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Building a TB-303 from Scratch

https://loopmaster.xyz/tutorials/tb303-from-scratch
183stagas | | 72 | HN
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c-c-c-c-c | parent | next
I'd love to see a deep dive into the 303 CPU and their replicas like https://www.sonic-potions.com/re303 and https://socialentropy.com/pages/product_qs303

sonic potions has an analysis of the cpu timings here https://sonic-potions.com/Documentation/Analysis_of_the_D650...

Theres also some nice articles about the diode ladder filter in the 303, similar to the one in the vcs3 https://www.timstinchcombe.co.uk/index.php?pge=diode2

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djmips | parent | next
How much are you building 'from Scratch' when your language has primitives like diodeLadder(). :)

I'm just joshing - it's very cool!

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keyle | parent | next
The TB-303 of reference to me is still Jeskola TB-303 :)

Back in my day of the demoscene and Buzz...

demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2kl-CW9snU

lagniappe | parent | next
Jeskola Buzz has a pretty interesting back story:

>The development of the core program, buzz.exe, was halted on October 5, 2000, when the developer lost the source code to the program. It was announced in June 2008 that development would begin again, eventually regaining much of the functionality.

djmips | root | parent
Sounds like a real bad day.
skrebbel | root | parent
Yeah it was pretty spectacular. The author was a bit paranoid, had never shared his sources with anyone or backed them up anywhere or version controlled them to a remote SVN server or anything like that. And then his hard drive failed and Buzz development was over. IIRC there even was a community-organized crowdfunding campaign to fund some fancy data recovery company to try and revive the hard drive so he could get the sources back (not sure if this ever turned out happening).
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creativeembassy | parent
This brings back memories. Buzz is how I got my start. And I've been producing electronic music as a hobbyist ever since.
juleiie | parent | next
Once you hear analog perfect imperfection, it is hard to go back to emulators.

No words can describe the feeling of original Yamaha cs-80.

It is very unfortunate as there is no true alternative to a 80kg, age issues ridden, ultra expensive antique device.

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rollulus | parent | next
I think “simulate” would’ve been a more accurate word than “build”.
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emursebrian | parent | next
The UI for loopmaster looks really good. The color scheme is really pleasing to look at and it is easy to jump right in and start editing stuff.

I've owned a bunch of different synthesizers and used a bunch of DAWs over the years and it was clear to me where I needed to make my edits to affect the signal chain.

We do real-time client-side audio processing in Emurse, and there were definitely a bunch of challenges to overcome there, so it would be interesting to hear more about what went into building the tool.

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torusle | parent | next
The fun thing was the Roland Sync. You could sync up all the TB-303, TB-909 and all the others with a 5-pole DIN cable. The sync was badly implemented. It lagged, it had latency.

However!

As soon as you cabled all together their imperfections added up and they started to groove like nothing that has been heard before.

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tnn1t1s | parent | next
I built one for 303 Day! https://tnn1t1s.github.io/day-303/303.html ... comparing notes.
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prmoustache | parent | next
I don't know what this website is made off but not being able to use pgup/pgdown to move around is super annoying.
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bowsamic | parent | next
It’s a nice demonstration of this software but it really sounds very little like a 303
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kennyloginz | parent | next
This is cool, but I would personally find an og iMac and install rebirth.
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bandrami | parent | next
It warms my heart to see the 303 getting a renaissance
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drcongo | parent | next
303 heads won't be fooled for a second, but it sounds quite cool regardless.

edit: This is, without a doubt, the best soft-synth emulation I know of these days and it's a hell of a lot of fun: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/pure-acid/id1481283602

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cocodill | parent
well by building 303, I would really expect building, something this guy do[1], not just simply using a filter in some shitty web app.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0/

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