The Smallest MIDI Synth Again...

More info: mitxela.com/flash_synth
Interested in owning one? Head to Aaron's shop: hpi.zentral.zone/flash

[@1owk3y]

"... now simply plug in your USB business-card stylophone, a mobile power bank and a piezo-buzzer, and you have a whole studio which fits neatly into an empty soda can, for some reason..."

[@shelvacu]

when does he say that in the video?

[@Fraptab]

I thought it was funny...

[@JGHFunRun]

And if you want sequencing/recording there are a ton of hand held recording devices that fit into that small a thing. I have an old tape recorder from my parents stuff that could work for this (admittedly there’s a ton of static, and you can only recorder one thing per tape, but still, they exist)

[@GatheredStorm_YT]

Yup pretty much

[@shyne2643]

youtube algorithm :)

[@leozendo3500]

Call it midi to 3.5mm audio jack converter.

[@GottZ]

*adapter sounds more hilarious

[@Z-Ack]

Im saying..? Isnt the keyboard hes using a midi controller and oscillation is built in along with various preprogrammed voices and on board digital and analog modulation.. the thing he was hyping up about in the beginning was just a jack so you could see the waves oscillate on the scope through midi cabling and power injection to give the waves amplitude to make them more visible on the scope so essentially he put a stand alone amplifier circuit inside a housing with plugs on it., and those circuits are simple as hell with only 4 components on some..

[@MICHhimself]

@@Z-Ack MIDI sends out only note data and parameters values, to put it simply, but no actual audio data. The keyboard you see here is a MIDI controller without any ability to generate audio. It does have a bunch of knobs and sliders which send parameter update messages over MIDI to whichever device is listening. Typically you'd send this data to either a computer running audio software, or a hardware synthesizer. In this case, that hardware synthesizer which listens for "play the note A4 with 80/127 velocity" and various parameters, is contained entirely within the MIDI plug. So the full actual synthesizer is super small, and powered entirely from the small electrical signals that are meant only for data (not power).

[@rich1051414]

@@MICHhimself Right, to simplify, midi out is streamed midi just sends the BPM/timing and instrument events and parameters(including pitch, so micro-tonal is possible) for something else to do something with. No actual audio is sent, that is all assembled by the synth at the end. Well, mostly, instrument wave tables can by synced with patches, but that's a different story entirely. It's not an insignificant task what that little dongle is doing. Midi is a really simple standard, but the devil is in the details.

[@EnginAtik]

How about the reverse? 3.5mm female audio jack to midi adapter?

[@quadrugue]

If someone is going to travel back in time to 198x, take this thing with you.

[@iadtag1853]

It will blow their minds like atom bombs.

[@Rudofaux]

They'll see as alien tech that's too powerful to be in anyone's hands.

[@Alkatross]

They did not have 14 bit pitch bends.

[@skunklungz]

@@Alkatross like that would matter at all

[@kaptainjay6238]

@@skunklungz 😂😂😂😂😂

[@scribtoon7146]

I thought he was joking at first when he was talking about the 16 voices in the beginning.

[@___d311]

I know nothing about synths so I thought nothing of it

[@scribtoon7146]

@@___d311 a voice is a single note you can play at once. so 16 voices = 16 notes you can play at one time

[@___d311]

ScribTOON Oh that’s cool

[@JensGulin]

Apart from demo, don't miss "the gory tech details" at 21:23 and showing the insides at 34:08. Outro at 36:42.

[@BertGrink]

The great Science-Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once said "Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". This device proves that he was right.

[@leonk6950]

Wow, this is literally the midi-to-3,5mm Adapter stupid people always ask me about when explaining them MIDI 😂😂

[@georgeisratemint]

Best analogy of midi for those not involved would be to hand somebody a sheet of music and ask them why can't you hear the music

[@djpetesake]

Now you don't need MIDI headphones!

[@bt_18]

Mitxela: (uploads after 5 months) Me and the fans: *happy MIDI noises*

[@nullderef]

More like happy MIDI messages

[@otesunki]

Me, finding this in the future: *Happy Cmaj7#11 noises*

[@patemathic]

Even better, happy MIDI signals

[@Wtfinc]

how hard would it be to make a home made midi controller.

[@ChrisLeeW00]

"For the production run" Okay, my wallet is ready.

[@gabrielhogan9670]

Chris LeeWooo Check video description, there is a link

[@karlkastor]

@@gabrielhogan9670 130€ Jesus. I know that this is an ok price if you factor in the time it took them to make this, but I don't think anyone is gonna pay that much for something so small and gimmicky. Especially when the Microcontroller at the heart of it only costs about 10€.

[@whoho1]

@@karlkastor Just FYI "SOLD OUT! - 150 sold"

[@Rudofaux]

@@whoho1 😢

[@joemontgomery6658]

Rudofaux he’s doing more

[@Hartlor_Tayley]

That’s great. I remember Ensoniq started as a hearing aid manufacturer and scaled up to making synths. You have done the opposite. I love it.

[@klangkombinat-de]

i don't think Bob Yannes would call the C64 SID-Chip a hearing aid

[@Hartlor_Tayley]

Hama Geddon I agree. Ensoniq didn’t consider their hearing aid technology a synthesizer either. The people that designed algorithms to smooth topographical data points, probably had no idea that it would be applied to audio in the form of Autotune. Changing the form and function and scale of known technology is very interesting IMO.

[@DerSolinski]

send one to andrew huang :)

[@slayerficated]

Bump

[@ShadiGhanem]

YES WE NEED TO SEE THIS HAPPEN!

[@conor4142]

Weird Gear would be a great showcase of this!

[@thepjup4507]

andrew huang is trash

[@reggiep75]

I'd suggest 8-Bit Keys or Simon the Magpie, the latter who'll seriously aim to meddle with it's s***.

[@Doctormix]

Killer idea

[@bankawatlata357]

Hello Dr.mix

[@Degrizai]

5:25 - It sounds simply awesome - need to develop this into a full track +_+

[@speeddemon4484]

5:52 agreed

[@AaronVB]

@@speeddemon4484 somehow that melody sounds very familiar

[@otesunki]

a fellow +_+er!

[@becketthor6478]

Sounds like type o negative

[@MeAlexSenna]

“A love letter to the Din Connector”... indeed it is

[@InkyDaCaT]

Great comment

[@MeAlexSenna]

Goric // stop being weird and go talk to your mom

[@InkyDaCaT]

@@MeAlexSenna Great comment 😂🙌

[@gadgetmama]

Big surprise that women can be intellectual, beautiful, and indipendent, eh? Rock on 🤘

[@cadenhood]

Dankeschön, Deutsches Institut für Normung. (I feel compelled to tie this back to Germany)

[@an2qzavok]

I should start an anti-USB club or something. These "legacy" connectors are a lot easier to poke around in a DIY environment, unlike modern stuff, so I don't want too see them go away.

[@Ariche2]

I had to reflow the pins to a Mini-USB port on a Blue Snowball iCE mic today, as an inexperienced solderer, and without a hot air gun. I'm gonna agree with you on this one

[@retrozvoc6189]

If you do, PLEASE make I2C or USART or SPI be the new communication method so that I can use my Teensy 3.5 with it to make my own portable MIDI sequencer. Millennial musicians need to be healed from broken backs and slanderings like "Self-entitled computer basement babies" by going outside to perform their talents publicly!

[@retrozvoc6189]

@@sfasdfasdgagsdgsdsa on a 6-pin MIDI microcontroller XD

[@thegeopard2313]

Imagine needing to write a device stack to recieve a few notes - this post was made by the MIDI gang

[@sonicunleashedfan124]

Yes

[@CyberCatto]

13:08 oh my rythmic abdolute goodness

[@H3wastooshort]

Sell em' as a "MIDI to -USB- 3.5mm Adapter"

[@ezyto]

I periodically go back to this video just to hear this man play the funny sounds

[@westeray]

These sold out pretty quick! Cant wait until more are made, I can only imagine how rad it'd be to plug one of these bad boys into my Yamaha SHS-10

[@comicsansgreenkirby]

Westeray Media GASP THEYRE BEING SOLD?? ASLFJSKJF

[@samgentle]

Optimisation-wise, there's some really neat stuff you can do using the STM32's DMA controller, like load a whole wavetable into a circular buffer and just let the DMA controller send it to the DAC - zero CPU cycles needed.

[@andrewnibbi]

samgentle This is a really interesting concept; do you have any reading I could follow up on?

[@samgentle]

@@andrewnibbi ST has an overview under "AN3126: Audio and waveform generation using the DAC", and there's a good write-up called "The DAC and its DMA buddy" on the Jeelabs blog. Also check out dac-dma.c in the libopencm3-examples repository on GitHub. (I'd give links but they tend to upset KZbin's spam detector)

[@noouch]

As far as I can tell this would limit the synth to a single oscillator, however most STM32s are fast enough for doing it in software to not have too much of an impact. Best case you’d only be using a single multiply-add per oscillator just to sum the values from the wavetable.

[@thomzz3449]

@samgentle I'm currently working on such a synth on STM32F401 and a PCM5102 dac. The DMA for the audio works with circular dubble buffer and I've also got a DMA setup for analog inputs. I'm doing more wave stuf at the moment, but at a certain point I will release everything to the public in some way (GIT hub or Thingiverse)

[@amigalemming]

Sounds like the way Amiga's Paula chip produced sound.

[@JOELwindows7]

This is your daily dose of Recommendation Smallest MIDI SYnth again

[@ArjanvanVught]

I cannot wait to see your code optimization tricks. However, the GCC compiler generates pretty good ARM assembler code. Mostly more clever than I would do write assembly.

[@morgan0]

you should add microtonal capabilities should have looked at the website first, or finished the video i want one even more now

[@JavierCarrilloMilla]

hhaha so great

[@kamalmanzukie]

microtonal isn't so easy with midi

[@among-us-99999]

I could listen to you playing around with this thing all day.

[@SomeoneCommenting]

I love to see in the oscilloscope screen what these notes are doing to your brain lol

[@mikaras]

You produce some of the most interesting projects on KZbin. It is always great and inspiring content. Looking forward to see what you come up with next, I am sure it's awesome.

[@isabuckles]

I need more of that 9:35 - 11:20 noodling in my life.

[@unfa00]

I could listen to your jamming for hours. Have you made any albums?

[@JGHFunRun]

UNFA!!! Hi unfa!

[@unfa00]

@@JGHFunRun O hai!

[@gundamwang]

I've watched this like, 5 times at work, just to hear you jam out.

[@noahschannel3209]

I've been looking at synthesizers for months now trying to find the perfect one for me. I really shouldn't have bought this and stuck with something different, but life is about taking risks anyway! I can not wait to get this thing and try it out.....

[@zelokorLocalGodOfChaosAndBread]

how'd it go?

[@jerricabenton842]

"I couldn't not add an arpeggiator" :D

[@BrendanPowerMusic]

I've no idea what you're talking about half the time Tim, but love your presentation and the amazing power of that georgous little gizmo!

[@ezion67]

Your mini synth gives me a big smile :) love it!

[@GerhardAlbinus]

Simply fantastic and magical! Astonishing to say the least. Thank you for creating such a device.

[@nerd_world8919]

You just earned a subscriber. I originally watched your stylophone business card and thought it was very neat. Then recently I rediscovered your channel and binge watched all your wacky creations keep up the great work

[@paulpvhl1930]

Brilliant! Reminds me of playing with my dad's VCS3 as a young lad. My favourite was using the ring modulator. Subscribed and will investigate this further. Lovely work.

[@cat2kill]

I've absolutely loved it. The skill, the presentation and everything else. Bravo.

[@donjezza]

I'm so glad people are devoting time and effort to this sort of endeavour, thanks for sharing such detailed information :)

[@Digithalis]

This is just awesome product for my project. I will check this later. Great job captain!

[@theacematt2]

😍. I love the sounds here. Thank you. Debating a purchase, unsure of the support on my devices here, lol. Best wishes in any case 😊

[@EthanWiner]

This is fabulous! Thanks for making this video, and of course the synthesizer too.

[@ProdDJD]

I'm counting on you for the next batch 🙏 this is so good

[@Aussiesnrg]

That is amazing! Brought back fond memories of making and tweaking the DX7 patches and other synths, and so much smaller!

[@gnudarve]

There are no words. This is just incredibly cool and awesome, thank you!

[@checktheevidence]

Clever stuff ! Congratulations on producing such an elegant and tiny solution/package!

[@leadersoundproductions4666]

Amazing... This is brilliant. Well done!

[@el.blanco8961]

Wow everything you played was interesting and beautiful, in sound and performance. Keep doing what your doing

[@among-us-99999]

I could listen to you playing around with Synthesizers for hours

[@laurencevanhelsuwe3052]

Loved the technical details part.. thanks for sharing.

[@mutzbunny]

holy sh*t that sounds so amazing, that cant be real.

[@GreatJoe]

Oh, you're on KZbin? Your article on the RN-42 and how to use it in a wireless gamepad helped me pass my wireless build exam back in 2016. I'm a Journeyman now, and the gamepad I made with your info is still one of my favourite things I made. Thank you!

[@TheResistorNetwork]

Exceptional project, especially the attention given to power consumption. I have mikmod running on an STM32 which allows it to render Amiga MOD files. There is something fun about deeply embedded audio synthesis where the audio framework is the output register of the DAC. Well done!

[@pianokeyjoe]

ya had me at running mikmod..

[@user82938]

Thanks for the technical details. I'm not very educated on electrical engineering, but it was interesting to hear about it.

[@G1SUNPLANT]

Insane!!! Man you made a breakthrough in big style! Great play and awesome engineering!

[@chriswareham]

Amazing! You could plug eight of these into the MIDI outs on a Yamaha QX-1 and replicate the monster Yamaha TX-816 rack that was eight DX-7 synth engines, but with double the polyphony!

[@sylvainbeaulieu5340]

Very cool to watch for a fan of midi & electronics! Hope to see more of this good stuff

[@rectangleboy]

Dude, it's just great hearing you play.

[@artisimo7967]

ive bumped into you a total of 3 times on the youtubes you are now a recognised familliar face

[@smacksalad]

Very impressive. I suspect this video is going to really rack up those views. Well done on this project.

[@kingbiscuit393]

Nerds are cool.

[@johnnyegel]

This is really some great work here. I really love it :-)

[@SlamWeasel]

Not gonna lie, I could listen to you jamming on the spacy Synths all day long

[@TDGalea]

God I love synth sounds. This is absolutely gorgeous.

[@duncanurquhart5278]

I swear this series (?) is making me fall in love with synths all over again

[@bingoccolon]

god i would listen to you play for hours.

[@alexbecker4149]

*Oh wow, just what I needed all my life, but I wish it was 16 channel multi-timbral!*

[@Fritzendugan]

build it yourself, iterate on his design :) Or probably just wait for v2 next year xD

[@creativebeetle]

Unbelievable! Fantastic work

[@kinnectar820]

Wow, that tone at 15:00 got me going! Do want! I wish they would do a bigger batch run.

[@whitturner7919]

I must say algorithm 1 - quad oscillators manages to sound very much like an analog synth - very nice!

[@kicksNCY]

yes indeed, remind me of my jx10

[@oldbatwit5102]

I have absolutely no use for one of these but I want one..... and now!

[@trileansoftware1440]

Amazing. And glad you did a technical breakdown at the end, for me at least that I'm not musician is the most interesting part. The STM32L432 does work on really low power, did you consider any of the MSP432P4xx? And about the next step of doing your own processor you mentioned, you could look into FPGAs before you dive into actual actual custom silicon.

[@RobertSzasz]

For prototyping only. FPGAs are power hogs unfortunately.

[@lavenderinthedark]

came for the awesome tech and cool ideas, stayed for the funky tunes.

[@dutchdykefinger]

first note: big fat FM sound ok, i'm interested... i love me some FM synths. i bet the metal housing makes the sounds even more clangy! :')

[@HominidMachinae]

I really dig the FM sound on this thing too. It's definitely its OWN sound, it's not trying to be a DX7 clone, but you can get DX7 sound, it's not an OPN2 but you can get OPN2 sound out of it for sure. I could see this being absolutely massive for retrowave and synthwave, it would be a huge boon to making big 80s sound while adding new sounds to the toolbox as opposed to just running timeworn dexed VSTs or shelling out for vintage hardware, at a reasonable price and with better programming capability than the vintage FM synths.

[@dutchdykefinger]

@@HominidMachinae true that i personally have a bit of a weak spot for that yamaha YM chip they put in the sega megadrive, which really isn't far off the OPL2/OPL3 ones, but it's even harsher. i kinda like that. i've done trackers for a long time, in fact still use renoise as my DAW right now, never really got into dexed though, tried it once or twice, found it a bit too much hassle, and went back to single-cycle sample based instruments in a piece of software i know a lot better doesn't get me the FM, but you can make some crazy chains in renoise instruments, but oxevst had covered me whenever i needed it :') if only i had hard synced sample retriggers i could probably make a bit of that c64 vibe too (yeah let's not get into how c64 isn't an FM chip, and those filters are analog and in series, so random AF, but it certainly shares some very FM-ish features when it comes to modulation) i like the idea of actual hardware, and it's a lot cheaper than one of them hardsids without the silly limitations.

[@HominidMachinae]

@@dutchdykefinger I believe the megadrive used the OPN2, unless you mean the master system japanese version, that used the "upgrade chip" OPLL

[@heinseemann7070]

This ist great! So much tweakable FM sound in such a small package ... Great!

[@adastra123]

That's soooooo damned clever.i wish I was that smart. Well done lol , probably the most well explained videos on how you did it.

[@enilenis]

On tantalum, the stripe is the opposite polarity, compared to electrolytics? Well, that explains a lot. I wish I knew that before attempting to repair my 48-port gigabit switch. It's off to silicon heaven.

[@mizukichan999]

The 8 Bit Guy would love this!

[@cln5510]

Petition to get the the 8 bit guy to get this

[@mpwsh]

This is so epic. awesome work!

[@PhilXavierSierraJones]

I have a cheap Yamana keyboard synth and it almost exactly sounds like this! Splendid job, looking forward to more projects from you :) (It probably uses a reduced version of FM synthesis chip used in DX7)

[@HominidMachinae]

They made a whole series of synths that used the YMxxxx / OPxx series chips. They all share a certain sound, the OPP (YM2164) chip was used in a whole "DX" series as well as some Korg models (!). I would bet that you have a DX100, DX21 or other model in that line. Fun fact: Other chips in the same series were sold to Sega and used in arcade cabinets and, most famously the OPN2 (YM2612) was used in the Sega Genesis. The L2 variant was used in soundblaster and adlib sound cards.

[@2.7petabytes]

Holy Hell! That’s ridiculously groovy! I’m in! I’ll take one for sure!

[@tonystephen6312]

and now for the FX/ reverb built in and DX 7 structure as well !

[@xhivo97]

This is so cool! I am working on making an ATtiny85 based MIDI wavetable synth. So far the specs are looking to be a least 4 voices at 6bits amplitude and 62ksps. The massive limitation was the lack of hardware multiplier for amplitude control, but I managed to get that part down to 39 cycles if I limited it to 6bits, which is all I need anyways since the 4 channels share one PWM output. It will be opensource and I'll make sure to e-mail the the link to the repo to mitxela as soon as I'm done, just in case he would find it interesting.

[@lo-firobotboy7112]

This is perfect for keytars. I must have one....maybe two!!

[@TheBaconWizard]

Holy crap, that's really impressive!

[@IgnatRemizov]

Truly incredible. I don't have a midi keyboard I could use with this, but this is something I could totally see myself buying and using it I had one

[@tsobf242]

I come back to this video occasionally just to hear the fun sounds. It's a very impressive range of sound considering the limitations. When I write synthesizers from scratch, they barely run on normal computers.

[@thewolfin]

Buy 5, 'cause you might lose them!

[@glenesis]

No joke! I keep losing some of my full sized synths!

[@glenesis]

@@euphemiaadamson8375 agreed. Need 16. But my interface has multiple MIDI out jacks, so...I need 80 of them.

[@colinhoek]

You keep impressing me. Ur a genius!

[@Zach010ROBLOX]

No f*cking way. This is an amazing feat of engineering, so so cool. I hope more people see this and appreciate your work

[@yy6u]

congrats, thats a hell of a device im impressed man

[@kristofers6559]

Your videos are awesome!

[@templemu]

superb, and a great vid for explaining synth and FM basics, for people like me who just do not understand FM please someone give this an Angel investment

[@ejjes]

Really exciting! I've heard people question whether this might eventually damage the circuitry in the controller, due to power draw? I have no frame of reference though.

[@JasperJanssen]

The power supply in a board that size could have 5 mA vampiric draw due to stray capacitance and never notice. The led backlight of that LCD right there will draw several times that whenever it’s on, never mind on full brightness. I mean, nothing is ever impossible, but this is really unlikely to be a valid concern.

[@KallePihlajasaari]

Magnificent integration. I have no musical inclination and the closest I got to MIDI was thinking of making a Midi to player piano interface as a project with a friend. I think if you get it to market before some copycat outfit you could have a successful niche product. A Kickstarter or Indigogo campaign could even pay for any missing software development and required custom machining. I wish you all success with your project. I like your MIDI music box too, very educational.

[@justanotheryoutuber739]

34:25 - yes, I am still watching and yes, I am really excited! This is some real og sauce!

[@WHYZMAN_]

This is the type of content I need in my life

[@ryanjones5803]

I wonder if this will work with my Octatrack. Would make for a very cool combo. Like adding a Digitone on the cheap! Sounds fantastic

[@CostasLilitsas]

Dude, you have re-invented the scale of awesomeness!!! Fucking extraordinary engineering!!! I wish you the success you disserve man! 👍

[@theLuigiFan0007Productions]

Daaaaammmmn. Now that sounds beautiful, the sound is really nostalgic and analog. If I had a keyboard with a MIDI connector I'd say shut up and take my money already. Unfortunately, I don't. But the day I do, let's just say I'ma get me one of these little wonders.

[@MahikaZeroNine]

Absolutely great work

[@blocktockblock6329]

looking forward to the source, i love some function pointers :)