Kabbalistic Synth ~ 2019

There are no conceptual changes from the model from 2015, just upgrades to the filter circuit and the synth engine. As before the synthesizer has three inputs from scientific observations, magnetic fields, gamma particles, and decametric noise at 21.1mhz, these inputs pick up readings of fluctuations in the earths magnetic field, cosmic rays and noise emissions coming from the sun and Jupiter. The synthesizer in this iteration uses a more accurate analog magnetometer, an FLC-100 Fluxgate, in place of the original micro-mag 3 that had a spi interface, it also includes a complete analog radio receiver tuned to 21.1mhz from the Nasa Radio Jove initiative, as well as a custom version of the Moog 4 stage transistor ladder Low Pass filter designed with a digital i2c interface to be algorythmically tied to the synths sound engine and interpreter which itself runs on a ARM cortex M4 with a 16bit DAC and 12bit i/o. The magnetometer takes a reading of the immediate magnetic field force in micro Tesla coming from a vertical axis slightly offset to match Earth’s magnetic field shape and converts it as a seed input to the base of a harmonic structure. This structure consists of an FM algorythm with 11 carrier frequencies and 11 subsuquent modulators. Each iteration of the structure from 1..11 increments by a value defined by a knob (10K linear pot) on the front panel that corresponds to a range of 0.11~11hz (default is 0.11hz) and cascades between polarity of the stereo field, L R L R L R.., there is also a mirror structure, an exact clone doing the opposite, R L R L R L, with the difference being that it is in reverse bias to the input control, so will decrement and go below the root. The system therefore can be described like this in SuperCollider pseudo code:

Stage1(RootNode) = SinOsc.ar(freq:uT1 + SinOsc.ar(freq:uT1f / 2, phase:0, multiply:log10(uT1f/4)) phase:0, multiply:1).. Stage2 = SinOsc.ar(freq:(uT1 + increment) + SinOsc.ar(freq: (uT1 + increment) / 2, phase:0, multiply: log10((uT1 + increment)/4)) phase:0, multiply:1)… The full supercollider prototype is open source and can be played with here.

The output of a cosmic ray occurs when a particle is strong enough and has the directionality to pass through all three rows of the Geiger tube array. When this happens the readCosmicsRays function will output a pulse of lpf-pwm (dc glide) with a value chosen via a timer counting the time in millis between occurrences and using this to seed a True Random Number Generator. This then feeds into a glide circuit using a digitally controlled potentiometer as the current flow resistor to the capacitor and therefore creating a glided value that is again chosen by a True Random Number Generator, this glided value feeds into the base of a transistor controlling the frequency cutoff (also controllable with resonance via 10k lin pot on the panel) of a full analog transistor ladder filter passing a mix of noise from the decametric radio circuit/antennae as well as the synth stream. The output from the cosmic ray detector is also compatible for use with other west coast synthesizers, namely Serge and Buchla creations. Specials thanks to Victor Mazon who helped me debug a complex filter topology right at the end and let me use his acid bath. For enquieries please contact studio[at]carstennicolai[dot]de.


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