Midi cable attached on the left side of this picture. I’m using a rubber band to hold the slider in the lowest not… Read More »HW Design (Mechanical)

HW Design (Electrical)

Here’s the schematic: The box in the middle is an Arduino Uno, which has everything we’ll need for this project. Breath Controller: The Gordophone blog has some great information on building a breath controller. I used the Freescale MPVZ4006GW7U, which is a through-hole part. I wanted to put the part on a prototype shield and I didn’t want solder a surface mount part; however after putting everything together I’m not sure this was a good decision, the arduino plus the shield plus… Read More »HW Design (Electrical)

So what’s this great new idea

We’ll have a breath controller and three valves just like the EVI; however, instead of the left hand manipulating a discrete control to select the harmonic, we’ll have a continuous control that represents the note we want to play. To determine which note is being played, we look at all the possible notes for the current valve combination and find the one that’s closest to the current value of the discrete control. To give a little more detail, here are… Read More »So what’s this great new idea

Why bother with a new concept for a Midi Trumpet Controller?

Currently there is really only one design for a Midi Controller that emulates a valved wind instrument, namely the EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument) developed by Neil Steiner (see Patchman Music for all kinds of information). The more recent Morrison Digital Trumpet  uses pretty much the same principal of operation. In both cases there are three valves like a trumpet and some kind of system for selecting the harmonic. This is a bit different than a real trumpet. For example, if… Read More »Why bother with a new concept for a Midi Trumpet Controller?