#audio effects

Recently I've been picking it up as a hobby and got selected for a few auditions. Some I plan on auditioning for require singing, and I have tried to record my singing, but my high notes aren't being picked up

I use OBS to record, and have messed around with most of the filters I use. I tried adjusting my gain, my open threshold, my everything, really. I've tried leaning closer to the mic, I've tried leaning farther from the mic. It's a HyperX Quadcast

I wanted to play around with some audio effects and used the end of a tma episode as text bc it seemed very fitting lol I like where this is going, maybe I'll come around to actually doing more with that

First is my Korg Mini Kaoss Pad 2S. I noticed one day that the side button which turns on the internal microphone — to record things, or to feed your voice into the vocoder settings — wasn't clicking, or working at all. So I took it apart to find the tiny tactile switch was entirely missing.

You can see where it should be, there on the right under the plastic button, by the white silk-screened outline labeled SW7. There are two tiny holes in the board that mate with pegs on the underside of the switch, but the whole thing somehow got knocked clean off. For a while, I couldn't find it at all. These switches are tiny, and I really worried about being able to find a surface-mount tact switch in a compatible size. Fortunately, when I went to close the case back up, it turned out to have been stuck to the magnet in the internal speaker. I soldered it back on without major difficulty.

The second is a newer acquisition.

This is an older guitar pedal, BOSS's DD-20 Digital Delay. It's still quite powerful by today's standards, with up to 23 seconds of delay, 11 modes including reverse delay and a looper, and tap tempo. On the left is the manufacturer's photo, and my unit is on the right; there are some obvious differences. I picked it up in somewhat compromised condition. The four knobs on the left were missing, the button labeled "tap" wouldn't click, and — most importantly — the rotary encoder on the right would glitch in such a way that you couldn't reduce the time or BPM setting. If you rotated it slowly counterclockwise, the setting would click down a few times, and then count upwards. The tap tempo on the foot switch still worked, so it could be used, but it was definitely suboptimal.

So I took it apart. It's designed very nicely; the whole thing is in two PCBs, the main board and the control board. The non-working tap switch turned out to be a broken plastic switch actuator. The switch on the board still works, so I just removed the actuator until I can locate or print a replacement. I've stuck a short bit of dowel to the switch with fun-tak, so it can be pressed with the case on.

The rotary encoder turned out pretty lucky. I happened to have mostly-compatible replacements on hand, which I got a couple years ago for a project I haven't gotten to yet.

I desoldered the original, seen on the left, from the board. As you can see, it's shorter, both in the body and in the shaft, than the replacements, but they're exact matches electrically and in the footprint, so the new one dropped right in. You may or may not be able to tell from the photo above, but both the cup around the encoder and the knob ride higher from the enclosure's surface than they did with the original, but it's perfectly serviceable. Once back together, everything works just as it should. (The replacement knobs on the left-hand pots are ones l likewise had on hand.)

The two units are an awfully stark contrast in builds. The Korg device is all tiny surface mount devices on a single board in a plastic shell; the Boss switches and other controls are through-hole devices on their own board, and the case is, save the backplate and battery compartment, made of large hunks of die-cast aluminum. Then again, they're very different use cases. The Mini Kaoss Pad is for DJs and producers, and meant to be safe in a pocket or bag, where the delay pedal is meant to be stomped on, day after day, by boot-wearing guitar players.

Here’s the signal chain I was using on the UA Arrow last night. Fender Jaguar DI into the UA-610B for some warmth > RE-201 to make it bounce > ATR-102 to glue it all together. This about maxes the DSP on the Arrow but it works for me.

one of the main reasons I love and use the DSI Prophet 12 so much is its almost limitless depth of sound design possibilities. instead of coming with a whole bunch of digital, ready-made effects it gives you 4 analog delays. add on top of that 4 LFOs and 2 AUX envelopes giving you the option to make pretty much whatever effect you want. you can make your own custom flangers, phasers, choruses with the delays AND there’s tuned feedback (that can be used in Karplus-Strong synthesis). I will almost always want to make my own stuff if I can. I think it’s cool to have your own custom effects that live only on your synth.