This frontpaged on Hacker News today:
Thought that lots of folks here would find this interesting. Dunno if i’ve got €499 for this right now (jk I definitely don’t), but I certainly want one.
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I’ve been watching Anabrid for several years now.
They have had a real struggle getting this latest product to market - so i’ve held off.
I used an analog computer a long long time ago.
This product could be made to fit in with CV systems, indeed CV equipment and systems can easily be approached as a special kind of analog computer.
I just want to poke patch cables in it and turn knobs.
Didn’t someone joke about making a functioning computer using eurorack modules? The future is now
So this Thing is made of :
- Five integrators
- Four summers
- Four inverters
- Two multipliers
- Eight coefficient potentiometers
- Two comparators
- Two precision resistor networks
- Panel meter
- Daisy chaining ports
- Digital port
- Capacitors, diodes, and Zener diodes.
Maybe enough VCAs, finally 
Think of this as being made of the electronic components that would make up a module in your analog Eurorack system. So this is really fine grained, and allows you control at the lowest levels. You may well need more than one of these units ( minions ) to do a significant amount of audio processing. You’ll need to think in detail of what you want to accomplish and in understanding how to use the electronics that this presents.
For audio applications you likely should consider wrapping other electronic parts around this at the input and output, and then use this as the low level glue in that system. Thinking outside the common volts per octave methods used in many CV systems, might be useful. Likely best to involve mathematics, like calculus and differential equations in the solution to your problem.
Anabrid intends to fund the development of an integrated circuit version of what is involved with this Thing. This might give a cost reduction in the order of 100 to 1000 times. Detail of what they intend is not available, but a hybrid digital analog system might be intended, similar to an FPAA. ( The analog equivalent to an FPGA. ) This could potentially be a real boon to those building versatile analog audio modules.
If you are stuck at the cost with this, there are alternatives, similar to using virtual analog software to substitute for hardware. Circuit emulation software would work very well for this sort of Thing. There are various available but you can also consider the Python library from Anabrid itself. It is open source and free. This also maybe a good way to design and model systems like this.
Gags aside i’d love to see what people are coming up with using these.
Check out the Application Notes section on this page, with over 40 applications.
They only have one music application there, which is only a paper, with some of the very minimum of the basics. ( Read boring – at least to me. ) Twelfth root of two.
ADDED : It does connect with Patch and Gate CV, and could probably be improved with more interesting waves.
Now the chaotic systems look fun.
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Oof, would be fun creating functions good for my vector oscilloscope or that’ll blow up the galvos on my laser projector!
Why can’t we just have lending libraries for kit? 