Digital guitar stomp box hardware?

[VPDannyMan]

Its really not something I would do in FS anyways just because of the hardware cost limitations. If you could use the flow board for it, you are already at 150 for the board alone, now you have to find out how to control that externally..

What I am thinking of doing (If the Ruby issue gets solved that is), is use the XBOX 360 controller with Kinect to control all kinds of guitar parameters. So when the guitarist jumps, it does something, when they swing side to side, it does something different. I want them to be able to program what the system does for certain movements just like you can with midi.. Now that is doable, affordable, and ground breaking in the guitar world...A Kinect is like $120 and that's all you need.. Imagine programming your own macro to be run for a gesture on stage. No stepping on pedals anymore, the Kinect stays with you and watches you, when you perform a certain gesture, it automatically does what you want it to do. You walk up to the front of the stage for your solo and jump up, the volume is automatically turned up, delay and chorus turned on ready for your solo..

However, as far as I'm concerned, there is really nothing that can be done until at least the Ruby issue is resolved. Once that's done then I am really looking forward to coming up with some of these new ideas.

[nix]

That sounds really cool man.
I imagine you could write music by dancing with that 8D
Is the Ruby issue you have the wrapping of the mscvrRuby.dll to the VST .dll?
I had terrible problems with multiple VSTs using Ruby,
but a Windows update fixed it.
Cheers, and thanks for sharing ur idea

[fixstuff555]

Hi guys,

I've been watching this thread with interest. Now keep in mind, I have the musical aptitude of a door knob.

From what I understand, a stomp box usually consists of an effect with some adjustments such as tone, frequency, etc, or some other adjustment to the effect itself when the stomp button is pushed. This sums into the passed through guitar pickup signal where it goes into the amp from there. Correct?

My question is this: If a Flowstone user has a synth for example, tied to a PC keyboard, would the stomp input be linked to a particular key? Or would you have a stomp box with multiple stomp keys, each tied to a different effect? Something like a multi-effect app.

Has anyone written such a FS or synthmaker project?

A stomp box to me seems like you would only need possibly 3 or 4 analog inputs, and possibly 2 or 3 digital inputs at the most as far as hardware goes.

If you had a board that plugged into the PC through a USB port, either using COM or USB itself, you could easily find an off the shelf board under $25 US to do this. The only thing else you would need is a small box and circuit to tie the pots, and switches into the board. Is this something that folks would be interested in? Of course it would require the PC with Flowstone, but it seems to me pretty cheap and easy to accomplish.

Now standalone is a different matter obviously. But with this being Flowstone related, I'm guessing thats not even an issue, since you can just buy one for $150 or less.

[nix]

Yep, that's what a stompbox is mate.

I imagine you wouldn't cater for synthesizers, only effects.
However, u could make a multi effect interface,
or more simply a single effect per stomp.

Maybe it would only need 4 pots, each with an LCD to label it.
We could have an open standard, anyone could develop a 4 pot VSTfx?

I can make the VST hosting .exe in MAX/MSP if anyone is interested.
The board needs to be able to run an .exe, and have 4 pot inputs,1 two way switch input,
and 4 LCD readouts.
Also needs mono audio in and out.
Cheers
Power is either a DC adapter or 9-volt battery.

I don't know how feasible this project is,
just sharing some of my thoughts about it.

[MyCo]

If you had a board that plugged into the PC through a USB port, either using COM or USB itself, you could easily find an off the shelf board under $25 US to do this. The only thing else you would need is a small box and circuit to tie the pots, and switches into the board. Is this something that folks would be interested in? Of course it would require the PC with Flowstone, but it seems to me pretty cheap and easy to accomplish.

Well, the benefit of an external DSP is the latency, which can get almost down to 2 samples from input to output. While on a PC you have latencies of 5ms on the input and 5ms on the output.

Also needs mono audio in and out.

That's where it already gets expensive, you need a codec and a quite advanced Microcontroller for that. Then you have to dig into USB audio class drivers...

[VPDannyMan]

Yes I have to agree with Myco, this is not a trivial venture. You may even find yourself having to write the drivers.

Anyways, yes Nix, the Ruby implementation is what has stopped me from doing anything more with FS. I really think its a fantastic product, but I cannot use it with that implementation, so I actually only show up here to see if they have fixed it... I'd rather have a version without it at all, I could use that, but whether you use ruby or not, it still silently installs it, and that's the problem.