Waldorf Blofeld Bad Encoder Fix

For over a year some of the knobs on my Blofeld have gotten a bit eccentric. At first it was just a bit of jitter when turning the fourth knob (Osc Level / Filter Env Amount / Env Release / LFO 2 Speed / Matrix Destination / Arp Clock), but eventually it got so bad that turning the knob clockwise would result in it going 2 steps up, 15 steps down, 4 steps up, 10 steps down, etc... until it took 5 minutes just to go from 64 to 90 on the damn thing. I dealt with it for a while, but then some of the other knobs started acting up, including the "Bank" knob which also doubles as a value knob for pretty much every parameter that's not on the front panel. After a bit of frustration I kind of quit programming on the Blofeld. I thought about designing some kind of software editor either in Mainstage or Logic's Environment or Reaktor, but these days I don't have time for anything.

Here's someone else's video demonstrating what my Blofeld was doing:


Originally I had tried opening up the Blofeld and spraying some air underneath the knobs, but that didn't help. Then I asked a friend who does synth repair in New York what he recommended, and he advised spraying some tuner cleaner under the knobs instead of air. That also did not work. A few years ago there was a post on matrixsynth advising replacing the encoders. I looked at the encoders in the Blofeld and decided that was not something I was comfortable doing (and I had built a PAiA 9700s before).

I was kind of stuck. I had this Blofeld that I couldn't really use the way I wanted to, but I couldn't really sell it the way it was for a price that I was willing to settle for.

Luckily, I happened to stumble upon this youtube video which, while not useful in and of itself, included a link to http://synth.stromeko.net/DIY.html, which contained some very useful info about how to fix this problem.

Basically, according to stromeko, the problem was that the encoders needed additional capacitors. He advised capacitors that were "not much larger than 1nF." I checked RadioShack's crappy website and found they don't really measure their capacitors in nF, but I was able to find this chart which shows that 1nF = .001 uF, which RadioShack did carry.

So tonight I went to RadioShack hoping to get seven pairs of .001 uF capacitors, but of course they only had four pair. Whatever. So far only two of my knobs were unusable and another two were just flaky, so that worked. I had big dreams of doing a short, succinct youtube video, but my camera sucks at up close, and the Blofeld's display just does not show up well on it, so FUCK IT.

Long Story Short: I did the mod and my two unusable knobs are now as good as new, and the two flaky knobs are fine too. It's relatively easy to do if you're an experienced amateur like myself (over 40 hours spent soldering on the PAiA 9700s plus a few other projects) and know to watch out for solder bridges and to keep the iron away from anything it shouldn't touch.

So far so good, but if my Blofeld starts smoking or explodes in the next few days, I'll be sure to update.

I tried taking photos, but it didn't work out so well.

Before


After

Access Virus TI OS4

Access finally added a way to make the Arp serve as a step sequencer for modulation. They also added some nice guitar pedal style distortions and a comb filter.

Os4 by mikeoday

Here's one where I use the arp to modulate pitch in a style similar to old analog modular synths. Way back in college, I got to play with an Arp 2500 and do stuff like this with its 10-step sequencer.

Os4demo2 by mikeoday

Waldorf Blofeld Vs Waldorf Largo

Waldorf Largo is a soft synth that is similar to the Blofeld, but Waldorf insists it is not a soft synth version of the Blofeld. They are very similar, the only differences are that the 3 Largo oscillators each have a sub-osc, the Blofeld oscillators have a Brilliance parameter, and the Blofeld has a PPG Low Pass filter setting. Pretty much everything else, in my experience, is the same.

I am of the mind that you would either have one or the other, there is no reason to have both. Some would disagree - I think those people have too much money.

I've been thinking about selling my Blofeld and picking up Largo instead. I like the Blofeld, it definitely has its place in the mix, it's by far my brightest synth and I wouldn't want to do without it completely. However, it is a pain in the ass to program. I do not like the layout, and one of my four programming knobs is buggy - if you twist it, say, clockwise, it goes up by about 10, then down by about five, then up another 10, then down another five. It's very annoying. Even without the buggy knob, it takes forever for me to program and tweak a patch, whereas with the Largo demo, I'm throwing shit together in five minutes.

Waldorf has a very generous demo thingy for the Largo where you get to try out the full version for 30 days. You can even bounce it and record it - so say I'm working on a song, I can throw in some Largo stuff, bounce it, and I'll still have it in the mix as an audio file when the 30 days expires. I think that alone would make someone more inclined to buy it.

***

Today I put together some Blofeld vs. Largo comparisons. The idea is to throw something together in Largo, then recreate it exactly in the Blofeld. At first I thought it'd be hard, but it was actually really easy. It's almost like the Largo would be a great sketch pad or visual reference for programming the Blofeld.

The first track is a pad with lots of delay.
Blofeld vs Largo 1 by mikeoday
The Blofeld is first, then Largo right after 2:03. The biggest difference is the delay, the Blofeld delay turns to flat mush, but the Largo delay maintains separation, giving it an animated, rhythmic quality. Largo definitely wins this one, I kind of hate the Blofeld half of this, but I think the Largo half is very nice. There's no compression on either recording.

The second track is an old school EBM percussive bass sound.
Largo vs Blofeld 2 by mikeoday
First half is Largo, second half is Blofeld. For this patch, Blofeld has a bit darker, thicker sound, whereas Largo is brighter and less chunky. This one is a toss up as to which is better, I'd be inclined to go with the Blofeld one, but I have a feeling I'd be rolling off those lows when it came time to mix this down in a track with a kick drum and stuff.

I'm still a bit up in the air at this point. If I did not own a Blofeld, I'd definitely go with the Largo. But if I'm going to go with Largo, I'd definitely want to sell the Blofeld, which would be a huge pain in the ass without the buggy knob, let alone with it.

Because... ZOMBIES!!!

Plants vs. Zombies from popcap!!!


WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!

...

I'm retarded.

PS. Popcap sells it for $19.95, but you can get it on Steam for $9.95

DAMN YOU, google maps!!!!

Thanks to that, we missed the start of the Angelspit concert, plus running around in the cold and the rain made my wife's cold worse.

I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!!!**

**Dear google, please don't delete my free gmail account or my free blogger account. K, thnx, bye.

What comes next?

Republicans accused liberals of being crooks and thugs. Then they gave us Watergate.

Republicans accused liberals of media bias. Then they gave us the Fox News Channel.

Republicans accused liberals of election fraud. Then they gave us Florida in 2000.

Republicans are now accusing liberals of plotting to create re-education camps and death panels.

What comes next?

Butterflies on Shit

Say something profound.

"Something profound."

ohGr - Devils in my Details

This CD actually came out last October, but I never picked it up because none of the music "previews" or whatever really grabbed me. If you listen to the two tracks posted on the ohGr myspace page, you have two songs that both start with weird spoken word things, and when the song starts, the first one "Timebomb" is kind of a samba style thing, and the second one, "Feelin' Chicken" is like circus music with random chicken noises in it. Based on those two songs, it comes off as an album by one of the leaders of the industrial music genre, whose solo work has had kind of an electro/synth-pop flavor to it, apparently doing every other random style of music that is not industrial.

This album was released right after Repo: The Genetic Opera was in limited release in theaters, which niveK Ogre aka ohGr had a role in. Based on these two tracks, it isn't entirely unreasonable to deduce this album is somehow influenced by - well - musical theater or some shit. I also listened to the 30 second samples on Amazon.com, but nothing there really changed my mind. It seemed like, for whatever reason, ohGr decided to do an album of industrial tinged show tunes. That's great, I'll pass.

As time passed, I noticed a lot of industrial reviewers gave the album high marks. Regen Magazine even went to so far as to call it the number one album of 2008. (Angelspit's Blood Death Ivory should be way higher on that list, possibly even number one.) I wanted to check the whole album out, but I didn't feel like spending $10 or whatever in case I hated it. (And I don't fuck around with piracy, no bit torrent, none of that shit). So I put it on the back burner until recently when Gemma and I happened to get an amazon gift certificate from an extended family member of hers.

It's really fucking good.

It's not a collection of songs, it is an album. You listen to it from beginning to end. Each song blends into the next. Unfortunately, the Amazon.com 30 second samples tend to fall on the in-between portions of songs, so you get a lot of Bill Moseley saying weird shit. And "Feelin' Chicken" is probably the last song that should be used to promote this album. It's not bad when it's played in its place on the album, but out of context it's just WTF.

Another thing I love about this album: it opts out of the Loudness War. It's beautifully mixed and mastered. The first track, "Shhh," intentionally lacks the highest frequencies (aka "sparklies") - why? So that when the second track, "Eyecandy," comes in, it has those upper-upper frequencies and it creates DYNAMIC CONTRAST and therefore MAKES AN IMPACT. Y'know, like music is supposed to. Music needs to be quiet sometimes so that the LOUDNESS means something - everyone who mixes and masters knows this and yet we all feel pressured to accommodate record execs (and consumers) and mix for maximum loudness all the time.

Musical "volume," aka dynamics, are not meant to be static, however record execs, radio programmers and consumers are increasingly demanding the music be LOUD all the time. Some Amazon reviewer called this album "poorly mixed." Wrong, bucko, all music should be mixed/mastered like this. The industry standard for movies is an overall dynamic range of 24 dB - meaning that the quietest part of a movie can be 24 dB less than the loudest part of a movie. In music, the standard is inching from 8 dB to 6 dB.

That's bullshit.

Decibels are not a linear measurement, it's logarithmic. That means a dynamic range of 12 dB is NOT twice the range of 6 dB, it's actually exponentially more. So 24 dB of dynamic range is actually far more than even four times that of 6 dB.

What does this mean? It means we're losing a lot of quality and fidelity in music. Why? Well it all started with the idea that, on the radio, the louder track grabbed people's attention and therefore sold more singles/records.

But does that even fucking matter anymore? Who listens to radio for music nowadays? No one I know. And what station is playing ohGr? Probably not a single one, probably not even college radio anymore. So why play the LOUDNESS game? Why not opt out? (I guess in the industrial genre, there's being played at clubs, but I digress...)

So yeah, this album is awesome. The music is great, the mixing/mastering is bold and refreshing, and if you're on the fence about it, my best suggestion is just to listen to the first two tracks, "Shhh," and "Eyecandy" back-to-back.

Logic Pro Pedal Board and Amp Designer demo

This is the same ~45 second recording I made of my guitar going straight into my MOTU 828mk2, ran through four different Pedal Board/Amp Designer combinations. I'm blown away by how good it sounds, but then I never had a really good, quality amplifier.

GuitarTest by mikeoday

Logic 9: Pedal Board and Amp Designer

Pretty much awesome.

Anyone want to buy a Fender Roc Pro 1000 Head and Cabinet?


(Not actually mine, just a random image of one I pulled from Google. My actual amp head has a hole cut in the front of it by a previous owner. A very stupid previous owner.)