Projekte

My Turntable Tower

Monday, April 10th, 2017

A few years ago a friend of mine gave me his old Syrincs M3-220 Monitor System which Satellites had given up service. Repairing them was quite straight forward as some diodes and caps had blown, probably in unison with the tweeters (as to who took whom down, I leave that to the pros). Finding replacement for the tweeters was a bit harder because mine was an older model and a fitting 6 Ohm (why?!?)  tweeter wasn’t available. I ended up with a combination of the replacement of more recent date, salvaged front plates and epoxy…

Ok, so I’ve good a pretty good sound system there. What now? It had been a long time since I’ve touched my turntables and I was missing the sound of vinyl quite a lot. Main reason I didn’t get the things out of their crates and connected them to a stereo is that I was simply too lazy and I didn’t find the right place for the setup in my room. My BassJump provided me with a bearable solution (both in weight and quality) for a while, but feeling the bass is something different.

Some time ago I was at an exhibition of Jay Gard and I decided I wanted to build something in that direction. So here it is:

 

Turn Table Tower

 

The front panel features a rotary switch for off/line in/phono/bluetooth (bt not integrated yet) and the volume and bass pots of the sound system. to have more control of the sound I added a Behringer EQ . It adds quite some noise, probably the power supply, but it’s alright. All in all I’m very happy with what I got. Vinyl is back in the game and placing my monitor on top of the box provides me with a nice home cinema sound.

 

I am in the process of getting the building plans done in Fusion360 as an exercise and will provide them here if anyone’s interested.

Audiopanel 1.0

Monday, September 30th, 2013

I had some procrastinating to do the last two weeks. Being who I am, this usually leads to some kind of new project, in this case I finally started something I wanted to do for a long time. What’s actually new here is that I kind of finished it :) So I present you: Audiopanel 1.0.

Audiopanel 1.0

Audiopanel is an enhanced version of the [audioweb 0.1] I installed 2 years ago in my room. It’s a panel of 14 small speakers that switch the sound around like my [Diskokugel] will one day do and also is backlit by rgb-LEDs. It also has a “stereo mode” where 6 speakers each work as left and right channel. The lighting can be controlled in hue, saturation and brightness. Right now this is all done by hand, but in the future I hope it will all work via bluetooth.

What makes me proud is I made this mostly out of stuff I had lying around in my workshop somehow. I took electronic from older circuits and some broken boards and made it up as I went on. That’s why the stuff in the back looks so “modular” ;)

The whole rgb part still has some glitches. I used an HSVtoRGB patch I found in the [Arduino forum] based on formulas acquired [here] but it doesn’t seem to check out comletely yet. Also, since there is no separate GND for analog and digital signals in my circuits, the audio signal can have quite an influence on the dimmer when turned on loud. But I decided this to be a feature ;)

Using the stuff that also powers my Diskokugel, I learned quite something about the circuitry again. I know now that I could have saved my time trying to make it [louder] with a different amplifier setup by simply experimenting some with the existing pre-amp. There’s more headroom here :) Also the issue of the separate GNDs leaves me a bit concerned how this whole thing will work out inside the ball itself. We’ll see…

Mixer 0.1

Friday, January 18th, 2013

The Mixer 0.1

 

Mixer 0.1 is my first approach to building a compact universal controller for music programs. It features 5 “channels”, each with one slider, 5 knobs, one button with LED attached and a vu meter. It’s all made to fit on a standard EU pcb of 16x10cm.

More pictures and video on the bottom of this article!

Kicad schematic of the beta and the Arduino patch can be downloaded [here]

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Audioweb 0.1

Monday, September 5th, 2011

As a special gimmick for my birthday party i used the elements of [Audiosphere] to build a web o 6×6 speakers on a wall in my room. The sensation is, of course, a different one and since its now totally at hand, I will do some more experimenting in the next weeks.

Audioweb

the cable length of the sphere didn't fit, so it doesn't look perfect yet. I still like it :)

AudioSphere for PDCON

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

Having introduced the [Diskokugel] project at Berlins biweekly [puredata] [user group], I was asked to build an installation for the finalizing event in Berlins [LEAP] gallery. Being busy doing technical coordination for the [Über Lebenskunst Festival] this was quite a task.

I used the five prototype circuits to build a walk-in sphere of 40 speakers. The speakers were attached to nylon strings stretched from the ceiling to the ground, so you could bend them aside to step in. In an effort I provided a crude interface in PD that provided a joypad for people inside the sphere to select different programs, such a random, sound going in circles, etc.

Contentwise, we had placed a call for content, which resulted in one piece that was handed to me and which worked quite well. I have yet to get the adress of the composer to thank him again ;)

 

The result was quite to my liking and so was the feedback (apart from nobody understanding the interface, but in the end that didn’t matter much). The sphere was fun to use. I personally found it pretty dizzying standing inside the speakers while the sound came from a different direction every 25 milliseconds. Unfortunately, as of now there are no pictures to show. The  installation stood at LEAP only for two days, in which I had forgotten to bring my camera. Hopefully I will find someone of the PDCON who made good ones.

[UPDATE: pictures of the building process and a picture from a mobile phone (thanks ckp and astring!)]

a picture by astring

in action. the nylon-strings could be bent apart to step inside. (pic by ckp)

arrangement of the circuits

some notes

more notes

Diskokugel

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Diskokugel is a work in progress, hopefully soon to be finished. For the whole story and latest updates check [here]

 

0.2beta

I started the project “Diskokugel” in autumn 2009. The vision was to build a ball made of speakers that can be turned on and off individually. This ball would turn while sound would be “reflected” in one constant direction, just like light from a mirrorball. So I went to the [sublab], a hacker space I am co-founder of, and asked for help. I got it galore from Christian, who volunteered to design a circuit that would both be cheap and easy to build.

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Quäkmonster

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

For the Popupshop exhibition in Frankfurt I equipped a stuffed cookie monster with a theremin and a speaker. (more…)

Dive! II

view gallery Thursday, September 21st, 2006

Dive! IIis a closed circuit video installation aiming to illustrate my personal views on the element water and some of its characteristics.

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Kafka – Der zerrissene Fisch

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

 

 

For the puppet theatre piece “Kafka – der zerrissene Fisch” (Kafka – the torn fish) I produced a video showing Kafka on a public reading. The video was projected as an epilogue at the end of the piece.

 

Die Räuber

view gallery Sunday, February 19th, 2006

raeuber_thumb01 “The team of directors uses the drama as lynchpin for its contemporary discourse about the inertia of the past and the forceful supersession of the coming. With its camera man Felix Obée it presents a prime example for live video on stage along the way.”

(Andreas Hillger, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung 24.01.06) (more…)