Sega Megadriver Synthesizer In Depth Look
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
- Sega Mega Drive Synthesizer This is a quick vid I shot after shooting the main vid, just a more in depth look at it!
Main Video on this :- • Sega MegaDrive Synthes...
SEGA MEGADRIVE MIDI INTERFACE :- catskullelectr...
Notes and volts :- • Arduino MIDI Controlle...
LITTLE SCALE AMAZING :- / littlescale
More info on this project and my modified code :- www.lookmumnoc...
I've been talking about this project for a while now as well as many others on my extra Vlogs on my patreon. the next patreon livestream is also this week :) :- / lookmumnocomputer
MUSIC :- bit.ly/LMNCSpotify
Paypal :- paypal.me/lookmumnocomputer
Facebook :- / lookmumnocomputer
Website :- www.lookmumnoc...
Instagram :- / lookmumnocomputer
I'm a boring 40 year old man with a real attention span and I really appreciate this more serious, less jump-cutty video so thanks!
It makes sense separating content. I'm a tard, but I'm very curious. I can imagine there's a large section that only appreciates the result.
Just a smidge younger ADD moron here. These in-depth videos stimulate me. I'd even watch the entire build process in real time.
Kids today are conditioned into being useless rather than lacking attention.
Hear, hear (me speaking as a 52 years old fart). I have no clue when it comes to playing synthesizers, much less make them but Sam's videos are always such a delight to watch. Makes for ideal teabreak viewing.
@@idj20 I'll up the ante to boring 53 year old here. :)
Stimulates the parts other channels can't reach
This channel should really have a more serious name like "Observe mother, nay thinking machine" and a furby with a monocle ;D
Thanks for the more in-depth look ^^
Way too serious
How about Yo Sean Jared, yo Sean Jared.
It should
I love that this guy comes off as a complete scatter brain but knows exactly what hes talking about. Cheers!
sam this second chanel is a great idea bud, i'm sure lots of people, including me, will appreciate the deeper look into your projects and thought process!
It was a nice discover to find that most of the consoles and PCs from 80s and 90s have complete synthesizers (PSG, FM and wavetable mainly) inside. Now our generation looks back in that electronic circuits to bring back the sounds of our childhood, ;-)
I absolutely love the sound you achieved with this interface.
"A knob bank" is my favourite phrase for today
Thanks, LMNC, for putting the "ish" in "serious ish."
oh man i remember my dad having a yamaha PSR680 !! this sound is giving me old feelings
I understood nothing but enjoyed everything. :)
Hey Sam! Great Idea. Looks pretty neat. You can save some input pins and some soldering work with the rotary knobs. Just solder resistors in between the pins of the rotary knob. It then basically becomes a poti with certain values, which you can connect like the other potis with just one cable to the multiplexer. You can easily achieve the same assignment as you have now with just a few tweaks to the code. Cheers
hello from australia mr Computer, I am a big fan! You have inspired me to get further into synth diy, and in particular to go ahead with something i've wanted for a while now, to try and make a similarly knobby synth based on the yamaha fm chips as they are still available and extremely cheap, like 2 bucks for all the guts of a dx-200! i just wasn't sure how i would go about making the interface and you have made me feel a lot more confident about that so thank you so much :) can't wait for my chips to arrive from china, and to see more updates about this and your other awesome projects :)
As far as I know, you cannot send on the omni channel, but rather, when omni mode is turned on for a recieving device, the channel number will be 0 for the incoming messages.
So, instead of changing the channel to 0, you could "just" send CC#125 to all the devices, and then continue sending on whatever channel.
This is the coolest thing I've seen on youtube in years and it's two years old. Fuck.
Yesss! I'm so glad you made a channel for more in depth looks at your builds!
In the future, I'd love to see more in depth videos on the design process and decisions made when planning and building!
Thanks!
So glad to know about this other channel.. don't think I've ever subbed so quickly. happy new year!
Thanks for showing off your project, Sam.
Your cable management is like when The Cure and Exploited will have kids together. I love it!
Just found this after watching the latest video. Excellent.
Awesome catchy song ! Would love to hear the complete instrumental version.
Howard Jones is looking ridiculously young. Congrats on this new endeavor Ho Jo!
Sounds so sooo good
YES. this channel. Great idea.
Love this soo much, the mega drive is my spirit animal
That's a weird coincidence. I've been working on something similar using an OPL2 and I thought my idea was original. A couple days into the project and you upload this, literally a more impressive version of the synth I've been making.
looking forward to seeing how it turns out please let me know!!!!
Finally something more advanced & serious. Awesome work.
"I've soldered all the pots on backwards". Just use the map function to reverse the values in software.
int mappedA0 = map(A0, 0, 1024, 1024, 0);
you would think it would work that way! however the issue is then the CV is inverted. annoyingly its an issue in the analog realm
also it works out the attenuation of the cv is backwards too, so I figured I would make it all backwards. however another thing to note, it actually works well for a fair few of the parameters. as the actual ADSR works backwards to a normal analog ads because the knobs are corresponding to the angles on the image at the top of the board, so some are actually inverted to normal use anyway
@LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER Man, with the proper hardware you could wire almost everything from the genny cart, easing a lot programming (almost all in pure 68000 and C). You need a 68901. It has timer and ports, also serial. Is memory mapped also, so you just need decoding an upper address bit and wire the bus to make it work. Is cheaper than arduinoes also
You can buy the crimps loose rather than on a reel, saves having to cut/snap each one off of the band. The banded ones are for automatic crimpers
yep but a lot more expensive, I used to do that, now I just buy reels as its about 10 times cheaper
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE ah I didn't realise that, good to know. Also a lot harder to lose them if they're on a reel!
"Behringer knob thingy"
the Behringer BCR2000. Though they stopped making them a while back :-(
Shame that. They were on to something good with the BCx series. The X-Touch just isn't the same :(
I’ll have a look at the code for sure - curious, what is the issue you actually running in to? You likely might be overflowing a tx buffer trying to send all that at once.. MIDI is actually pretty simple - you can likely also take advantage of something called “running status” - where you send the command (e.g. CC, note on etc) and then you can send multiple data bytes without having to send a command for each data portion. Could save a byte per knob - you’d still have to send a new command for each midi channel though. I’ll have a look today!
Sent an email!
You're brilliant, brother. Inspirational. Can't wait to learn all about this. Honestly, all I really know how to do is solder.. Any tips on where to get started when wanting to learn about and understanding the electronic side of pots/voltage/etc..? Also, learning the midi and coding side of things..? I feel like there are so many things I could do if I only knew how.. Thanks for being you!
Im not sure of the best place to start. I learnt from a very hands on approach. so I'm not sure what to suggest except for build. whenever you have a question search it up, check out Raymon Wilsons make book, and ermm yeah\! dunno haha
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER BUT MORE SERIOUS ISH got any links for where to find a copy of that book? i’m curious
@@skuzza405 www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220/ref=asc_df_1449345220/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310972644448&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5709784411771916009&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006916&hvtargid=pla-546468536087&psc=1&th=1&psc=1
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER BUT MORE SERIOUS ISH thank u so much!! also i want to thank you for starting me off in the world of analog hardware synths, i just bought an MS-20 mini that arrived a few days ago and i’ve never been more inspired ❤️
I have this book, it's great
Amazing work, maybe your most inspiring project yet.
Havent watched a full second yet, but wikll subscribe ... cant have enough of your posts.
Observe, Mother, The Lack Of A CPU.
Arduinos
Behold, Ancestor, An Abscence of Devil's Device
Much better presentation than the Furby [ tm ] one, not all people on the 'net are 12 with a 10 second attention span.
You're hooking in 40-somethings who also watch 3+ hour Joe Rogan podcasts, good vid ;-)
Dead serious, I want to build one of these myself, the mega drive sound card and FM synth is one of my all time fave sounds, and I just need to build one and use! I think based on this and the other stuff you’ve shared this shouldn’t be impossible, but would you ever consider making a tutorial on instructables or something about how to make one?
Some tutorials exist, for smaller ones.
ABOUT YOUR POLYPHONY CODE PROBLEM THINGY, in the main loop, if Midichannelomnipinstate == HIGH; you run the updateMuxPots(); 5 times and increment the midichannel variable. that way, you send the pot values to every channel. that does mean you have to move the updateThing() functions below the channel selection checking.
I switched over to this channel as soon as you mentioned you had a more in-depth video. Great idea to have them both because it would be a shame to waste all that geeking
okay, so, I incidentally know a thing that might be the problem with polyphonic mode, is that the YM2612 isn't polyphonic with 1 instrument having up to 6 note polyphony, but rather 6 instruments that are monophonic, each with it's own independent instrument information. Additionally, Noise channels, (and re-pitching operators independent of root pitch on ch3) are super useful for creating percussive and organic sounds.
yes that is fine like I mention in the vid, there is an Arduino that splits the midi code from a polyphonic stream to separate channels
so the issue im having which is sorted now is sending same parameter changes to all the different instruments, treating them all as the same instrument. incidentally making it polyphonic
Another thing you could add for the sega megadrive synthesizer is an option to use each induvidual channel without the others interfering with it so you could do something like making one channel a strong bass and another one a soft synth. I hope you get things fixed for it. Big fan of you!
thats what this does :) hence why you can scroll through the channel parameter pages
something you could do is program a custom cartridge with a serial or spio connection to an arduino. or you could hack apart a cartridge to interface the arduino directly to the mega drive's data and address bus
Can you dress in lab coat and posh up for this channel please, if you're gonna be serious'ish, put the effort in mate.. hehe
good suggestion ITS ON!
Only if you goto work in just your pants for a week.
@@TRIPPLEJAY00 Or without.
Yeah, the deeper synth nerd needs to be seen.
The one that collects and inhales soldering fumes........... for later use!
Lol...
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER - I get it. Awesome!
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER BUT MORE SERIOUS ISH - I think I still get it ... eyes glazing over @ ~7:00
But seriously, great work.
Ditto! I love the 2nd channel idea... longform for us circuit benders lol
That behringer knob bank you were thinking of: BCR2000, which you can put the Zaquencer firmware on it and use as a MIDI sequencer, 2 of the MIDI channels can be used to send chords too!
I was messing about with wavetable synthesis on the Arduino yesterday and then had all these questions of how I would be able to get enough knobs connected or how to get CV going for all parameters etc, and here you are with your video explaining everything! Also, I just found my old megadrive in a box and was wondering what to do with it ...! Thanks mate! Now, can we have a gritty details video for all your builds please?
ooh, second channel, cheers Sam :)
This should be called the Sega Megamachine.
(It could maybe have compatibility with the Gameboy Megamachine? Like connecting with MIDI etc.)
Mate, you're amazing.
More cool stuff.. thanks man
Just saying has a SEGA fan, if you recorded an album, I would have to buy it
This is such a cool project, I'd love to try and make one as I've got loads of free time. Any chance of a full circuit diagram/schematic?
Thanks
what happened to Look Mother A Computational Device
god i love the YM2612
Luv it... this guy is absolutely crazy.
Over a thousand likes with no dislikes. Haven’t seen that in quite a while
Dope. Good work m8
oh baby
The YM2612 can do 6 channel FM, but you lose the DAC which typically plays digitized drum sounds and voices. The 6th channel can be in either FM or DAC mode at any given time and can probably be changed on the fly as well depending on the capabilities of the sound driver. Both the 68000 and Z80 CPUs can talk to both chips (YM2612 and SN76489) in the Mega Drive / Genesis.
indeed, 2 reasons i went with 5 voices, in my opinion any more than 5 voices in a polyphonic synth is counterproductive (probably cus the most notes i ever play at once is 5 haha and hate over hanging notes) also gen mdm sadly omited the fm option on channel 6
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER The GenMDM manual specifies a channel 6 DAC toggle command. Have you got an older version?
can you still play Road Rash?
yes the mega drive isn't actually modified at all. so you can still use it
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE What would happen if you put a game in there and tried playing the synth?
Boy do I miss that game.
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE cool as fook. Always loved the sound of the MD. Trying to get my guitar to sound like one for a while but more expensive little boxes required.
JackANDJude surely it wouldn’t do anything? cause if the game he’s using to control the built in sounds is taken out i don’t think it’d do anything anymore
Hey, I love this video and the project. I have an old sega megadrive here and want to build it myself. Is there a way to get a list of the parts and the schematic? :)
sick
They may be backwards but they're consistent. Imagine if you had done one or two backwards and the rest correctly.
"What the fudge"
I have been living in Aus from wales since 2007 haven't heard that in aaaageess haha .
Floyd Steinberg has created some custom patches using the YM2612 / YM3438 found in the Sega Genesis Megadrive and made a really nice video. Check it here: th-cam.com/video/UxOlmJB2zeI/w-d-xo.html
This bangs! I would probably trade my digitone for this hahaha fm synthesis with knobs is the only fm worth the pain of patching. Are the 5v lines going to the modulation jacks all wired in series? If you plug cables in, would that mess with the voltage all across the chain / would there be voltage drop across the series anyway?
I'm pretty sure there must be a voltage drop, unless he has a serious positive bus. The ground is probably (or could be) the faceplate.
out of curiosity, is there a way of getting your VC jack/knob combos built en masse?
Yay!
I'm watching this not understanding a quarter of the vocabulary, which sounds like absolute VX nonsense. But I still enjoy every minute of it for the pure enthusiasm, talent and creativity, which translates perfectly 😁
If you don't already, you should have a playlist of your tracks...oh my, look at all that breadboard...
dunno jack about Arduino, but the code is C++, so maybe you could use a "for" loop in your code to send each command to all channels:
for example: for(int chann = 0; chann < 16; chann++) sendMidiShortMessage(status | chann, val1, val2 );
I'm curious, what is doing the small board with the wire connected to the gamepad port?
thats the board that comes with GEN MDM @t to plug midi into the controller port for the megadrive to read
You are amazing. ✨👍🏼✨
Sweet!
Also, would you consider doing a bit of live streaming during your soldering/making sessions to talk a bit about what you're doing and do a bit of Q&A? That'd be awesome
He does it for Patreons I suppose.
im currently figuring how to do things, but I may do them once in a blue moon on this channel.
Speaking as a solder nerd, I suspect it would force him to be in performing mode and might throw the whole thing into some counterproductive thing where the soldering is no longer fun.
Sam, yeah - it's a bit annoying to protect so much inputs... But as I remember there is a mean where you just solder one (or two) "quick" diodes (1n4148 probably) and that's it - it will cut off any spikes. It can be necessary (not sure though) because of CMOS chips you're using to control the Sega. I've read a lot of times that they're pretty weak about static discharges.
Nice. Want one.
I've emailed you a possible solution to your polyphony troubles! Hope it helps ^^
Props for using legit Arduinos.
Can you make one for the DX7.??That would be awesome.
Could you tell us a bit about the costs of all that, and where you buy your components & all that?
Crazy
Awesome :)
Hey... what if you made another part to your creation that took all the music n samples off difft game cartriges youd interchange and use that as difft sounds? Did that make sense what i said?
Well, I don't know what the knobs and buttons and everything mean, but the code for sending stuff to all channels when channel 6 is selected would look like this:
if(midichannel == 6) {
for (int i = 1; i < 6; i++) {
MIDI.sendControlChange(MUXBUTTONS[i]->Bvalue, MUXBUTTONS[i]->Bccvalue, MUXBUTTONS[i]->Bchannel + i);
}
break;
}
MIDI.sendControlChange(MUXBUTTONS[i]->Bvalue, MUXBUTTONS[i]->Bccvalue, MUXBUTTONS[i]->Bchannel + midichannel);
break;
This is around line 293
nice! thank you Ill see how that goes down! :D
@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE it's just for that one bit. There are more places where it uses the selected channel. So, the same kind of for loop for those would probably work there too
Yeahhhhhhh boooooooiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!👌👌💚
I've made a web based synth but want to make a web based FM synth now, that makes noises like that! Where would i begin or where can i read up how to link up all the oscillators?
search up fm operators
I’d pay for one of these.
That song at the beginning of this video (end of the other one).. You should make it!
noice
if (message == 0) {
switch (BUTTONS[i]->Bcommand) {
case 0: //Note
MIDI.sendNoteOn(BUTTONS[i]->Bvalue, 127, BUTTONS[i]->Bchannel);
How does the sega use it's FM equivalent timbres, are they separated by channel? If so, shouldn't the last line use a variable++ and an If (variable > 4){variable = 1;}
Have you tried always sending five signals, but when it's not in polyphany mode you send four dummy signals?
Cheers
could you add voltage protection after the multiplexer? you'd only need 3 or 4 then :)
for the omni mode, could you add a for loop around the midi send? ie if poly mode, for (int outchan=1; outchan
What about a 5.1v zener in series with the cv in? No perfect because the voltage drop means you wouldn’t have 5V exactly but you could throw in 10v cvs yolo style
Jacob Siener indeed! I was just being lazy. In my experience sending more of less than 0-5v doesn’t hurt an arduino. I have one that gets an lfo that is +10v and -10v for about 300 hours so far and it’s fine. One day! One day
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Probably because it's a very low current; arduinos have a snapback diode at the 6v level to bring 'anything above 6v' down to a 5.1v level. As long as you're under the sink/source mA limit for the chip, you probably won't blow anything. So 1-3mA LFO signal at +10v/-10v will likely just be bled as heat across the snapback diode. Thwack a copper heatsink 'for raspberry pi' on that atmel and point ye olde 12v chassis fan running at 5-7v across them. Five D batteries and a switch, if you *really* wanna isolate the coil noise, which shouldn't matter a bit for the YM2612's filthy-delicious output. *ANY* moving air (even if the case is sealed) ought to be enough to dissipate any hotspots unless you're really overdriving the GPIOs enough to let the magic blue smoke out. So any really hot CV source has a small chance to deliver enough current, but it's probably so unlikely (especially with the amount of opto isolation that musicians like for sparky-safety) an occurrence to be statistically insignificant.
Any plans to release a schematic for the project?
Hello man can you post a list of all things needed to make this cool synth. I have for now the sega mega drive and genmdm . Best regards.
Aleksandar
I feel like this could be done with a single arduino and a few analog multiplexers for the pots. I think I might give it a try myself honestly.
that's what it was?
I worked on a retro synth build using an axoloti a while back and used the notes and volts code too for the midi controlling ( community.axoloti.com/t/retro-lookin-synth-work-in-progress/4134 )
I found that the notes and volts code worked when twisting knobs but when I would start up, the values of the potentiometers wouldnt initialize properly when using multiplexers. For yours, if you have a pot value...1 then shut down, turn it to 11 and then start up. will the value of the knob be 11 or will it still be 1 until you fiddle with it a bit?
Is this solid core wire? I'm no expert but I think stranded wire is more resilient to failure due to fatigue caused by vibrations, specially important if you wanna tour with this beast.
indeed it is. I've not had a problem, I stopped using stranded because it wasn't as easy to work with
I put a hacky "omni mode" solution on the original vid.