Subject: Dave Stampe's convolvotron-ish board...

From: [email-masked] (Geoff Thomas)
Date: Fri, 22 May 92 15:43:03 NZS

Earlier in the year, Dave informed the rend386 bunch, and the s.v-w
followers about his version of the convolvotron. After all the flames
etc. had burnt away, I was at a bit of a loss as to whether to pursue
this board and build one for myself.

Dave - have you gone ahead and built the board? How well does it work?
How simple is it to build? What's involved in it? Could you pop a
reasonably detailed description on the rend386 list for us not-too-
electronically-wizzy blokes to have a look at? Or maybe in an ftp-able
file or something?

Thanks very much,

Geoff Thomas	[email-masked]

---

From: Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng <dstamp@watserv1>
Date: Fri, 22 May 92 09:57:49 -0400

> From [email-masked] Fri May 22 00:06:05 1992
> From: [email-masked] (Geoff Thomas)
> Subject: Dave Stampe's convolvotron-ish board...
> To: rend386@sunee
> X-Envelope-To: [email-masked]
> 
> 

Ooohh that flame thread was fun, wasn't it?  I haven't built the device I
discussed, but I did refine the design quite a bit.  Basically, it would
now consist of:

- Two delay lines, one fixed, one variable to set interaural delay.
- An attenuator for each ear
- A 2-delay line reverb unit with variable attenuator and a different output
  for each ear (to produce incoherent reverberatory sound)
- A 7-band graphic equalizer chip (with the bands all in the range from
  1.5 to 15 KHz) for each ear.  This eliminates the need for the pinna
  delay line as well.

That project is on the backburner, as I get my HMD and head tracker ready
for demonstration.  But I'm still looking for chips and parts for it.  
Maybe in 6 months or so I'll be ready to finish it up.

In the meantime, a stereo super-Soundblaster board is available now so
in theory you can have stereo or better (say, 20 synthesized positions
for each sound, stored in extended memory till needed) as a stopgap
measure.  Or try quadrophonic headphones (you can even convert a standard
Soundblaster to stereo or quad by adding controllable attenuators to the
output, one for each headphone driver).

- Dave Stampe