By MPZ60
Mon Aug 04, 2008 2:39 pm
I am curious to see a bent 500 .... any out there?
By bedouin
Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:23 pm
poundaproblem wrote:Circuit bend a sampler? Why?
To get new sounds out of it? My RZ-1 is bent and occasionally, bending sounds cool.
By MPZ60
Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:21 am
Casio SK1?..The most circuit bent machine of all time..It's a sampler...You would circuit bend the 500 for the same reason..You could manipulate samples in a way unachievable by an os ..It being battery powered allows you to tinker with it without being electrocuted..You will see one bent soon I am sure.. But in order to really appreciate a bent sampler you must thirst for way out sounds...
By guyb
Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:16 am
Nah this is a modern DSP platform, there wont be anything to bend in it.
(This is all guess work)
The SK1 will be developed around a set of chips such as a keyboard scanning chip, a wavetable chip which iterates through a set of addresses on a memory chip which correspond to the waveform at a speed determined by the sampling rate of the sound and the desired pitch shift (this will also be fed by an oscillator for the vibrato and a low pass filter on the note for the portamento. There will then be an envelope generator chip following this, as well as some kind of sequencer chip doing all of the preset rhythms etc.
The MPC500 on the other hand is a digital signal processor connected to some pads, a slider, an amplifier and an LCD screen. All of the hard work is done in software. The software could be reprogrammed to do something completely different, for example pong.
So whereas the SK1 has analog components and internal connections which could potentially do something interesting to the sound, the MPC is purely digital. The flexibility of the MPC is in reprogramming it, not in altering the circuitry. In theory, and I mean pure theory, you could add additional peripherals to the MPC such as a VGA adapter and a mouse. Obviously you would then have to reprogram the O/S from scratch to drive these. However in practice this is not possible, since you cant add extra tracks to the PCB! More to the point, there isnt any point in doing this whatsoever, the hardware schematics wont be that complicated or difficult to design (from an experienced engineers point of view), the software is the hard part (as well as getting the pads to feel good, and even Akai mess that up sometimes).
Sorry to dissapoint you
Guy
(This is all guess work)
The SK1 will be developed around a set of chips such as a keyboard scanning chip, a wavetable chip which iterates through a set of addresses on a memory chip which correspond to the waveform at a speed determined by the sampling rate of the sound and the desired pitch shift (this will also be fed by an oscillator for the vibrato and a low pass filter on the note for the portamento. There will then be an envelope generator chip following this, as well as some kind of sequencer chip doing all of the preset rhythms etc.
The MPC500 on the other hand is a digital signal processor connected to some pads, a slider, an amplifier and an LCD screen. All of the hard work is done in software. The software could be reprogrammed to do something completely different, for example pong.
So whereas the SK1 has analog components and internal connections which could potentially do something interesting to the sound, the MPC is purely digital. The flexibility of the MPC is in reprogramming it, not in altering the circuitry. In theory, and I mean pure theory, you could add additional peripherals to the MPC such as a VGA adapter and a mouse. Obviously you would then have to reprogram the O/S from scratch to drive these. However in practice this is not possible, since you cant add extra tracks to the PCB! More to the point, there isnt any point in doing this whatsoever, the hardware schematics wont be that complicated or difficult to design (from an experienced engineers point of view), the software is the hard part (as well as getting the pads to feel good, and even Akai mess that up sometimes).
Sorry to dissapoint you
Guy
By MPZ60
Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:11 pm
thanks for the info.. I guess I just thought battery power = bendable equipment..
By distortedtekno
Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:16 am
^^^ If you want to bend a good battery powered drum machine, get your hands on a Roland TR-505. It's the same size as the MPC500 and takes 6 AA batteries as well. So it would be a perfect companion to take out with you, as well as in the studio. When you sample the bent sounds to the MPC, you'll have even more flexibility on the Roland to tweak it out in real time. I do this with my MPC1000 and Roland TR-626 (the big brother of the TR-505). 
PS- Check out this link for info on bending a TR-505
http://burnkit2600.com/gear/tr-505/
PS- Check out this link for info on bending a TR-505
http://burnkit2600.com/gear/tr-505/