Questions re: Procyon Specs

[esteband]

Hi All,

I'm brand new to these forums, but have been lurking here for quite a while. It seems I've already read most of the posts twice already.

So when I finally received my Procyon yesterday, I only spent a few minutes going through the internal sessions. After that, I was ready to connect it to my computer and see what I could make it do on my own. I consider myself somewhat of an electronic musician, and have been chomping at the bit to start designing my own sessions.

I've tried synchromuse - which is fantastic. CraigT, I want to say thank you - not only for the exceptionally clear tutorial - but also for the session you included with it. It was REALLY awesome. I hope some of my own synchromuse sessions can begin to approach that kind of quality.

My questions here, however, concern the onboard audio fucntionality:

1) I notice the onboard audio synth in the Procyon is pretty limited. It is basically just 2 sine waves with the only controllable parameters being pitch and modulation source. Is this a limitation of the software (Procyon editor and firmware), or is it a limitation of the hardware audio IC? In other words (theoretically) could software be developed to control parameters such as a filter, LFO, or ADSR envelope?

2) I understand the vast majority of users would never touch this functionality, but it occurs to me that releasing an SDK might allow geeky users such as myself to develop some additional functionality. Is that a possibility?

Thanks! I'm really enjoying this new toy!

[CraigT]

Hi, and Welcome!

Thanks for your kind words, but I can't take credit for the session used as a Synchromuse example - I can't recall the exact history, but it is a MindPlace supplied piece.

In addition to the two audio oscillators, each light control channel can be used to modulate an audio channel. The light control channels have a lot more control - phase, duty cycle, offset, waveshape, etc. Have a look at my blog "Don't be afraid, it's only an editor".

There is a "sort of" SDK available by emailing MindPlace. I say "sort of" becasue basically almost no-one has attempted to use it and thus it has not been evolved as a friendly package. What it amounts to is an assortment of files that do make it possible to control the Procyon. It's all in VB6 and unless you have VB6, it's a dog to get it working in later versions.

Cheers,
Craig

[esteband]

Thanks, Craig. I will request the SDK from mindplace and see if I can make some sense out of it. I don't have very high hopes, but it's worth a look.