Early Kraftwerk Modification by Doepfer

You might know that Doepfer can also do customizing and special design jobs for their clients (see HERE), but they must have looked up strange when they got a telephone-call from Dusseldorf in the late 80's..

It was Florian Schneider from Kraftwerk, calling if Doepfer could help them out retrofitting a miniature keyboard with MIDI.
Florian would use this keyboard later to trigger a sampler, and used it with Kraftwerk live for the Pocket Calculator song.
Schneider had to come back a few times to München for this project, and that is when the good relations started between Doepfer and Kraftwerk.

From that time on they worked together on various projects like the MAQ 16/3 sequencer, the MOGLI, the A-100 vocoder and some others.

Since then Doepfer even dares to advertise some products with the 'designed in cooperation with KRAFTWERK' tagline, but "...we shall not exaggerate that", according to Dieter...

Sources: http://network.technobass.net/page/kraftwerk-historical-images
KEYS Magazine 12/97 - Picture by: Petra Schrambömer

Dark Energy II Specifications Announced

From the Doepfer website:

The Dark Energy (I) has to be discontinued because an important electronic part (CEM3394) is no longer available. (Read more on that HERE)
We are working on the redesign of the Dark Energy at full speed.
The new Dark Energy II will look like the Dark Energy I at first sight.
Only the function of some controls and switches will differ from the Dark Energy I.

Dark Energy (I) picture by Marc Weerts
from the band 87PM

These are the most important differences between Dark Energy I and II:

- 12dB multimode filter with lowpass, notch, highpass and bandpass (instead of 24dB lowpass of Dark Energy I)
- the previous LM control of the filter becomes the filter type control (continuous crossfade lowpass - notch highpass - bandpass)
- the LM function of the filter is no longer available
- the waveform switch is used to select between saw and clipped/distorted saw (in the center position the saw is off)

- the basic waveform of the VCO is saw (not triangle like the Dark Energy I).
- because of the pure analog circuit and the temperature control it takes about 30 minutes until the VCO is in tune.
- the VCA has a exponential scale (not the combined linear/exponential scale of Dark Energy I)

All other functions will remain unchanged.
Even the price will be the same (currently Euro 428).
The Dark Energy II will be probably available summer 2012.

Doepfer hopes to have a (working?) prototype ready for the MusikMesse in Germany, which starts next week.

Video: Doepfer Sequence

Another nice A-100 Video, found on Vimeo is simply called Doepfer Sequence
It features a Dark Time sequencer controlling a large A-100 system and a Dark Energy, plus some other equipment.



Original link
http://vimeo.com/37901408
Uploaded by Mark Angel

Modifying the A-124 Wasp Filter a Little More

I don't know why i didn't come up with this idea earlier, but here is a short follow-up to my earlier self-oscillation modification post for the A-124 WASP filter ( original post can be found HERE )

The (mini-) modification consists of adding a switch to toggle between self-oscillation on/off modes.
To do this i had to use an extra 4 HP wide blank panel because there isn't enough space left on the A-124's front-panel to add a switch.
This is not my first 'expansion module',
i  made one earlier for my A-127 Triple Resonance Filter

I did this modification in less than an hour; i carefully drilled a 6 mm. hole in a new 4HP blank panel, desoldered one side of the resistor that i added earlier and connected that one to the new switch.
Another piece of wire connects the other side of the switch back to the original position of where the resistor was connected.

I am very happy with the result, i can now manually switch, turn the resonance-knob up to self-oscillation and simply switch back to the original mode again...

Thanks to Tony Steventon from Synovatron for the project review

A-114 Ring Modulator Video's by Raul Pena

The next module in the wonderful video tutorial series by Raul Pena is the A-114 Ring Modulator.
Sit back, relax and enjoy!

Video 1: Ring Modulation of Basic Waveforms with Doepfer A114 Ring Mod

" A look at the Doepfer A 114 Ring Mod. Basic Waveforms are used to explore timbres created. Sound and Video by Raul Pena."

Video 2: More Ring Modulation with Doepfer A114 Ring Mod

" Second in the Ring Modulation series. Using a random melody as a sound source timbres are explored further. Sound and Video by Raul Pena."

Video 3: Further Modulations in Ring Modulation with Doepfer A114

" Third installment of the Ring Modulation Series. This video explores how using modulation can change a Ring Modulation Sound. Sound and Video by Raul Pena."

Doepfer GMX-1

In 1992 Doepfer released their version of a General MIDI (GM)-compatible MIDI Expander, the GMX-1.
It was Doepfer's attempt to offer a fairly cheap alternative to the popular Soundblasters, LAPC's and cheap GM-compatible modules like the Roland SC-7.
The GMX-1 was (based on) a Dream mainboard - you will also find this module as Dream GMX-1 mentioned in old magazines - Future Music rated it 86/100 in issue 4, page 41 )

It was a simple grey box, with only an on/off switch, a volume slider, a mini-jack headphone output and an LED that visualized incoming MIDI signals on the front.
On the back it had 3 MIDI connectors (In, Out and Thru), stereo audio-outputs (cinch) and a 9 Volts adapter input.
Beside that, it also had a nine-pin RS-232-C port that enabled the unit to be connected to a serial port without the need for a MIDI expansion on your computer.
With this port you could hook it up to almost any PC, Commodore Amiga or Apple Macintosh, and it even came with MS Windows drivers and 2 MS-DOS programs that could play back MIDI-files.

The sounds (158 instruments, 47 Sound-effects and 92 percussive sounds) were based on PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) and Algorithmic Synthesis, sampled at 16-bit / 44.1 kHz , and could not be altered.
You could control a few things like volume, pan, velocity, after-touch, modulation and pitch-bend, but no chorus, reverb or other effects.
The Doepfer GMX-1 only had 20-voice polyphony, so it did not fully match the (24-voice) GM standard, but beyond that it was completely GM-compatible.
Besides General MIDI the module also offered an MT-32-mode, that could emulate the (classic 1987) Roland MT-32 module settings.

It sounded decent, but not too impressive, but what would you expect for the price...
Reports say it didn't sound awful and that it actually had some good sounds too, like the pizzicato strings and percussive sounds like vibraphone, marimba, music box and harmonica...
But if you'd put your GMX-1 audio through one of your own FX processors it already sounded a lot better.

Price at the time was 649 DM > around 330 Euro's
Only 250 units were sold through Doepfer, but Zone Distribution in Britain has probably distributed at least a same amount through England and perhaps even more worldwide.

Video: Charlie Chaplin Through a Doepfer Vocoder

As one of my earliest Quick Tips i suggested to test your Vocoder with recorded spoken word.
In that way you don't have to hold a microphone or constantly keep an eye your audio-levels.
The audio-example that went with that post wasn't that special, but here's another short but nice demonstration, uploaded by YouTube user WorksLimited.

Video: Charlie Chaplin through a Doepfer modular A-100 Vocoder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH1NlbDhPRQ
"Charlie Chaplin speech from The Great Dictator, slowed down about 10% and run through a Doepfer Vocoder. The results compare very favorably to units like the Synton and Sennheiser (in my humble opinion)."

Uploaded by WorksLimited