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Active Sunday 3/29 ~ Wednesday 4/01/09.

Health Club Music's new creation, Sonic Snailcase, is a mini synthesizer that may keep you playing for an extraordinary long time. The special features on this synth are the Morph Lag (described below) and a simple Sample and Hold, and as we have been on a boom of banana jacks, we did that again on this one.

THE FEATURES:
2 voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO) (1volt/oct)
1 low-frequency oscillator (LFO)
1 Attack-Release (AR) Envelope Generator
1 12dB, Band Pass/ Low-Pass Voltage-controlled Filter (VCF)(1volt/oct)
1 Mixer
2 voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCA)
1 white noise generator
1 Morph-Lag Processor

MORPH LAG:
The Morph Lag is a neat glide/portamento circuit that you can use to smoothen control voltages. It has independent controls for setting the rise and fall times, and a shape control to vary the response between linear and logarithmic. Patch your keyboard to the oscillators and the morph lag together, and you will hear your CV change shape!

* UP: sets lag time for positive (increasing) voltages.
* DOWN: sets lag time for negative (decreasing) voltages.
* SHAPE: sets the response from linear to logarithmic.

This circuit is implemented thanks to Harry Bissell's design.

SAMPLE & HOLD:
The Sample and Hold takes an external clock, you can use the on-board LFO or the repeating AR generator as your clock, or use a trigger/gate output from an external source. The LFO or AR can also be used as the input source which has a nice effect of staircases of different shapes.

Whoa!--> Patches they-are-a-coming..-->

And on this note, here are some mp3 demos.
mp3 demos: Keep in mind that they were all made with a CV/Gate Keyboard output going to the CV inputs and Gate input of the Sonic Snailcase. There are lots of demos of the Sample and Hold...Just couldn't stop once we got started. Also, the Morph Lag is found on tracks 1 and 3. The filter is self oscillating and you are hearing a sine wave on track 1 also.
Ok, enjoy!

OTHER SPECIAL NOTES:
*The oscillators are tuned 1V/octave, so it will track with other 1V/octave keyboards. There are inverting level shifters on the ramp oscillators, and a sawtooth wave output on each. There is an additional square wave output on VCO 2.
*There is a pre-amp on the main output so that you can listen to the Sonic Snailcase on your headphones.
*The sync switch that you find on the oscillator area is a switch where you can sync the frequency of oscillator 2 to the frequency of oscillator 1.
*The link switch links the frequencies of the two oscillators; unlike the sync switch, once the oscillators are linked you can use the oscillator 1 frequency tune knob as the "main tune" source, and it will sweep the frequencies of both oscillators. Very useful since plugging a CV source into only CV 1 input puts that CV to both oscillators. (Ah, becomes much clearer when you play with it...!)

MORE SPECIAL NOTES:
*The Voltage Controlled Filter self oscillates when the resonance is turned up to max. It will play nice sine waves. Since there is a CV input on the VCF, you can patch your handy stackable banana cables to the CV inputs of both oscillators and to the filter and have three oscillators playing together. That's right! This time we tweaked the filter so it is now scaled to 1 volt per octave just like the oscillators. Now you can play it on a CV keyboard, yeah!

*Rope handle to carry around your synth (why not? it is the size of a handbag.)

Takes 12V (AC only please!)

This synth circuit is based on a design by Ray Wilson. Visit Music From Outer Space for other exciting analog projects and PC boards.