Cynare Modifications

creatorlars

I love my Cynare, especially the gated dampening feature. However there are still a few bugs I'd like to work out to improve it overall and make it more usable. I've attached my 1U MOTM-style panel with banana jacks. It's pretty crammed in there but I like it. Smile

I'm following my own placement and feature standards as far as common features in all of my drum modules, so I've added an output level knob and a pushbutton trigger. Here are some thing I'd like to work on/improve. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

1) The output level control is currently a passive 100K log attenuator to ground, but the module still produces an output when the control is fully counter-clockwise. I'm guessing I should be putting the pot in parallel with the feedback resistor on the output op-amp or something, but I don't really know what I'm doing there, honestly.

2) I don't ever hear much noise blending with my oscillators, so I'm thinking my noise source might be a little too quiet. Which parts should I be looking at to fix this? Or are you not supposed to hear white noise when the Mix knob is set all the way in that direction and the filter is open?

3) The impact sound never seems to mix right with the metallic sounds. It's more of a bassy thump or thud instead of a sharp click or strike, which is what I'd expect. As a result, the drum sounds I get out of it sound awkward and muddy up the mix with other modules. Any ideas on altering the tone of the impact sound? I may just eliminate it altogether.

4) My pushbutton control is just connected to the input via +V, but the module doesn't trigger cleanly when I hit it (kind of repeats or misfires). I want it to be able to generate a gate so that I can hold it down for sustain control when trigger & sustain in are both patched together. What can I do to improve the response?

Thanks for any help! I love this module, but it's always been really quirky and I want to get it up to par.

Lars

P.S. The black tuning controls are smaller-knob pots. They are controlling three of the six oscillators -- the others are preset. I may change these to dual-gang pots to get control over all the oscillators at some point, but haven't found a source for 16mm dual gang 500k pots yet.

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reve · Joined: Feb 23, 2008 Posts: 149 Location: USA

Lars, did you ever get your Cynare bugs worked out? I'm about to get goin' on one and would love to leverage the wisdom of your experiences. Smile

droffset · Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 3:22 pm Post subject:

I'm building one soon also, would be great to hear more impressions from people.

creatorlars · Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 4:25 pm Post subject:

I messed with a bit more -- it's still very usable but I don't think it's quite 100% what it should be. I may rebuild it or build another one someday. The strength of this module is when you can send it a variable gatelength from a sequencer -- really adds motion to hat/cymbal sounds.

TekniK · Joined: Aug 10, 2008 Posts: 1059

cool panel dezsign

creatorlars · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:17 am Post subject:

Thanks! Certainly packs it all in there. Smile

If I were to redo it, I'd try to patch out all the ins/outs, and maybe add some extra inputs to the filter so that I could use it as an extra Steiner Synthacon filter when it wasn't being used for drum sounds.

I love the kick thumps I can get out of the Cynare when slamming the filter down really fast with the resonance cranked. I end up mixing that with my 808 BD clone to create a really thick kick sound a lot.