Building A Sampler-type device

Scott013 · Joined: Aug 16, 2005 Posts: 32 Location: Canada

Ok, I play guitar mostly, but I am very interested in electronics and electronic music. I have a a tiny bit of experience with circuits (I built a square wave oscillator). I want to build something that I can record several sounds onto, and then push a button for the sound (or possibly beat) to play back. I don't want to record anything major, just some ambient noise or perhaps a loop of a short beat. It would be really nice if I could store sound on some sort of removable media (flash memory?), but that's not neccesairy.

I'm having a tough time finding information on recording/playback of sounds, so can anyone here either point me towards some information, or give me some directly?

jksuperstar · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 12:19 pm Post subject:

Ohh, this is a pretty big DIY project, really. There are chips out there that can record (radio shack sells a kit like this for ~$20), and would simplify things for you greatly. But it is primarily an analog circuit, with a analog storage device, if I remember correctly. It might have been updated to be digital, but it's still an all-in-one chip with no external storage.

Going digital, however, you need to spend time with an ADC, probably a microcontroller, and DACs. For simple things, you can try looking at http://www.atmel.com. Look for the AVR 8-bit microcontrollers, then look for the appnotes. There is a sound recorder application, records 8-bit @ 11kHz I think. In the appnote is code & schematic. Made for voice-recorder type things, but you can always add features in software (like triggering & beat detect), once you have the thing running. WinAVR is the free toolset for that processor, look at http://www.avrfreaks.com for more info & downloading.

jkn · Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 469 Location: La Porte, IN, USA

I'm not a diy person at all - but I noticed a few things in researching modular synths that might apply to what you're thinking of... This would be more along the lines of building a pedal or similar...

Ken Stone's Delay Development Board - schematics, etc...
http://www.cgs.synth.net/modules/cgs44_ddb.html

Here's the rest of his designs - http://www.cgs.synth.net/

You also might try doing some searches at http://www.synthdiy.com/

Kassen · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:41 pm Post subject:

http://www.nescivi.de/research/sampler/sampler.html

Nescivi is a member here and might be willing to answer any and all questions if you ask nicely.

dnny · Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:36 pm Post subject:

this sounds like interesting project.

there is lots of information and one schematic to make a simple sampler (16 -20 sec record)
on the ISD1400-series Datasheet

you can head sound sample from Bugbrand´s devices page scroll down for dirty sampler Smile

daniel

Scott013 · Joined: Aug 16, 2005 Posts: 32 Location: Canada

Thanks for all the info guys, I'll start looking into it all now.

Kassen · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 4:35 am Post subject:

Nescivi occasionally gives workshops on that little cerquit as a introduction into synth DIY. I could be that she has one of her little bags with a print of that text and the parts left over.

Just speculating there but it can't hurt to try....

opg · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 9:02 am Post subject:

Sounds like you want a Roland MS-1. I won one on eBay for $35, but the guy never picked up the money. Oh well. The MS-1 uses Compact Flash cards and also has RCA or 1/8" inputs to import your sounds, and 8 buttons to trigger sounds (with 3 banks of sounds). It seemed perfect, but I haven't seen any MS-1s on eBay in a while.

I am also having a frind build me a drum module that has 6 drum trigger inputs and plays 8-bit sounds that, hopefully, will be loaded via USB in the end. It is not finished yet, but he will put all the plans on the site: http://27b-6.lathan.org

There are occasional updates and a few pictures of the progress right now. All you would have to do is change the trigger inputs to push-buttons. Of course, it is set up for 8-bit 22050 Hz sounds, but I think you can change that with a faster DAC. It's not really a beginner project, but at least you could have all the info for it.

Scott013 · Joined: Aug 16, 2005 Posts: 32 Location: Canada

That Roland MS-1 sounds great, I should probably just buy a sampler. I would rather spend my time making sound instead of the sampler that will play the sound I think. This sampler is starting to look like a fair bit of work.

That project looks interesting though, I will look into it.

v-un-v

Kassen · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 4:57 pm Post subject: