The farmer and his plow - When I set out to build a record cutter

[markrob]

Hi Thomas,

Great work! Did you write your code using floating point calculations? If so, you can really speed things up if you use integer math. Takes a bit of work, but in a time critical situation like you have here, its worth the effort. The Arduino has no floating point hardware, so using 32 bit integers is much faster. If you need help with the coding, let me know and I'll see if I can give you some tips.

If you really need floats, then maybe look into the Teensy. Uses the same Arduino IDE so its easy to get up to speed with. Its a 600 Mhz ARM processor with an FPU.

https://www.sparkfun.com/teensy

Mark

[farmersplow]

great job....fyi. it's easier to just route the main signal into another channel and apply delay there digitally, then there is no need for playing back 2x2 channels and when you change the main signal level the pre-view will follow.

Thank you for the suggestion! Originally I wanted to go exactly this way, but I didn't know how. My plan was also to make it easier, but my knowledge with the DAW is limited. I don't know how to route a signal to another channel and then delay it digitally. I work with Cakewalk - maybe this DAW can't do that or I haven't found anything about it. Maybe you can give me a tip on how to do this. I should be able to use this for several song titles (LP with 6 songs) and set different peak levels for each one. If it's easier to do this via loop and delay, that would be great.

Thomas

[farmersplow]

Wow. I thought the speed changes would be very slight and difficult to discern but no. There's really quite a difference in speeds.

Quite amazing, isn't it? How strongly the groove spacing control reacts depends of course on the system and the effort you make to get the maximum out of it. I think I have exaggerated a lot here.

Thomas

[farmersplow]

Hi Thomas,

Great work! Did you write your code using floating point calculations? If so, you can really speed things up if you use integer math. Takes a bit of work, but in a time critical situation like you have here, its worth the effort. The Arduino has no floating point hardware, so using 32 bit integers is much faster. If you need help with the coding, let me know and I'll see if I can give you some tips.

If you really need floats, then maybe look into the Teensy. Uses the same Arduino IDE so its easy to get up to speed with. Its a 600 Mhz ARM processor with an FPU.

https://www.sparkfun.com/teensy

Mark

[farmersplow]

Hi Thomas,

Great work! Did you write your code using floating point calculations? If so, you can really speed things up if you use integer math. Takes a bit of work, but in a time critical situation like you have here, its worth the effort. The Arduino has no floating point hardware, so using 32 bit integers is much faster. If you need help with the coding, let me know and I'll see if I can give you some tips.

If you really need floats, then maybe look into the Teensy. Uses the same Arduino IDE so its easy to get up to speed with. Its a 600 Mhz ARM processor with an FPU.

https://www.sparkfun.com/teensy

Mark

Thank you Mark! You're right, you won't get far with floating point calculations. I already had problems with the “normal” groove control, especially when I did some tests with 78 rpm and wide groove spacing. At that time, I didn't use floating point calculations. I then had to make extensive changes to the software. If I hadn't done these tests back then, I would have had problems now at the latest and your tip would have saved me. I didn't want to switch to the Teensy yet because it has too few connections and I used them all up (a small excuse, because I could have avoided that too). In truth, I was too lazy to do that.

But now I had to go back to a Teensy 4.0 because I'm working on the turntable drive control. For the necessary FOC control, I not only need an encoder with 1024 steps, but also a very fast magnetic field measurement. The Arduino is completely overwhelmed by this.
I have a short video where I do the encoder measurement with the Teensy 4.0.
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20250528_190017.mp4

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In fact, I still have problems with the Teensy because not everything is the same with the Arduino. If I need some help with this, I would be happy to get in touch with you.
Thomas

[misjah]

great job....fyi. it's easier to just route the main signal into another channel and apply delay there digitally, then there is no need for playing back 2x2 channels and when you change the main signal level the pre-view will follow.

Thank you for the suggestion! Originally I wanted to go exactly this way, but I didn't know how. My plan was also to make it easier, but my knowledge with the DAW is limited. I don't know how to route a signal to another channel and then delay it digitally. I work with Cakewalk - maybe this DAW can't do that or I haven't found anything about it. Maybe you can give me a tip on how to do this. I should be able to use this for several song titles (LP with 6 songs) and set different peak levels for each one. If it's easier to do this via loop and delay, that would be great.

Thomas

i never used cakewalk so can't help you there but most DAWs can simply route 1 output to another input internally...if not, you can always go physically out (digital and back in with AES cable or whatnot)

[mratx]

In Cakewalk you want to send the channel with your recording to a bus, and then apply the delay to the bus. In console view, you need to create a new bus, then, in the send section in the middle of the console channel for your track, set the send to go to that bus. Change the output for the channel (located at the bottom of its console channel) to one set of your audio interface outputs. Then set up a single delay in the effects section of the bus (middle of the bus console channel), and set the output of the bus to another set of the audio interface channels. The delay has to be 100% wet. You'll then get the original signal in one set, and the delayed signal in another.

This is assuming you're starting with a stereo recording on one channel. If you have two mono channels, you have to do the process for each channel, and each channel's output would be a single audio interface output.


Mark