Cold Mac Ideas

[SimonK]

Nice! I don’t know how I’ve never thought to use CM in this way. So simple really. Not that I have JF but there is definitely still something I can get out of this.

[baleen]

and i think it’s a great use of CM and is one of the modules strengths. you can get complex, reactive results without complex patching. i always start my CM with something simple like this and then mess it up along the way.

[renegog]

today i sent a breakbeat into cold macs envelope follower and then the follow into a 2nd cold macs survey, then mixed DC from the 2nd cm with the drum beat and sent it to RIP so the rhythmically added DC offset made the transformers get all crunchy and good. Could have done this particular patch with one cold mac i guess, but if you’ve got it flaunt it as they say

[brndnwilliams]

I’d love to hear this if you’ve got a clip

[renegog]

0:00 Clean
0:17 DC offset added
0:30 Then with DC offset controlled by envelope follower
0:45 seconds it gets quiet because too much dc offset
1:00 it gets loud (warning!) for a second when I plug the wave folder out of cm 1 into the survey of cm 2 then you get extra crunch

[dansimco]

From the distortion thread:

Overdrive everything: overdrive, distortion, fuzz, etc

I guess the easiest way is to draw a picture. This is the basic gain cell: [single%20cell] And this is the gain cell within an additional feedback loop so you can make things extra crunchy: [dual%20cell] EDIT: important to note, you want to be using a linear VCA for this. 2nd EDIT: Also, you’ll need to mix your inverted ringmod signal with an offset if your VCA doesn’t have an onboard bias/initial level control.

I feel like there must be a way to cold macify this patch with an inverter.

[brndnwilliams]

thank you for sharing sounds awesome

[Starthief]

Adding a PLL to the feedback patch from the technical manual is a recipe for everything from modem noises to repeating gabber kick drums to cartoony squeaky polishing sounds. And a lot of noises the dogs really hate

Crease In -> Left In
Crease Out -> Right in
Left Out -> A-196 Signal in
A-196 Lowpass Out -> Survey
Left Out -> monitor

optional: other Cold Mac outputs, or a sequencer or busy LFO, to A-196 CV in.

[hermbot]

I think I can help with that, in less than 5 minutes:

[Starthief]

A good explanation

The Doepfer PLL breaks out the phase comparator, filter and VCO as separate sections. I often substitute a different VCO for the built-in one, making it track with another signal – a neat way to get an oscillator that doesn’t track 1V/OCT to sync (more or less) to another one that does. It can be used with dynamic exponential FM, for instance.

PLLs tend to only be reliable over a small range of frequencies, dependent on pretty much every possible factor in the patch – but that just means they’re weird little beasts full of character.

In my patch, the PLL is trying to make its internal VCO (that we’re not listening to) track the feedback noises made by Cold Mac. But at the same time, it’s also feeding its frequency adjustment signal back to Cold Mac, which serves to throw it back off again. So the result is modulation of the Cold Mac’s frequency, but the shape and frequency of that modulation depends on all the various settings. Come to think of it, that signal might make a really interesting LFO for some other purpose…

[dansimco]

Getting off topic here, but could a Maths be used to make the PLL in this patch? Or would a synced mangrove do the same thing?

[Starthief]

Maths can’t do the phase comparator part, but it could act as the filter and VCO. (*)

A logical XOR gate can work as a phase comparator – and post 294 above shows how to patch an XOR gate with a Cold Mac Even if your signals aren’t exactly square waves in exactly the 0V to +5V range, it may be “good enough” to act as a phase comparator.

As a proof of concept, I set up two square LFOs in Stages at different rates, patched them into Cold Mac as an XOR, patched the output through Maths channel 4 to slew it, and the channel 4 output into one of the two LFO inputs. With some tweaking of the slew times, the two LFOs synchronized (a bit imperfectly, but better than I expected).

…in fact I had accidentally patched the Cold Mac-as-XOR output into the Trig input of channel 4 without even noticing, and that worked.

…in fact I just bypassed Maths entirely and used the raw XOR output and that works too. It may be a little less stable about frequency changes though.

(*) (apparently I was wrong, Maths can be patched as an XOR gate using channels 1-3, while still leaving 4 available as a slew.)

[Starthief]

Ah, the slew/filter is necessary for it to work at audio rate without just devolving into weird FM noise.

[lsky]

I just discovered the upcoming SSF Zero Point Oscillator and while reading through the details about it’s “Thru-Zero FM” technique I was wondering, if something similar could be acheived using the Cold Mac (and possibly some other common utilities or mod sources).

The fullwave rectification can be done quite easily using CMs SLOPE circuit. However, I’m not sure about the “reversing the wave-form’s polarity” part.

I’m actually just starting to get a bit deeper into FM synthesis techniques and I’d be happy to hear your ideas about how to use the Cold Mac in this context!

[blacklodgeal]

I’ve been working on a patch with the ZPO and Cold Mac over the last week, and I must add that with all those modulation inputs on the ZPO, the two make a particularly wonderful pair. In general, I love the opportunity to use Cold Mac to focus in on just one module, it helped me get a feel for the module better than anything else.

[lsky]

I guess this patch is mostly a Just Friends one, but since Cold Mac is also playing an essential role:

• Patch 4 of JF’s outs into CM’s AND/OR ins
• Patch the AND/OR outs into some v/oct inputs
• Use JF’s knobs to travel between tone (weird arpeggios) and timbre (FM territory).

In my current patch, I’m using use Teletype as a S/H and quantizer for one of the CM outs; the other one goes into Three Sister’s FM in.

[xeric]

Is this Just Friends in sound or shape mode? Sounds like a fun patch!

[lsky]

Oh right, so I used Just Friends in SHAPE/CYCLE mode, but other modes should also work.

Using SOUND/CYCLE will probably result in mostly FM sounds, although with INTONE and TIME somewhere CCW there should also be single discernable pitches.

[smbols]

I think you might be able to do this with the addition of some extra utilities. Might be mistaken but I think it would work like this:

Modulation Osc > CM Slope
CM Rectified Out > OR In 1 (since rectifying the wave will cut its amplitude in half, do this to boost it back up to its original total amplitude at the MAC output)
MAC Out > Mult > Carrier Osc FM In
MAC Out > Mult > Offset mixer, apply -5V offset > CM Fade (since the fade circuit requires -5V to +5V and your MAC out signal should be 0 - 10V at this point depending on the osc you’re working with)

Carrier Osc > CM Left In
Carrier Osc > inverter > CM Right In

CM Left Out should resemble TZFM, and I think you’d need to patch a dummy cable into the Right out to keep it from mixing into the MAC Out.

I only got my Cold Mac last night so I’m just trying to think through how to do this at work but I’m going to try it out tonight when I get home.

EDIT: actually I don’t think the fade circuit would be best suited for this, at least not without converting the rectified modulation osc into a square wave first. You’d want an immediate swap in polarity, rather than a fading of polarity. Might still sound interesting though.

[smbols]

I got weird results from the patch. Lots of pitch drift, but also some really nice tones that could be fun to mess with. Found the whole 2x gain thing to not really work well so I skipped that part, too.