Etherwave Plus Review (Factory Upgrade)

Thanks,

Its a multiple, just 4 jacks wired together.

I wouldn't try putting more than 1 cv into a mult though because it can sum and fry your destination. You need a CV mixer for that.

You can probably make a mult pretty easy but you might as well buy one, they don't need a power supply and if you are into modular synths or want to put a cabinet together with a few modules to run your theremin through it would be nice. Perhaps a rack frame from synthesizers.com or something woudl be all that youd need to suffice your needs.

http://synthesizers.com/q124.html 54 dollars

thanks eric!

i didn't know that you could connect the jacks passively (e.g., without throwing off the 1V/oct calibration) but it must work pretty well if that's how all of the production-devices do it!

also, now that it is finally warm in ny, i seem to be noticing that the CV / pitch tracking of the freqbox is not 'perfect' (e.g., if you calibrate it to your theremin in a high register, it will be noticeably off in the low register and vice versa), which kind of takes a little away from the "instant additive synthesis" possibilities of the theremin + freqbox, but nonetheless, just using the freqbox's great sounding internal oscillator by itself is pretty nice, imho. (EDIT: from messing with my attenuator, i feel like the problem is that the freqbox, when operating on a hot day, responds at a slightly over 1V/oct... anybody have a good circuit for whatever does the opposite of an attenuator?)

it is so hot in my apartment that i swear i could hear the change in pitch from a bead of sweat rolling down my arm. (too lazy to install the air conditioner just yet)

"... anybody have a good circuit for whatever does the opposite of an attenuator?)"

Uh, that would be called an amplifier. :)

I have a feeling what you are actually talking about is a temperature-compensated circuit. There are several ways of doing this, but you would need to have schematics of the things you want to apply this too.

You may want to look at the device that accepts a Control Voltage. The input CV will likely go to a resistor -- the resistor will connnect to a buss where the external CV and all the other CVs are summed. An easy fix is to reduce the resistance of the external CV's resistor. You could simply piggyback another resistor on top of the existing resistor. Your goal is to force the effect to track at <1v per octave (that is, a signal of less than one volt will move the effect one octave). Once you've accomplished this, then you need only use a passive attenuator between your theremin and the device that is being controlled. If you are ambitious, you may want to replace the fixed value resistor with a trimpot (or a trimpot + a fixed value resistor). This would allow you to calibrate the external device to the theremin's CV.

To do the opposite -- to increase the CV from the theremin requires an active circuit. To make this work with passive components is a lot easier.

[i]-- Kevin[/i]

thanks kevin and don! - that makes a lot of sense, and maybe that explains why moog decided to have their ring mod pedal track at ~.75v/octave instead of ~1V/octave (as the freqbox does) - at first i thought it was annoying that you had to attenuate the ring mod signal to get it to track properly, but in the end (as you said) it is easier to attenuate a CV voltage to calibrate everything than figure out a way to amplify it!

Im trying to figure out exactly what the Freqbox tracks at, but Steve Dunnington would be the first person to admit that it wasn't designed to track perfectly as an extra oscillator for a system. It was designed to process audio. It really works the best in my opinion as a synth sound for a non synth instrument like a piano or guitar.

I did a demo of the Theremin and the Freqbox to show how they interact. This was before I got my pro upgrade so you can hear the ring modulation in the extreme upper registers when staying purely in the audio chain.

reverbnation.com/rhythmicondemos

The Freqbox only tracks maybe 4 octaves at the most. Im waiting for a responce on the Moog forum regarding what voltage it tracks. I think its the same as the Voyager, because it doesn't need attenuation and the Voyager I don't believe is 1vpo either.

Ill bet that the Ringmod will track easier and over a much greater range than the Freqbox but it will need attenuation. You have limited waveshapes but you can change that with a dostortion pedal. Its all in the Knob Tweak yahoo users group:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/KnobTweak/



Eric

Im going to say that the Theremin tracks at .93 per octave, and tracks at a 5 octave range according to a very good source on the Moog Forum

Eric

hey eric, thanks for the info - that is bizarre but good to know. i wonder if this means that the theremin doesn't exactly spit out 1V/octave? from my noodling around it definitely seemd like the CV needed to be amplified a little bit for the freqbox - either way, it is only an issue when you want to play both the theremin audio output in combination with the freqbox oscillator output over a wide range...

I don't own a scope so I really can't say.

I know that my MicroMoog isn't 1vpo either and both the Ringmod and Freqbox needed a bit of boosting to track properly.

What I would try, and this is what makes the Freq so difficult to track and ill explain why later is I would run your Pitch CV out to the Freq box Freq in. then Patch the Osc Out into the Freqbox's Audio Input, then the Audio out to whatever device you are using as your output.

When you want to get the Freqbox to track, its all about the placement of the Freq knob. You can play a balancing act with the Attenuators and the Freq knob all day long and wonder why they aren't tracking properly. When you add the Osc out to the Audio input it makes it even more difficult because the Freq knob acts as a coarse tuning and the Envelope Knob becomes a fine tuning adjustment.

Try the Osc out to audio in and try your Frequency knob about 1-2 o'clock and then use the "Fine" tuning method and see if that eliminates some of the drift.


Oh, if you own the 107 and 102 or any other CV device, then youll certianly want the cp251 at some plint in the future. It features active attenuators.

Eric