Axoloti Modular Synth – DIY Clavia Micro Modular-Style (Indiegogo Projekt)

Axoloti is a DIY Modular synth project that has a lot in common with the  Micromodular , Micro Modular Modular Synthesizer by Clavia

here’s what it does an looks like – the GUI – much like the Nord Modulars…

and here’s his speech at the 31C3

(not that fast but listen to it! he’s at the ccc explaining it to nerds not among synth / musicians)

the basic thing is this piece of hardware with MIDI, some buttons and a little display – and it reacts to OS X, Windows and Linux. hope this thing will be done and made, so just do it!
And of course this is not closed source like the Clavia. It’s an ARM Cortex M4F. ARM is sort of the real antagonist to Intel. It’s a Processor. Not a DSP. But it’s the number cruncher. Can be compared to fast Tablets and Smartphones but would need a lot of details – in fact it is a fast load of power for doing a modular synth.

check this out it is easy to „read“ as a synth guy: and don’t get shocked it’s not just windows – its ALL platforms! participating is about 60€ – just to give you an idea. plus shipping etc.
you might add a front panel, and solder some potentiometers, faders, leds and switches to the GPIO pins.

Dieses „kleine“ Projekt erinnert sehr stark an den Clavia Micro Modular und basiert auf einem kleinen Board mit ARM A4 Prozessor- die Aktion hier handelt von dem eigentlichen Kern (Core) – und wird passieren, wenn du das Projekt bei Indigogo unterstützt. Da es bisher keinen Nachfolger gibt und Clavia keinerlei Signale gibt den G3 zu bauen, vielleicht einfach mal ein belgisches Modularsystem? Und offen! Denn hier hält keine Firma die Quellen zusammen und „closed source“ mäßig zusammen, weil – könnte ja mal wieder irgendwann kommen (kommt aber nicht, kann man sicher sein, erstmal).
Komplett würde es durch die „Control“ genannte Einheit, die noch nicht so weit ist und vielleicht als nächstes weiter entwickelt werden könnte, je nach dem wie erfolgreich das Projekt wird.

Info>Indiegogo-Projektseite
UPDATE: it did work! there’s enough money to run the first batch and a little more – the official site is http://axoloti.be
UPDATE: 19.Jan: about 480 will be made

Forum-> Axoloti – DIY Micro Modular? – auf Indiegogo

an older patch

ok – this is not part of the indiegogo thing.. but it may help to understand the „nord modular“ similarity – but this is not yet ready. this is sort of the control part and therefore referred to as „control“

The advantage of Axoloti Control over a midi controller is that you don’t need to midi-map parameters in order to tweak your patch. It can show parameter names and real world units rather than just midi numbers. Or show a oscilloscope waveform or edit a step-sequence

the midi i/o etc. being part of it is smaller – it’s this one – it’s the basic thing you need to do the work. so – this is what isn’t like the nord – it’s not one machine you could buy (of course) but the most important stuff is in here. referred to as the core. hence the name.

Forum • Axoloti – DIY Micro Modular? – auf Indiegogo.

what is in it so far..

Input/output
audio input
audio output
digital in (including optional pullup or pulldown configuration)
digital out (push-pull or open-collector)
analog in
digital PWM outputs
LFO’s
sine
saw
square
Oscillators
sine
saw
square
pulse-width modulation
saw with sync
square with sync
Envelopes
Filters
lowpass biquad
bandpass biquad
highpass biquad
lowpass 1st order
highpass 1st order
MIDI
controller in
controller out
keyboard (incl. velocity, release velocity, polyphonic pressure)
bend in
bend out
channel pressure
Mixer
1,2,3,4… input mixer
crossfader
Logic operators
Tables
similar as in Pure Data
Echo
Delay lines
similar as in Pure Data
Displays
VU-meter
chart-plotter
oscilloscope
bandpass-filter based spectrum analyzer (constant-Q)
FFT-based spectrum analyzer
Math
Logarithm
Exponent
Square root
Reciprocal
Sine/cosine
Distortions
Soft saturate (non-antialiased)
infinite gain clipping (alias-free)

another demo and patch – which is quite easy to understand

this one features samples – re-organising a breakbeat (I did this a lot on other systems so it is a good demo)
look at it – it’s a lot easier than coding / clicking that on Max or PD – looks like a want one to me..

Alpha Juno Fans ho(o)vering over this