Isla Instruments

  • Isla Instruments,  Personal,  Synths

    Life, the universe and Quadrowave

    Well, the last couple of months have been a challenge. My partner is getting better which is great, but I managed to get COVID and this time it was horrid, 5 weeks on and I’m still not great. I struggle to focus and I’m constantly exhausted.My mood also hasn’t been great and I’ve been told I have arthritis, so yeah life is pretty sucky right now. However, I did manage to get some work done on the Quadrowave card for Isla Instruments; It has 4 voices, each with two oscillators (each with a sub) and 256 waveforms, currently two ADSRs per voice (VCF and VCA) and two LFOs (with 6…

  • Delta,  Isla Instruments

    Life & synths

    September has not been a good month in many ways. Firstly my partner has been in hospital for a week having some major surgery as a result of her having had cancer 6 years ago and A week before that my mum had a stroke and has been in and out of hospital. Suffice to say, I’ve really not had much in the way of energy or enthusiasm to do much with synths, but I have done some bit when I’ve had the beans. Quadrowave Quadrowave has fully functioning ADSRs for VCF and VCA, the VCF and VCA work, two LFOs are also working and the oscillators are working, it’s…

  • Delta,  Isla Instruments,  Synths

    Even more synth updates

    Things have been moving with synth projects this last month, first up the Quardowave card for the Isla Instruments Caladan has arrived, I’ve assembled it, checked power and got blink working on the CPUs. I still have to debug the VCFs but the other parts, like DACs and VCAs are the same as the OPL3 card I’ve been working on for Isla Instruments, so they shouldn’t be a problem. The next job is coding the CPUs and getting some sounds out.I’m looking forward to getting this up and running and making some sounds, it should sound epic. In other news the prototype voice holder for Delta has arrived and been…

  • Delta,  Isla Instruments,  Synths

    Synth updates

    Things have been getting a little better of late and I’ve got some of my mojo back, some. Firstly, I’ve been working with Isla Instruments on their Caladan synth, specifically the OPL3 card for it, this uses a bunch of new old stock YMF262 4 op FM chips and a multimode VCF and VCA. Originally it was 4 voices and has now been expanded to 6 voices. It’s almost done but I have a couple of features I want to add to the firmware yet.I have also been working on a voice card of my own design, I’m calling it the Quadrowave (until I can think of a better name),…