rcrds

here’s a valve based preamplifier in the works.

those little glass envelopes can sure be fun… takes loads and loads of testing and tweaking at high-volume… but thankfully the neighbour has been pounding on the wall when the sound gets to be just perfect. (thanks bob.)

much of this stuff here has been salvaged from old television set and a bit of mysterious military transceiver equipment.

there were some bad buzzes in there… on 1 channel but not the other oddly enough…

...dedicated powersupply with more current and cleaner power for the heaters was in fact the solution.
so now it’s 2 channels with the good kind of quiet. (and the nice wicked-loud i should mention)

only one mighty shock from the dc power so far… felt a bit like a pysio machine…
not so bad for 350 – 400 volts actually…
but do remember kids, involuntary muscle contractions can be dangerous… so play safe, etc.

today marks the official launch of a little webforum dedicated to hacking around with analogue video synthesis.

http://vidisynth.mediumrecords.com/forum/

it’s been there for a few days, but why not pick an official birthdate? today is the 43rd anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who ... a show which was well known for it’s creative visual effects on a tiny budget as well as its neato psychological/sci-fi soundtracks. that’s a good birthday to share.

this is my first completed video-synthesizer.

it adds the wave-forms of audio inputs onto the VGA output of a computer.
it can be patched in ways which turn it into a big, fast, and very noisy audio-visual glitch machine.

more over on project-page>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

info on project-page>>>>>>

here’s just another little video file.

http://www.mediumrecords.com/video/vidisynthexp05b2.mov 18.2Mb 3:13

was experimenting with different resolutions and refresh rates to drive the synth’s sync with. the basic circuit handles 120Hz (as in this example) with no problem and also works with all the other rates like 85Hz, 75Hz etc. higher rates actually do look better but it will be interesting to see what’s involved with converting to SD video.

resolution works fine at 1024 pix wide, but higher than that causes the right side of the image to be brighter than the left for some reason.

(not sure who this music is from at the moment as it was just taped off the radio… will be a bit of work to figure out who it is, so, that soon)

...update… optional diodes on the synch-lines need to go between the inputs and outputs to monitor (or projector)
so NOT as shown in this diagram..
synch inputs need to go directly to the logic without any diodes.. but you could DC or RC couple if you’re into that kind of thing.

some boring experiments>>>>>>

here’s a bit of still image documentation.
it’s an early attempt to make an audio controlled video-image-synthesizer.

...more>>>

some years ago i was trying to capture video with my 266MHz G3 Power PC.
using a free program called Avid-Video-Shop i got some results which worked normal but also some happy accidents.

with a capture setting called “post-compress”, the program would try to grab uncompressed video and audio before attempting to encode the material to the codec of your choice. basically every codec tried would result in mega-glitch material in the end. a very simple A/V blenderizer.

so here from 2004 is a short compilation video clocking in at 1minute, 9.5MB. it’s some of the captured material, live triggered with GRID video software.

this is basically the first project of this kind i’ve ever actually completed… in the sense that it’s done that is..
for now.

so check out the

project page with pictures and exhaustive descriptions >>>>>>>> here>>>>

and the

audio & video documentation >>>>>>>>>>>>

page.

An attempt to make field-recordings which are free from wind-noise.

photos and info on project page >>>