FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE North Coast announces 21st Century modular synthesizer filter TORONTO, Ontario - November 9, 2017 - North Coast Synthesis Ltd., Toronto-based manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, today released its flagship…
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It's just one thing after another with the Leapfrog. I'd been hoping to have them for sale by now, and I am getting close to that point. I actually have the stock of the first batch on hand and ready to sell now. But there's still a fair bit of wr…
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You've probably noticed that although resistors and capacitors come in many different values, some of which seem like they could be randomly chosen, there's nonetheless some sort of logic to it. You'll see power-of-ten sizes like 1kΩ, 10kΩ, 100kΩ an…
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The panel contractor says they dispatched the first production batch of MSK 007 Leapfrog VCF panels to me on Friday, and those are the last remaining physical items needed before I can launch the module; so I'm still hopeful that I can ai…
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I've spent most of this week working on the second and third prototypes for the Leapfrog VCF. I'm hoping to have this product available for sale by the end of the month - maybe in time to have some kind of spooky Halloween tie-in for the launc…
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Here's a diagram of something called the CNO process, encompassing many of the nuclear reactions by which stars shine. I thought it would be fun to "sonify" the CNO process by building some kind of simulation of a star and making it generate m…
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I finally got the Leapfrog prototype PCBs from Shenzhen, so I hope to have some progress on that very soon. Meanwhile, Muffwiggler is still down, and the word is that it's because Mike is in hospital. Everyone's thoughts and prayers are with him.…
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North Coast's first fiscal year ends with this month, and I have a bunch of small news items and progress updates. First up, the Leapfrog VCF. This is the big flagship module that I think people are waiting for, and I was supposed to have the…
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I make a lot of music that is intended to be "ambient": something you can put on in the background and have it create a mood without demanding conscious attention in the foreground all the time. I'm also interested in automatic generation: I'd like t…
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This week I'm planning to order the prototype boards for the Leapfrog Filter, and it makes a good opportunity to go through some common questions beginners ask about shopping for PCBs. When you go to buy PCB production services you're typically hit w…
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I've been busy this week dusting off the design for the Leapfrog Filter. I really did most of the work on it back in 2016, and I even built a prototype which works pretty well, as you can hear in audio demos like this one. I'm hoping that will tran…
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Here's a simplification of the output driver circuit from the MSK 008 Dual VC Octave Switch. It's a familiar inverting op amp circuit with gain of -1. The op amp's positive input is tied to 0V; it will act to force its negative input to also s…
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