noise embedded.

Midi Moose. Midi Issues Everywhere After finalizing the Acid Moose 303 clone build my midi usage increased significantly. So did my midi problems. Unfortunately I just couldn't get the Acid Moose midi interface working reliably. Sending too many messages made it freeze and the whole device had to be rebooted. I tried changing opto-isolators, crystals, pretty much everything around the pic microcontroller but nothing helped. Anything more than simple note on and note off messages would make it fail. Unfortunately that midi implementation is significant part of the sound because it mimics many 303 peculiarities so changing to another microcontroller implementation wasn't an option either. Needless to say the source code is not available. I finally gave up debugging it and decided to add a midi filter in front of it to throw out everything except the bare minumum of needed midi note messages. Around the same time I also bought an Elektron Digitakt sequencer/sampler. ...

Surface Mount Future It's time to face the truth. Nobody uses good old through hole components for professional electronics designs nowadays. This of course means that there's less demand for components and more and more new components are only offered in surface mount form factor. Sooner or later hobbyists need to follow the trend and start using SMD components too. I have been avoiding SMD projects without any good reason. I've seen how easily hardware designers at work solder all those tiny barely visible components but somehow thought it would be too difficult to be fun. And I don't want to waste my scarce free time doing something that I don't enjoy! I have Mutable Instruments Clouds module in my eurorack and have always liked the open source approach they have. I have been aware that many people build their own DIY versions of those brilliant modules but have always skipped those projects because of the SMD soldering. After giving it some thought ...