Final Prototype

I have finally finished the prototype I’ll show in the presentation for the Element 1 module. In this prototype I decided to include controls of the synthesiser, so I could explain the sonic qualities of it. For the actual finished project I’ll abstract those controls into a single button, as I’ve explained in other posts.

Screen shot of final UI of my prototype device.

The figure above is the actual consolidated UI of the prototype . The functionality of the device goes from left to right, starting with the grain engine parameters and finishing with the output meter. To be able playback from the device first you have to load a file to the buffer, that can be done by dragging a .wav file to the space next to the PanDist parameter. Then you have to toggle the Start Engine. After the those steps, there is some parameters for grain generation, changing the grain start point, grain duration and pitch. After this you get to the envelope generator, it can be toggled on and off with Env On/Off. When the envelope is activated you can trigger it by either pushing the gate button or sending midi data. The envelope shape can be customised by adding or taking points of the graph. When Env/LFO is toggled on, LFO mode is activated and the envelope will start cycling. Finally at the end you have a set of parameters to adjust the amount of the envelope affecting the parameters. When the dial is on 0 the envelope does not affect that parameter.

After finishing the device I made a lot of tests to check the possible timbres of it. I found out that my device was quite powerful, I managed to create a bunch of different sounds that where very interesting. The modulation was also very effective, it gave the sound cool transformations that could be easily used as progressions in a composition.

Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5

The device is flexible of creating different aesthetics. It can produce more tonal and musical sounds like Test 1 and Test 3, or create quite dissonant and experimental sounds like the rest of the tests. I’m happy about this because it was one of my main goals with the device, making it flexible to use any medium or form of sound productions.

Demo of Prototype