Lexicon M93 iOS or Similar ......

Gravitas

Quick update.

I’ve almost got one for drambo one working.
Sorry for the delay 🥁

Bear with me.

NeonSilicon

Did a quick search for the service manual and found this link (warning: I don't know anything about the site that it is on, but it's a PDF so should be relatively safe).

http://thesnowfields.com/manuals/PrimeTimeServiceManual.pdf

The manual has details that might be useful in trying to recreate the sound. It lists bit depth, sample rate, I/O filters types etc. The filters types and frequencies could be pretty important.

rs2000

@NeonSilicon said:
Did a quick search for the service manual and found this link (warning: I don't know anything about the site that it is on, but it's a PDF so should be relatively safe).

http://thesnowfields.com/manuals/PrimeTimeServiceManual.pdf

The manual has details that might be useful in trying to recreate the sound. It lists bit depth, sample rate, I/O filters types etc. The filters types and frequencies could be pretty important.

Nice! That's useful indeed.

Gravitas

‘Freeze delay’, also know as ’Repeat Hold’.

Currently thinking about how to implement Flexisampler to create the multiplier/divider.

screenshot.

Telefunky

Cool

rs2000

@Gravitas Just a few ideas:

• Use the Graphic Shaper to implement the M93's playback speed steps (you might add a few more fun intermediate steps) by controlling Flexi's pitch

Using internal MIDI control of a hosted Flexi:

• Implement "Freeze" by recording the output of a normal Delay Rack with Flexi
• Make Loop Start and End adjustable (also in beat quantized subdivisions if you wish)
• Use Flexi instead of the Buffer FX to record and play back sections of audio
• Work with both Loop and Loop Ping Pong for additional creative sound design

I would do all the vintage audio beautification later, there's some interesting info to be discovered in the service notes posted by @NeonSilicon.

I wish Flexi had some loop point clicking countermeasures like X-Fade of start and end range since when adjusting loop start and end live, there's no way to hit the perfect loop points intuitively. (side note to lovely Mr. @giku_beepstreet)

Gravitas

@rs2000 said:
@Gravitas Just a few ideas:

• Use the Graphic Shaper to implement the M93's playback speed steps (you might add a few more fun intermediate steps) by controlling Flexi's pitch

I had one lined up for the Delay Length to get precise steps.
1,2,4,8 and 16.
Graphic Shaper is quite cool for things like that.
I left in there under ,'Even'.
You can see it in the screenshot.
I can quite easily send it to Pitch to modulate the Flexisampler.

I'm now thinking about the monitoring more than anything else.
The rest of it is practically done.

Using internal MIDI control of a hosted Flexi:

• Implement "Freeze" by recording the output of a normal Delay Rack with Flexi

Done.

• Make Loop Start and End adjustable (also in beat quantized subdivisions if you wish)

Good suggestion.

• Use Flexi instead of the Buffer FX to record and play back sections of audio

Ahhh.....I like that.

• Work with both Loop and Loop Ping Pong for additional creative sound design

I haven't got enough encoders.

I would do all the vintage audio beautification later, there's some interesting info to be discovered in the service notes posted by @NeonSilicon.

Nah, I don't want to do the vintage thing with
this though it would be good to read the notes.

I wish Flexi had some loop point clicking countermeasures like X-Fade of start and end range since when adjusting loop start and end live, there's no way to hit the perfect loop points intuitively. (side note to lovely Mr. @giku_beepstreet)

+1

jonmoore

@rs2000 said:
I would do all the vintage audio beautification later, there's some interesting info to be discovered in the service notes posted by @NeonSilicon.

The service document is a great insight into the signal path but attempting to add ‘vintage audio beautification’ later would miss one of the key things that makes the Lexicon unit sound the way it does. The non linearities introduced by the interplay between in analog ampilfication components and to AD/DA aspect of the singnal path. Part of the magic of the M93 is that the Feedback input (not the feedback atenuverters themselves) would overdrive the signal in a very pleasing way. That needs to be considered too in any Drambo remake.

In the Soundtoys emulation this input cirtcuit has an extra 25% ‘overdrive’ compared to the original Lexicon. PrimalTap was released after Soundtoys designed Decapitator, their analog saturation modeler and you can tell they poured some of its secret sauce into PrimalTap to give it more personality.

rs2000

@jonmoore With "later" I referred to development time, not to processing outside Drambo 😉

jonmoore

@rs2000 said:
@jonmoore With "later" I referred to development time, not to processing outside Drambo 😉

Coolio.

jonmoore

The thing I’m reminded of most reading through the M93 service manual is how much companies used to shout about their lack of distortion and how much in the modern digital era companies talk about saturation warming their digital designs.

A hardware M93 sells for around $1500-$2500 these days, and the memory expansion that takes a standard 128ms M93 model to a whopping 256ms will set you back another $300-400.

Thank the new appointed archangel of dub, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, for the plugin era!

Gravitas

@jonmoore said:
The thing I’m reminded of most reading through the M93 service manual is how much companies used to shout about their lack of distortion and how much in the modern digital era companies talk about saturation warming their digital designs.

Agreed.

A hardware M93 sells for around $1500-$2500 these days, and the memory expansion that takes a standard 128ms M93 model to a whopping 256ms will set you back another $300-400.

dRambo

Samu

@Gravitas said:

@jonmoore said:
The thing I’m reminded of most reading through the M93 service manual is how much companies used to shout about their lack of distortion and how much in the modern digital era companies talk about saturation warming their digital designs.

Agreed.

A hardware M93 sells for around $1500-$2500 these days, and the memory expansion that takes a standard 128ms M93 model to a whopping 256ms will set you back another $300-400.

dRambo

Looks like a fun device and you can clearly here that there is no 'linear interpolation' going on when the pitch is adjusted...
...and all the wonderful aliasing noises kick in

I just wish Drambo had an option to disable linear-interpolation and just drop/repeat a sample when changing the pitches.
Sure those allergic to aliasing noises would go nuts, but it's how it was back in time, even on the Amiga...

Cheers!

jonmoore

Hey, don’t get me wrong I absolutely love Drambo but sometime the Drambo crowd would have you believe that the BeepStreet homage to Elektron could cook you a Mitchelin chef nine course tasting menu given the chance.

The weakness in Drambo’s processors is the Shaper. Like so many saturation fx on iOS it’s veers too closely to idealised mathematical models in much the same way as the original Filter processor was way too polite. The more recent Analog Filter is a great improvement (although not a touch on the best circuit modeled designs available for the desktop such as Cytomic’s The Drop). I’m hoping that BeepStreet manage to make their saturation fx have a more pleasing non-linear response. The wave-folding side of things is decent enough but the soft and hard saturation fx only work well (for my taste) at more conservative settings. Writing non-linear saturation fx algorithms is a full time job in and of itself. The Soundtoys team, who are some of the best dsp engineers in the business took years to nail Decapitator.

But much as Analog Filter was a huge step-up from the original Filter module, I’m sure BeepStreet will come up with better soft and hard saturation fx that still manage to be reasonably kind on the processor (my favourite aspect of the Analog Filter module is that it achieves a great filter model without too much by way of processor overhead).

klownshed

Not sure if this will get close, but it Looks (and sounds) like it will be capable of all sorts of delay madness which might make for an interesting alternative?

https://twitter.com/audiodamage/status/1432371593024454658

Gravitas

@Samu said:

@Gravitas said:

@jonmoore said:
The thing I’m reminded of most reading through the M93 service manual is how much companies used to shout about their lack of distortion and how much in the modern digital era companies talk about saturation warming their digital designs.

Agreed.

A hardware M93 sells for around $1500-$2500 these days, and the memory expansion that takes a standard 128ms M93 model to a whopping 256ms will set you back another $300-400.

dRambo

Looks like a fun device and you can clearly here that there is no 'linear interpolation' going on when the pitch is adjusted...
...and all the wonderful aliasing noises kick in

I just wish Drambo had an option to disable linear-interpolation and just drop/repeat a sample when changing the pitches.
Sure those allergic to aliasing noises would go nuts, but it's how it was back in time, even on the Amiga...

Cheers!

I hear you.

It would be fun.

Gravitas

@jonmoore said:
Hey, don’t get me wrong I absolutely love Drambo but sometime the Drambo crowd would have you believe that the BeepStreet homage to Elektron could cook you a Mitchelin chef nine course tasting menu given the chance.

Hiya, I’m from the dRambo crowd.
Very subtle hint. 👋🏾
Haven’t used an Elektron yet. lololol

But if it keeps them happy then it’s all good.

I’ve been busy putting together a 32 step input sequencer
which now has 8 loopers so that I can add live
guitar, bass and vocals if I so wish and drawing tesseracts
on oscilloscopes which I eventually found out was called
‘vector synthesis’.