Kodamo Bitmasker

Not many details, but thought I’d post for visibility.

Pocket-sized synth bringing a new synthesis method. Real-time wave shaping, dual oversampled oscillators, ADSR, LFO, filter, effects, sequencer, polyphonic and multitimbral… Made for fun jams and sound exploration, at an affordable price.

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wow! my favorite form factor

From the latest newsletter:

Binary masks synthesis ??

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I have no idea either. Probably related to this bit:

Interesting tho!

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Sounds cool!
Literally no idea what it means.
Looking forward to hearing more about it.

Does this represent a binary number, maybe, … on/off (1/0) represented by vertical segments ?

Complete guesswork of course.

image

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Reminded me of the runes from the self-destruct sequence of the Predator’s gauntlet.

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Could anyone give me a primer on what binary mask means? I’m completely clueless, the image on the front of the device isn’t helping me much either.

I generally don’t like having my bits masked. The truth should be out there. But I am willing to give this one a chance, at least until some demo’s are out.

Some good info on the built in speaker in this post.

How much do you know about binary numbers ? Assuming you’re not completely green, here’s an explainer that might work: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31575691/what-is-a-bitmask-and-a-mask

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I think you can find this approach in some of Mutable Instruments synths/fxs.
It’s applying logic gates on two signals at audio rates.

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I found this visual explanation about Binary masking:

So my guess, applied to sound synthesis:

By manipulating bits, we could mask/replace/switch some parts of a waveform to create or alter another one.
Thus the schematic printed on the device, with the 2048 values.
For example a sine could be cutted in half and the end replaced by a square. Obviously it could be really more complicated than that and create really complex signal. (I guess this would be really noisy) (yummy)

It may could even be applied to audio samples and not just single waveforms.

As I’m used to work closely with programmers I can assure you based on my previous experience that there is a lot of chances that I’m 100% wrong :wink:

Do you know the modules that do that? I’m really curious about it.

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Shruthi appears to be one of them. Search for 'mask in this manual -> https://mutable-instruments.net/archive/shruthi/manual/

EDIT: Actually that refers to XOR which is another bitwise operation … I’m not sure of the relevance here…

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Shruti synth. Warps fx.

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I found this extract about XOR modulation on Warps:

If the sonic palette of the Bitmasker is this kind of stuff, it would be an instant buy for me. If not, I would definitely deep dive in the modular side of the force :loopy:

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