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And the response from Brach, designer of the Percolator:
“The Percolator isn’t voiced like anything that I know of. My goal in designing the Percolator was to have a good sounding solo guitar amp at a low wattage. I live in a inner-city single-room high-rise apartment, so my goal was to have an amp that would sound great by itself in my room without making much noise to bother the neighbors. Most amps are designed to sit sonically in a mix so they can be heard in an ensemble setting. They don’t have too much low bass response or high response…they are designed to reproduce audio in a relatively narrow mid-range band…that way they don’t interfere with other instruments that are playing along side it. This way, the guitars can cut through the mix and be heard. This concept of the narrow mid-range frequency band works well when amps are being used in an ensemble context, but it’s fairly limiting when the guitar is a solo instrument. I designed the Percolator to be a solo instrument amp (for playing alone in one’s bedroom) so I widened the bandwidth accordingly. Because of this, it has a much beefier low and low-mid range than most other amps. Conversely, if you try to use the Percolator in an ensemble setting, you’ll find it gets lost in the mix…but this can be rectified with a properly set eq pedal.”
UPDATE: We recently released Macchiato software Hotfix 3 that eliminates this behavior. The Macchiato now properly interprets both Note Off and Note On / Vel 0 messages to terminate notes. Download it from our Github page and flash it to your synth with a USB-Tiny programmer. If you are unfamiliar with this process, get an Arduino friend to help; they’ll do it blindfolded.
Craig, thanks for posting. We have not seen the review yet but look forward to it! Yes, it takes some practice to master the Altura, but yes, it’s easier than a theremin! We have some tutorial videos in the works to help with the learning curve.
Wow atwiniare, thanks for this thorough, thoughtful review. We really appreciate it. Readers can see the build in the gallery forum here.
This is gorgeous! Thanks for sharing. Here, let me embed a couple of links to better host your photos. Do I guess right that you picked up Special Walnut instead of Dark Walnut? It looks great. Good work!
Katherine (and others): there is a very slim possibility that we shipped a few units with no software on them at all! This, of course, would account for No Sound. The most direct solution is to download the latest software from our Github page and flash it to your Macchiato. If you have never done this sort of thing, you may want to find an Arduino-enthusiast friend, who will be able to do this with both eyes tied behind his back. Otherwise, obtain a USB-Tiny programmer and the AVRDUDE utility. Follow the Github instructions.
If you do not want to mess with this, write to us at info at zeppelindesignlabs dot com and we’ll work it out.
Here’s a couple things to check:
1. An earlier version of the Macchiato software sometimes showed this behavior. We believe your board has the latest software on it, but the only way to be sure is to download the latest from Github and re-flash it. (I see you just ordered a USB Tiny programmer.)
2. We had a generic USB-to-MIDI cable here in the Lab that proved to be a piece of junk. It was actually missing some components from its innards and yielded unreliable MIDI conversion, with all sorts of ill effects. This is not an uncommon problem. Here is an article on fixing a buggy cable.
3. The MIDI specification allows for two ways to tell a device to stop playing a note: with a Note Off message, and with a Note On / Velocity = 0 message. Theoretically they are equivalent, but we have seen several devices fail to respond reliably to one or the other. We developed the Macchiato to take Note On/Velocity 0 messages. Check your DAW. See which message it is sending. If there is an option, try to get it to send Note On Vel 0 in place of Note Off.FOLLOW UP: We released some updates summer 2017 in an attempt to rewrite the Macchiato to compile on a more recent version of Arduino and Mozzi. These updates had some stability and other performance issues, and we recently reverted to a vamped-up version of the old code. So the latest release, v1.1.2 (software file v1_171024) is packed with the latest features, sounds a little better and is every bit as stable as the original Macchiato — but it still has to be compiled with Arduino 1.0.5r2.
!!BRAVO!! I am SO GLAD to hear you solved the mystery! That’s really good news for a Monday morning. Have fun with your gear, and if you capture any crazy-wild sounds, be sure to share them with us.
Glen
Hi, Glen here. Brach is out of town this week on family business. He may or may not weigh in as he is available. Thank you for your patience with this de-bugging process.
“I work for the local ABC affiliate. I found you all while researching ways to record environmental sounds to create an effects library. I also have a personal interest in making a version of this into a hydrophone. I purchased this unit to experiment. If we find a use for this application we may order a second one and work it into our production gear. It seems like a good product from an engineering stand point as well.” — Raymond, WATE-TV, Knoxville Tennessee
“We ordered 4 of your Cortado MKII microphones for some noise research we are doing at one of our airport radar sites [in Prague].
“We are impressed with your product specifications and the field sound samples available on your website. Our plan is to attach them to various points on the motorized antenna gearbox to characterize the mechanical noise generated by the assembly.”
— Dan, Saab Sensis, http://www.saabsensis.com
Ian Swanwick sent us this nice photo of a fantastic Percolator build. His construction notes follow:
“Thanks [Glen] for the compliments, it really did turn out well and your instructions were excellent.“The finish is 3 coats of Minwax oil based stain ‘honey 272’ with sanding in between, followed by 2 coats of Minwax polyurethane fast drying ‘clear satin’. The polyurethane was left over from a few years ago and I don’t think I’d use it again – too hard to get an even finish.
“I plugged the screw holes on the sides and they are very hard to see with the stain. For the grill I substituted brass screws for the exposed heads as I think they look a little better.”
