Mannequins Mangrove

[dansimco]

Discovered two things by moving these to the 84hp case. It was a power delivery issue causing the above problem, and Mangrove binaural beats are really nice.

[robertsyrett]

Does anyone have some clear oscilloscope videos of how the waveshaping in mangrove works?

[ioflow]

annotated mangrove walkthrough, with oscilloscope close-up:

[robertsyrett]

Thank you! That was really fun to watch. I’m still a little unclear on the relationship between the parameters and the waveshaping because the hand/camera angle kind of obscured things and it looked like two parameters were changing at the same time.

But It looks like the formant is made by the rising portion of the slope extending past the period of the waveform and there is clipping that creates trapezoid waves. So you can get triangle saw and pulse with the symmetry control (barrel) and width (formant).

[alanza]

that’s right! basically the Square wave is controlling an “envelope” that eventually becomes the formant out. I like to think of barrel adjusting the rise/fall knobs of a channel of Maths, while formant controls the overall time a la “both”. Just like on Maths, it’s only possible to retrigger after the Rise section has finished, hence why formant will divide down into undertones with some settings.

[robertsyrett]

Could I make my mangrove by running a square wave into maths?

[alanza]

sadly not really: Maths is tuned to respond at CV rates; you can get some pitched sounds, and it’s fun to try, but it’s hard to get the tracking to work, and it won’t go higher than a certain frequency

[robertsyrett]

Well that makes a certain amount of sense. All the same, it will give me a model to experiment with. Thanks for the info

[maf]

Thank you for sharing this idea. It’s insightful.

[ghost]

As @alanza says, maths itself doesn’t track so well, BUT because in a mangrove style patch, maths is sync’d to another VCO it will stay in tune and you can get pretty close to mangrove sound with maths

See the subharmonic generator patch here (maths is based on the type of serge circuit) http://www.serge-fans.com/m-class-quad-slope.cfm

It takes quite a bit of fine tuning to get right - You want maths slope to be quite exponential but not all the way. But with some patience you can get a pretty similar sound to the mangrove.

[theelectricyouth]

I have been noticing recently that one of my 3 Mangroves was exhibiting more noise than the other 2 when I am sweeping the Formant knob. 2 of them go between the registers cleanly, I can get to the chaotic segment if I want, but can also smoothly slide around the registers. But there is the one in question where the range of Chaos is much wider than the other 2, and noise is unavoidable when moving through the registers.

Wondering if something is the circuit might not be working as expected as it is different compared to the other 2. Anyone else having this issue? Anyway to calibrate this?

Here is a sound sample of the noisy Mangrove.

https://llllllll.co/uploads/default/original/3X/a/3/a3b14aa492b85b362e0426e9795bc96952d8ce35.wav

[Olivier]

Interestingly, I’ve noticed the same thing on mine, but it almost seems like a scratchy pot to me. Could be my ears fooling me.

[theelectricyouth]

When u said scratchy pot, you referring to yours or to the soundfile I posted?

[Olivier]

The scratchy pot was an assumption about mine specifically. The sound file you posted does sound similar to what I’m experiencing, though, with a lot of audible instability as I turn the knob — definitely seems more pronounced now than when I first got the module a couple of years ago.

I’ll likely send Whimsical an email — I’ve had that on my to-do list for a while…

[theelectricyouth]

Hmmmm so maybe something does happen with the formant circuit over time? Mine doesn’t seem like a scratchy pot as I’ll manage to stay within the (wider) range of chaos if I wanted to, I don’t see this only negatively as it does widen the palette somewhat, but it can be unwelcome sometimes as it isn’t a trait that can be switched on/off.

[Galapagoose]

Sounds like a scratchy pot to me I’m afraid. Send us an email: service@whimsicalraps.com

[theelectricyouth]

Thanks for replying @Galapagoose ! I already emailed some days ago

[robpurd]

Has anyone had issues with the pitch drifting?

I tested it using the square wave output and I’m getting some some significant drift in pitch. Enough to make tuning it with other oscillators impossible.

It’s been stable as anything for the past 3 years, issue has just started out of nowhere.

[alanza]

I notice some drift between my Sisters and Mangrove in the first few minutes as I’m starting my synth up, especially with the season change. Never impossible to tune to other sounds, though; more like it might take a quick adjustment after five minutes.

[sunbeamer]

Yeah I definitely get some drift here and there, usually need a couple minutes of fine tuning to get things back where they were after a couple days of leaving the synth alone.