WHIMSICAL RAPS Braided Signal Combiner Illuminated In Two Planes
BRAIDED SIGNAL COMBINER ILLUMINATED IN TWO PLANES
Sounds and shapes outlined in SILHOUETTE. Foregrounds of light and shadow bending in time, lit by a spotlight on sound’s stage. Lying over a back- drop bent and contorted through synthetic metamaterial. Aberrant tension through tender gels highlighting, implying, finding, connections.
Dancing on air, your signals, a soft focus romance.
INS AND OUTS
Six DC-coupled INPUTS, in a ring, corresponding to a 20 plane. No order, no end, just vectors dancing in space.
These inputs are combined into two output pairs: Fore- ground presents the LIGHT and SHADOW of your focal point. The Background, LEFT and RIGHT, moves with stereo rotation, capturing all elements outside of Foreground’s purview, re-arranging them in binaural space.
mix/split combines the Foreground into the Background presenting a single stereo combination. When in mix, the Foreground outputs are still available for general use.
SPOT
Perpetual potentiometer pointing- SPOT throws a spot- light at the directed input jacks. Appearing now in LIGHT and SHADOW- the Foreground of your piece. Selec tion is continuous, blending nearest neighbours.
An attenuverter allows SPOT modulation to subtle or dramatic effect. /-5V signals spin a full 360 zotation.
When no CV jack is present in SPOT, an internal modula- tor is pushed & bent by the attenuverter. Dial up the intensity to break the magnetic attraction, and explore asymmetric undulations to scan your sonic field.
FOCUS
FOCUS pushes and pulls the SHADOW output in time. A bucket-brigade delay squeezes from tiny flanges at 12:00 through to swampy grumbles at both edges.
Together with LIGHT, an analogue delay dry/wet duality, signal sourced from your SPOT directed sources. No feedback, only open architecture for your deft recircula- tions.
When mix is active, the stereo field of this dry/wet effect is controlled by the direction of FOCUS around 12:00. Clockwise mixes LIGHT and SHADOW to mono, focusing the sound centrally. Anti-clockwise maintains stereo separation, for maximum width & dramatic spatialization.
LENS + ATMOS
LENS controls the level of the Background. Fully clock- wise is full volume, while turning anti-clockwise reduces gain more and more aggressively. Coupled to ATMOS, this gain reduction takes on dramatically different effects.
Level acts as a linear VCA over all 6 channels, decreasing to silence. Here is a simple volume control for your background, useful to desaturate a busy mix, or allow more space for your Foreground.
Chain uses the amplitude of the Foreground to duck the signal- a classic side-chain compression. As LENS is decreased, more space is carved away for the Foreground to shine. Or forget the front plane and enjoy a dramati- cally pulsating backdrop.
Expand controls Background amplitude using it’s own signal level. Loud sounds stay loud, while quiet elements are truncated to zero. Chop off reverb tails and long envelopes, making space to BLUR…
BLUR
How better to draw attention to the Foreground, than BLUR our Background with that bokeh effect. Smear transients, heighten rhythmic ambiguity, wash out in some kind of might-be-a-reverb.
At minimum there is silence, opening up with volume, high-frequencies, and increasing temporal density. An analogue lowpass softens the digital bit-glitter in a texturized haze.
BLUR follows the ATMOS switch too. When chained, reverb density is ducked the same as the background, while expanding fills LENS’ silence with reverb swells to place transients in a new space.
POWER CONSUMPTION
104A +12V 91A-12V
Shrouded power connector Red Stripe (-12V) to left when viewed from rear.
VIEWFINDER
The hexagonal window tells you all about how signals are being controlled and combined behind the scenes.
The ring of white lights Illustrates the signals currently in focus. They will gently pulse in time with the FOCUS delay.
The central yellow light displays the amount of gain reduction currently applied to the background in the style of a compressor meter.
ANALOGUE meets DIGITAL
While the specular motion of signals requires some digital smarts, the entize path fron inputs to outputs remains purely analogue. Delay is provided by a bucket-brigade with dynamic filtering.
BLUR is however digital and strives to capture the glittery beauty of vintage 12-bit samplers.
All mixing is performed in the analogue domain under digital supervision, and there are multiple stages of compression to keep your output signals to standard ranges. As such your input levels will affect the amount of mix glue applied.
ALL INPUT
The seventh input at centre of the input ring is normalled to all six inputs in the ring. Each jack is inverted vis-a-vis its neighbours for exploring phase cancellations.
ALL is highly useful for setting a ‘main’ input to be overriden at specific points of SPOT rotation.
SHADOW FEEDBACK
While there is no provision for direct feedback of the delay line, patching the SHADOW jack back to the INPUTS allows SPOT-controlled regeneration.
Insert a filter or other effect in this path for added unfolding complexity, or patch directly to the ALL input for self generating delay tones that respond to SPOT.
FUTURES
On the left edge toward the front is a USB-C connector available for future firmwате updates. We don’t have feature changes planned, but if you run into any strange behaviour check our website for a nеw update which likely fixes it.
github.com/whimsicalraps/Silhouette
To upload a new firmware, attach the USB port to your computer. Hold both small buttons above the USB port, then release the top one before releasing the lower. You’ll now find a USB drive in your file explorer / finder where you simply drag and drop the new firmмате file. Update complete!
ARCHITECTURE
On first glance opaque. Becoming clearer with time. Always just a sequence of optics; diffracting, refracting, refactoring.
This signal diagram offers a quick glance into the many pieces that form SILHOUETTE. Explore these same ideas with other technologies, or be inspired by the components hiding within & their typical functions.
SIGNAL TRANSFORMATIONS
From humble beginnings as a spatial miхет, SILHOUETTE has transformed again and again to take a final form. Indeed the term “mixer” has been eschewed along this journey, opting to focus attention on the myriad possi- bilities of signal combinations, and specifically the relationships created when we do.
Thinking in terms of foreground/background was a radical change in my own view of piecing together sounds. The conscious act to highlight a given element brings clarity, while reminding myself to leave space & gel together a backdrop so that compositions stay intelligi- ble.
Of course this is Eurorack! Concepts such as these are mere suggestions. These structures bring us a real object, yet we bend the capabilities in our creative pursuits. Silhouette is full of individually rich processing, by all means we should (mis) use it to those ends. Perhaps you see in Silhouette a mіxет, от an interpolating scanner; a delay, or reverb. There is no one answer.
Patch-programming remains at the core here, used as a model for spatialization and feedback configuration. Not only *can you self-patch Silhouette, but you are encour- aged to do so. Certainly one could no-input-mix with nothing else. Audiorate modulation is unique, especially with SPOT for some kind of wave-slicing, or FOCUS for dramatic split-tone delays.
Throughout the development process I’ve grown a deep appreciation for the pairing with Just Friends (and often crow). I’ve always loved tiny modular systems, but there is something magical in this combination. Silhouette was always designed to work well with modulation signals as well as audio, but with Just Friends it became clear just why. Cross-patching, more and more cables, new percussive & tonal sounds emerge always unclear where the origin lies. A real playground for cybernetics.
I hope Silhouette excites and challenges you much as it has me along this ten year journey. Certainly you will find new connections to reflect back on our world.
Trent W Gill, 2024
Documents / Resources
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SILHOUETTE WHIMSICAL RAPS Braided Signal Combiner Illuminated In Two Planes [pdf] Instructions WHIMSICAL RAPS Braided Signal Combiner Illuminated In Two Planes, WHIMSICAL RAPS, Braided Signal Combiner Illuminated In Two Planes, Signal Combiner Illuminated In Two Planes, Combiner Illuminated In Two Planes, Illuminated In Two Planes, Two Planes |