Sunday 25 December 2016

Happy Xmas from Soulsby Synths...

... and there's a special present for miniAtmegatron owners!

Here's a preview of the Odytron port for the miniAtmegatron. Turn the miniAtmegatron into a totally different synth engine! The Odytron emulates the features and sound of a classic analogue synth in 8-bit. The synth has 2 filters, 2 oscillators, ring mod, white noise and much much more.

Here's a very rough and ready video demoing it.

The controls are virtually the same as the normal miniAtmegatron. Key differences are:

  • Distortion and Phaser knobs control oscillator frequency offset.
  • Amp LFO knob controls the overall amplitude output offset.
  • Portamento/Wave crusher function only controls portamento
  • Waveform function cycles through several combinations of oscillators, noise and ring mod
  • Filter function cycles through, off, soft filter, hard filter (more resonant)
  • LFO shape function cycles through several routings of the square, saw and S&H to oscillator freq and filter cutoff
  • Xmassy sequence in the sequencer, which auto-increments through patterns
I'll write all of this up properly when it is launched officially next year!

To install:

  1. Install Arduino IDE. Run it up once, then close it.
  2. Download Libraries 2.6. Then put the contents in /*documents folder*/Arduino/Libraries/
  3. Download the miniAtmegatron Odytron arduino sketch. Put the contents in /*documents folder*/Arduino/. Then double click SsMinOdytron.ino
  4. Remove the miniAtmegatron shield from the Arduino Uno.
  5. Attach the jumper onto the Arduino Uno, as shown in the instructions.
  6. Reattach the miniAtmegatron shield.
  7. Plug in the USB. Goto Tools->Board->Arduino Uno/Genuino. Goto Tools->Port->COMM** (your Arduino Uno).
  8. Click upload button (top left, second icon in).
  9. That's it. If you want to use the miniAtmegatron with MIDI, you'll need to remove the header again.

Merry Xmas! If you run into any issues with it, just put a message on the forum.