Monthly Archives: January 2013

Audulus moves

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Not too long ago, I wrote a rant about how music software on my iPad didn’t really live up to its promise: the developers tended to get little things like MIDI wrong, apps wouldn’t work together, designs were flawed. But this is the brilliant thing: you can see the software mature. Most of the things that drove me mad then just is gone now, and all this in less than a year. The software is growing up.

audulus1Even more brilliant is this: You’ve got some question, or some idea, or some issue, so you go to the developer’s forum and let off steam. And they listen, and they reply. Almost instantly. Even though the guy that answers may be some  lone code warrior who does all his coding (and his customer service) from a mobile home he’s traveling the world in – you will get help. You may even, after posting some especially ludicrous ideas, find yourself being beta tester for a smart little thing like Audulus.

Modular Madness: Building Blocks for Music Nerds

Audulus is a software representation of a modular synthesizer, basically the electronic musician’s Lego: Instead of a monolithic device, you have little bulding blogs you can wire and rewire any way you like. Well, modular synths are nothing new, not even in software; I ran into Audulus some weeks after learning about the open-source modular synthesis system PureData.

Steve Porcaro (Toto) and his massive modular synthesizer. (CC BY jamesthephotographer via Wikimedia Commons)

Steve Porcaro (Toto) and his massive modular synthesizer. (CC BY jamesthephotographer via Wikimedia Commons)

What drew me to Audulus was it’s elegance, and its natural usability in the iOS environment. (Although, originally, Audulus is a native Mac OS X app.) And it looks gorgeous.

Audulus' welcome gift - a rich polyphonic synth pad with a soul

Audulus’ welcome gift – a rich polyphonic synth pad with a soul

To be frank: for me, Audulus now is more of a brilliant toy rather than your everyday universal tool, but it will be one day – you can see it grow. It just got Audiobus support, so now you can wire up your own custom effects module. (You’ll find some extremely weird examples in the Audulus forum.) And in the upcoming 1.9 release which I had the honour to beta-test, you can build your own custom modules, or “nodes”, as they are termed, and re-use them wherever you like.

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Demo for a custom-built waveshaper module

Ah, and you get a shiny new patch browser.

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It’s extremely satisfying to see a great project on the move.

Tech Hack: Alesis IO Dock with USB Hub

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Update, May 2014. I’ve put the unit on eBay. And I’ve summarised lessons learned from this hack here.

The Alesis IO Dock is a great product for iPad musicians – this small hack makes it even greater. It overcomes one limitation of the IO Dock: You can’t simply hook it to a USB hub. So I decided to build in an additional hub – which allows me to hook up additional class-compliant interfaces like my M-Audio Axiom master keyboard, and power them via the hub.

Yes, it works. No, it hasn’t been thoroughly tested yet. So try at your own risk.

The hacked IO Dock

The hack isn’t too sophisticated or demanding. Yet there are a couple of things we need to discuss before going to the step-by-step description. I’ve also tried to answer some questions that might arise in the FAQ.

What we’re doing:

We’re smuggling the USB hub into the connection between the iPad and the IO dock. (The video explains why.)

What you need:

  • A USB hub. Edit, 4-Jan-2012:  After giving it some more consideration I think that you might start with a normal hub rather than a powered one. (I used a powered hub Belkin F5U404.) This has certain limitations, though. Why? USB knows two basic types of port power – normal USB ports are supposed to deliver a 5V supply current of up to 100mA. That is enough to power simple interfaces and USB sticks. It is not enough to charge your phone, or to power a USB master keyboard.  So using a hub without power supply would normally mean that the iPad is not properly charged – but the way the iPad charges is actually hard-wired in the IO Dock’s iPad connector, so the iPad will charge even without a powered hub. (It is connected to the USB port’s input rather than to its output anyway).  IMPORTANT: As we will be using the IO Dock’s power supply, there are some limits to what we can drive with our hub. Please: See the FAQ. And I’ll have a more thorough look at the IO Dock’s power supply circuitry soon.
  • The hub’s connector cable. These cables have a flat A-type USB plug to go into your computer, and usually a micro-USB B-type plug like the ones for charging your phone (if you don’t have an iPhone, that is). We are going to cut up this cable and configure it to supply and interface the hub within the IO dock.
  • 2x 1.27mm 2mm grid pinstripe connectors – one 6-pin male, one 6-pin female. If you can, get connector strips with turned sockets; you can use them as plug and as female connector, like these ones. The original connector is like this one: [sample]
    EDIT, 19-Aug-13: Corrected the “these ones” link to RS Components. Also see FAQ section.  EDIT, 10-Sep-14: Modelmakers may look in their boxes for JST PH connectors (thanks Wolfgang!)
  • A small 100uF/6.3V capacitor – or something along these lines – as a buffer for the hub’s power supply. If you haven’t already, see the FAQ.
  • Basic soldering tools and skills. 
  • A Dremel tool to cut out a hole for the additional USB ports in the IO Dock.
  • Glue to fix the hub within the housing – I used a run-of-the-mill hot glue gun.
  • A class-compliant USB device for testing. (What’s that? See the FAQ.)
  • Approximately 2 hours to do it.
Me with a surgical mask and a Dremel tool

Not really a project for the aspiring Evil Mad Scientist – there’s hardly any rocket science involved – but especially the Dremel brought out my inner Walter White.

So let’s get started!

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