Floppy Drive Music - General

[QUOTE=haloguy234;50276691]Bump for a little progress update. [vid]https://my.mixtape.moe/droiib.webm[/vid] Spent this morning figuring out how to get the stepper motor inside of a scanner to play music. Result is pretty good. It will sound less clanky and grindy once I screw everything down. The next problem will be to figure out how to get the motor to turn the other way once the scan head hits the end of the track, which is something I should be able to program into the pin output for the Arduino.[/QUOTE] i demand more things with the scanner

[QUOTE=Ott;50296212]Couldn't you delegate which notes to play with the aurduino? Start playing a note on a floppy, send it to the back of the queue, play the next note on the next floppy?[/QUOTE] Yes and no. The Moppy program has an automatic feature where it downscales notes that are found out of range in real-time, but it's not fast enough to work with notes in rapid succession. Just slows things down by a ton and breaks things, or skips over lots of notes. Something like what you're thinking of can be done but it would require too much processing power. Plus I don't know a whole lot about Java. So far I'm already halfway done mixing the MIDI. In that time I would have barely scratched the surface for some kind of automation. [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] Plus when it comes to channels, there is unfortunately no way around that due to the MIDI standard. Like I said earlier, one channel = one pin output. It's a hardcoded type of thing. So I could get this to work on a single floppy, but if I duplicate that to the rest it will put my arduino's into cardiac arrest. [editline]10th May 2016[/editline] And another thing to add, I definitely DO perform duplication of channels. This causes whatever I duplicate to other floppies to sound louder, but the downside to this is if there are way too many notes it will seize up the Arduino. It's also in-part due to electrical limitations. Think of motors like inductors, which are basically coils. The motor moves when the coils are energized in the correct sequence (in the case of floppies, the coils receive these instructions via serial packets converted by the Arduino). This energizing sequence takes time though. Coils/inductors like to hold charges for a period of time after energizing, and take time to discharge to accept a new charge sequence. For notes in very rapid succession (like the sweet riffs in E2M1) this doesn't exactly work. It can, and maybe on four floppies, but any more than that and the whole system will seize up due to lag from the Arduino. The actual notes will also somewhat lag from the motors, since the coils can't energize and discharge fast enough. That's why I looked into getting HDD's to function as speakers. They too are using coils, but their coils can discharge fast enough to accept new inputs, so they can shrug off rapid notes like nobody's business. So for rapid fire notes, I can just stick those on a single channel and send them to the HDDs, which the Arduino won't care about, and the rest of the harmonies and such can still be processed and sent to the rest of the floppies. It's a balancing act.

This is awesome, I wouldn't have thought to have used HDD's. I was wondering if you could offer some advice. I tried this myself with 2 floppy drives, each one works great... if it is connected to channel 1 (pins 2 and 3 on the arduino) but none of the other channels work, and I have verified my MIDI's have more than one channel.

[QUOTE=DarkCarnage;50317342]This is awesome, I wouldn't have thought to have used HDD's. I was wondering if you could offer some advice. I tried this myself with 2 floppy drives, each one works great... if it is connected to channel 1 (pins 2 and 3 on the arduino) but none of the other channels work, and I have verified my MIDI's have more than one channel.[/QUOTE] Have you verified the channel numbers in the MIDI? I use SpeedyMidi because it's great for quick transposition and copying/pasting of notes. I've seen lots of MIDIs out there that still have multiple channels but do not have separate channel numbers. So if you have two channels, and both are channel 1, only the first chronological channel on channel 1 will be processed. Another possibility is that your wires are not correct. If you flip those around the drive will not function. It's also possible that the other pins are bad on your Arduino (this happened to me with one of them, I now use it as a tester). If you want to find out, try plugging one floppy into the next set of pins and see what happens. If it doesn't work, and you're sure it's wired right, and there definitely is a Channel 2 in the MIDI, then you've got faulty pins on the Arduino. You could solder directly to the bottom if you want, but with how cheap they are it's probably not worth it. [editline]14th May 2016[/editline] Also, bit of an update. No new songs yet but I got sick of all the wire clutter (it's seriously bad) and I've finally started making a proper ground bus for each floppy column. [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/XB78aAD.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/PabOKC6.jpg[/img_thumb] I bought these terminals because I thought they were busses but I'm an idiot. So I turned them into busses by jumping the second column of contacts to each other. Saved myself about $100 (a 5-point bus is like $30 from when I looked and I'd need 4 of them). This will reduce the clutter by a ton because I'll have shifted all the ground wires over and out of the way of all the pins.

[QUOTE=haloguy234;50317568]Have you verified the channel numbers in the MIDI? I use SpeedyMidi because it's great for quick transposition and copying/pasting of notes. I've seen lots of MIDIs out there that still have multiple channels but do not have separate channel numbers. So if you have two channels, and both are channel 1, only the first chronological channel on channel 1 will be processed. Another possibility is that your wires are not correct. If you flip those around the drive will not function. It's also possible that the other pins are bad on your Arduino (this happened to me with one of them, I now use it as a tester). If you want to find out, try plugging one floppy into the next set of pins and see what happens. If it doesn't work, and you're sure it's wired right, and there definitely is a Channel 2 in the MIDI, then you've got faulty pins on the Arduino. You could solder directly to the bottom if you want, but with how cheap they are it's probably not worth it.[/QUOTE] Both floppies work fine if I connect each one (or both) to pins 2 and 3 but neither work on any other channel (I verified the channels with SpeedyMidi). I tested my Arduino's pins and they all are sending out +5V when set to HIGH. If I pool other channels in Moppy to channel 1 they play but if I pool them to any others they don't. It seems like the problem lies within Moppy or its Ardunio code but I can't find anything wrong (with the Arduino code at least). Either Moppy isn't working or my Arduino is shitting itself :v: [editline]14th May 2016[/editline] Turns out the serial com on my Arduino hardly works, tried another one and all my floppies started singing.

So I think my amplifier died for the HDDs, or it is on its way out. For some reason my HDDs sound a lot less loud. I don't know if this is because I am using different ones now or if it's a wiring issue, or if it's caused by the rubber bands I'm using to restrain the actuators (without rubber bands, they just clink and clank against all the metal and it sounds horrible). I don't think it's because of the rubber bands, because the coils function through electromagnetism and a piece of rubber sitting on top of a coil would insulate the electricity, but not the magnetic field. I tried testing the output of the amplifier and I was getting a very inconsistent current reading, so I'm thinking the thing is dying. I can barely hear my drives now. That may also explain why I've been having so much trouble with getting the actuators banded down to stay in a particular cone of movement. I've noticed when the current output is consistent the actuators tend to stay in one spot, but now when I have absolutely no rubber bands they glide allover the place at random, even when no notes are coming through the amp. Not bad because that thing was only $4.00 or something. This time around I'll pick up a stereo amp, because for all I know it started going out because I'm splitting the mono signal to two separate coils. Or it's just a cheapo chip amp. And I'll get several of them. Also I finished Blumenkranz. Here's a little teaser (this was recorded a few days ago). I'm not going to plaster the thing on the Internet until I finish up the chassis and implement some neat LED matrices. I think driving specific arrangements of LEDs similarly to how I'm currently running the front-LEDs of the drives would be a really cool aesthetic. And for this specific song I think flowing strips of rainbow LEDs are the only way to go. (it'll be interesting to run the absolute clusterfuck of wires for that, but that's what the chassis will be for). I unfortunately have no updates on the scanner. I'm actually considering building a proper power circuit for it because as it stands when I want to test with it I have it running off of a 19v 3.4a laptop charger and it is, of course, fully exposed. So any time I test it I am dealing with a pretty dangerous shock hazard. I should be able to run it off of the DC power coming from the same PSU I'm using for the floppies, and build a circuit to downvolt/upvolt as necessary. Anyway here's some fresh content. I spent the last month doing this and I have to say I'm pretty damn satisfied with it. I'm still working on finding an optimal way to record when I do audio takes. I think this one came out good but it's way too bassy. I'm getting closer to a good position though. [vid]https://my.mixtape.moe/llzpqz.webm[/vid] Edit Oh yeah, and here's a nice before and after of all my wires. [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/M7fiNAL.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/XYgdNmNh.jpg[/img_thumb] The poor man busbars I made have helped considerably.

In preparation for the case I'll be building sometime soon, I wanted to start getting legitimate wires instead of all these separate jumper cables. I decided to use Cat5 ethernet cables and some floppy IDC connectors. Result is really good! [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/k0ez6La.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/zF8JPu5.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/FzO0BMI.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/C7Rpfcu.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/r9CL57T.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/aAds8LT.jpg[/img_thumb] However breaking out the grounds from this is really difficult. I think what I'm going to do is get DSL phone splitters, ones with all 8 pins. Run the main lines from the floppies into those splitters after terminating them to RJ45, then run two wires out. One wire will be specifically for the three signal wires I need (2-to-1 direction signal, to make the LED function and move the motor, and the step signal). These will break out and plug into the Arduino. Then another wire which I will use specifically for carrying the ground signals from the splitter. I was thinking of terminating them all to RJ45 and plugging them all into an ethernet hub, since it's basically an ethernet bus. I won't be carrying an actual ethernet signal through it, but instead will use it as a bus for all my ground wires. And then run a tap out of the hub, break out the three ground wires I need, and merge them into a single wire that can be jumped to the ground pins on my Arduinos. I think using a hub would be a really neat aesthetic, because the link lights would also flicker every time the Arduinos pulse the ground signal. It would add to the "old computer hardware" feel. I just don't know for sure if an ethernet hub would work. I'm gonna grab one from work and test it on a small scale and see if it works. If it does then I have myself an extremely elegant and cool solution for the wiring (finally). The next step for the wiring will be to daisy-chain each molex power connector per stack onto themselves, then run them along a bus that spans the length of the entire setup. That way the wiring can be even cleaner. Next weekend I'll cash another check and I'll take a trip to Home Depot and pick up all the supplies I need to construct the chassis I've designed. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/2PuQtW4.png[/IMG] After that, the next goal will be to build my own power supply and completely remove the necessity of a full ATX PSU. It's getting there!

I think my favorit floppy songs are the ones with the Sonic 3 soundtrack, because it translates pretty much perfectly. :v: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zabL7H2wlc8[/media]

New microphone. I'm experimenting with different placement and arrangement techniques. Acoustics are fucking weird. One inch is all it takes to completely change the sound. Let me know which of these sounds the absolute best and I'll keep playing around with the different ways I recorded them to perfect it. The mic is dual condenser in XY so it has a really small cone of capture, which is good and bad. Good because it blocks out TONS of background noise, bad because the floppies furthest from the center are harder to hear. This includes the HDDs, so in one of these recordings they sound like they're far away and trapped in a box. [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3[/URL]

[QUOTE=haloguy234;50487604] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3[/URL][/QUOTE] 3rd one sounds pretty good

[QUOTE=haloguy234;50487604]New microphone. I'm experimenting with different placement and arrangement techniques. Acoustics are fucking weird. One inch is all it takes to completely change the sound. Let me know which of these sounds the absolute best and I'll keep playing around with the different ways I recorded them to perfect it. The mic is dual condenser in XY so it has a really small cone of capture, which is good and bad. Good because it blocks out TONS of background noise, bad because the floppies furthest from the center are harder to hear. This includes the HDDs, so in one of these recordings they sound like they're far away and trapped in a box. [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3[/URL][/QUOTE] 2nd one is the most balanced frequency-wise imo. Have you considered hooking your floppies and HDDs up with [URL="http://www.ebay.com/bhp/piezo-microphone"]piezo mics[/URL] and mixing them individually? Or even just 3 mics, left right and center?

[QUOTE=UnknownDude;50487768]2nd one is the most balanced frequency-wise imo. Have you considered hooking your floppies and HDDs up with [URL="http://www.ebay.com/bhp/piezo-microphone"]piezo mics[/URL] and mixing them individually? Or even just 3 mics, left right and center?[/QUOTE] I've knocked around the idea of using transducers but I'm not sure how well they would actually work. At least they're cheap so I can sample them with no real cost. The recorder I got allows for an additional mic input in combination with its condensers so I'll likely get a transducer and try it. First recording was done with the mics basically touching the front center of the entire arrangement. Second was further back, and third I actually recorded left and right and mixed together.

still demanding more scanner.

[QUOTE=BrickInHead;50488051]still demanding more scanner.[/QUOTE] Soon™ [video=youtube;cFMnKMa-OZ0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFMnKMa-OZ0[/video] HDDs are out until I feel like soldering up some other amps to them, but I think this came out really well

No idea why but floppy music always reminds me of cave story music, maybe the tone of the soundbits are very similar. [video=youtube;594aUuWMiOE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594aUuWMiOE[/video]

[QUOTE=haloguy234;50296152]Yeah, I've learned that the hard way. Some MIDIs are an absolute nightmare like this one I'm currently working on. Whatever asshole made this decided to throw everything into one channel, which will not work for floppies. I started working on it about a month ago but I missed a lot of important parts like some harmonies and melodies and lots of duplicate notes, and lots of parts that were just out of key. Dupe notes on a channel make it harder for the Arduino to process. So I'm re-doing it. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/AXov6C8.png[/IMG] On the upside when I'm done I'll be the only person to do Blumenkranz on floppies. Fortunately not all the MIDIs I've encountered are like this.[/QUOTE] seeing the old square FL interface brings me back. this looks like FL10 i'd imagine? now i sort of want to go back and see how garish FL6 and FL7 are in hindsight

[video=youtube;WhbBYLB90U0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhbBYLB90U0[/video] Only remix that matters

Obligatory super mario bros. overworld theme ! Also I can't stand Undertale but Megalovania would probably translate well [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcoqR9Bwx1Y[/media]

[media]http://youtu.be/l4i51b8ZS-4?t=85[/media] get this shit pumpin' on them floppies @ 1:24 [editline]12th June 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=haloguy234;50487604]New microphone. I'm experimenting with different placement and arrangement techniques. Acoustics are fucking weird. One inch is all it takes to completely change the sound. Let me know which of these sounds the absolute best and I'll keep playing around with the different ways I recorded them to perfect it. The mic is dual condenser in XY so it has a really small cone of capture, which is good and bad. Good because it blocks out TONS of background noise, bad because the floppies furthest from the center are harder to hear. This includes the HDDs, so in one of these recordings they sound like they're far away and trapped in a box. [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/ojstqk.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/prkajt.mp3[/URL] [URL="https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3"]https://my.mixtape.moe/bhsdrt.mp3[/URL][/QUOTE] get the mics nice and close up, boost around 200hz just a touch for some presence, higher frequencies just a tad to make it sound closer (you'll hear a little more high end of something the closer you are to it) if you can get your hands on izotope RX-5 there's a great plugin that comes with it which does a BRILLIANT job and cutting down on a sound's reverb, making it sound nice and close and full it's also VERY stereo. you might want something to fill the central space in lieu of drums and a bassline, in fact, your bass floppy (;v) could be panned centre with a little emphasis on the clicky parts to create the illusion of percussion there are other things but i won't ramble i'd love to get my hands on the stems for one of these mixes

[QUOTE=Kylel999;50500101]Obligatory super mario bros. overworld theme ! Also I can't stand Undertale but Megalovania would probably translate well [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcoqR9Bwx1Y[/media][/QUOTE] [video=youtube;4tdfZrZVc7k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tdfZrZVc7k[/video] the song was already on floppy so but also [video=youtube;g-Lm9EeIIMY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-Lm9EeIIMY[/video]

[QUOTE=geogzm;50500609][media]http://youtu.be/l4i51b8ZS-4?t=85[/media] get this shit pumpin' on them floppies @ 1:24 [editline]12th June 2016[/editline] get the mics nice and close up, boost around 200hz just a touch for some presence, higher frequencies just a tad to make it sound closer (you'll hear a little more high end of something the closer you are to it) if you can get your hands on izotope RX-5 there's a great plugin that comes with it which does a BRILLIANT job and cutting down on a sound's reverb, making it sound nice and close and full it's also VERY stereo. you might want something to fill the central space in lieu of drums and a bassline, in fact, your bass floppy (;v) could be panned centre with a little emphasis on the clicky parts to create the illusion of percussion there are other things but i won't ramble i'd love to get my hands on the stems for one of these mixes[/QUOTE] My usual process when I want to work with a recording is to do multiple takes from different angles. Those were all just tests from different placements and different arrangements of notes on specific drives to see how well it could capture the sound. For more serious work what I usually do is perform four takes and then mix them together. I usually do a full center capture, with everything. Then I do one from the top with a very flat, external microphone (I use this to accentuate trebles, it's good at that) and EQ that track to basically squish all of the other sounds and keep just high trebles. The other two captures are done with just the left and right arrangements. However it does come down to more than just how you position it. I can keep it dead center and capture everything but that would require more time put into specifically arranging the floppies and their appropriate channels based on what type of notes they'd be playing. Basically it would require a very conscious effort with thinking of what is going to be louder over everything else. By doing multiple takes I eliminate that entirely and can mix whatever I want to be louder in post. That's just the price to pay with so many of them. If I just had eight like that one guy it'd be different, but I can tell you from experience eight of them are insanely quiet unless you are right above them. With double the amount and a good arrangement of them (mass resonance is what makes these sound good) you can get much louder volume at the expense of less clarity. I generally duplicate channels and distribute them across the entire arrangement for specific parts I want to have louder than others. From the perspective of actually viewing it in person and hearing it in person, this works fine. In the perspective of recording it, not so much. So that's why it sounds very "stereo", as you put it. Also, what's the name of that plugin?

Please do one of Blue Orchid - The White Stripes or Icky Thump - The White Stripes

[QUOTE=haloguy234;50500697]My usual process when I want to work with a recording is to do multiple takes from different angles. Those were all just tests from different placements and different arrangements of notes on specific drives to see how well it could capture the sound. For more serious work what I usually do is perform four takes and then mix them together. I usually do a full center capture, with everything. Then I do one from the top with a very flat, external microphone (I use this to accentuate trebles, it's good at that) and EQ that track to basically squish all of the other sounds and keep just high trebles. The other two captures are done with just the left and right arrangements. However it does come down to more than just how you position it. I can keep it dead center and capture everything but that would require more time put into specifically arranging the floppies and their appropriate channels based on what type of notes they'd be playing. Basically it would require a very conscious effort with thinking of what is going to be louder over everything else. By doing multiple takes I eliminate that entirely and can mix whatever I want to be louder in post. That's just the price to pay with so many of them. If I just had eight like that one guy it'd be different, but I can tell you from experience eight of them are insanely quiet unless you are right above them. With double the amount and a good arrangement of them (mass resonance is what makes these sound good) you can get much louder volume at the expense of less clarity. I generally duplicate channels and distribute them across the entire arrangement for specific parts I want to have louder than others. From the perspective of actually viewing it in person and hearing it in person, this works fine. In the perspective of recording it, not so much. So that's why it sounds very "stereo", as you put it. Also, what's the name of that plugin?[/QUOTE] mid/side processing perhaps to tweak the stereo? i think a central percussion/bass track could work out still though - take the clickiest tracks, bandpass them to solo the clicky parts, resample them all as a group until you've got one percussive loop and then use something like ableton's utility to turn it mono. LPF down to 120 on a duplicate of the bass floppy (still ;v) and boost/saturate like a mad cunt this is all off the top of my head so it might not work out in practice as well, i'm not sure what your raw audio looks like, but this is an idea i'd try out to fill out the stereo image and izotope RX5, it's a swiss army knife of audio processing and it's fucking BEAUTIFUL. you can remove frequencies with surgical precision and there are a variety of tools, namely this helpful bastard: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZgpJRG167s[/media] [editline]14th June 2016[/editline] it's a tad pricey though, so you may want to try find it for cheap [editline]14th June 2016[/editline] my buddy just told me about another plugin which can convert low frequencies to mono across multiple channels at once (or your whole mix) which would help with the missing 'centre' of the track - UAD bx_saturator

[video=youtube;ITN4cKq4oOg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITN4cKq4oOg[/video] Also starting to work on some requests. Wanted to wait till I had a better mic for them before getting started. Working on getting some of them recorded now. Case is still WIP. Was hoping to get all the materials I needed a couple weekends ago but still hasn't happened yet. Money sucks.

[video=youtube;DTwHPnroZEE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTwHPnroZEE[/video] Whoa. Huge update. I finally got this scanner fully functional. It was an adventure filled with multiple near death scenarios (touching 120v AC is bad fellas). The head assembly was as simple to direct as I first hypothesized. Simply program it with a new max length in the Arduino code. However I sadly had to sacrifice a floppy drive to make this happen. You will be missed. [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/zRK0jdO.jpg[/img_thumb] Once I got the scanner functional, I knew my next step would be to get this built in bulb to work similarly to the front-facing LEDs on all the floppies. I knew how it would have to be done, at least halfway. However powering the bulb proved more difficult than I thought. The board it was originally plugged into before I gutted it required a 24v input. Time to get a boost converter! I hooked up the converter and did a lot of testing, but I couldn't get the light to power at all. I did what any sensible electronic repair enthusiast would do and pulled out my trusty multimeter. I followed the voltage trail all the way to a transistor. I bridged that to one of the nearby pins on the transistor, and...light! [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/UwS1HQs.jpg[/img_thumb] To get the light to pulse with every step I just had to run the step signal wire from the Arduino right into that pin. I did that, but ran into some...complications. Since voltage likes to try and flow to the lowest potential, and in effect I had a step signal line with a peak of 2.5v running to a line with upwards of 24+ volts (I never could get an accurate output reading because everything past the transformer on the bulb driver would arc the instant I touched a meter probe to it and it made my meter fuck itself...so that means that's probably very dangerous), the current flowing through the 24v line would eventually...make its way back to the signal wire. Testing the pin with an Arduino step signal [vid]https://my.mixtape.moe/svxbkx.mp4[/vid] It didn't do anything dangerous, but it made the scanner motor sound like it was experiencing a stroke any time this happened. So I did the next sensible thing, and wired the signal through the front-facing LED of the scanner. Since an LED is a diode, it prevents the 24v from flowing back through to the signal wire, interrupting the signal to the motor. ANYWHO, the case is of course still massively WIP, and by that I mean I haven't even picked up a hammer yet. But now that I have a good range of "instruments", I will be able to handle tons and tons of songs now (most of the requests I've gotten did not sound very good at all despite spending a ton of time reworking them to be flopptemized). With the addition of the scanner I will be able to cover much more note ranges. Anyway as per usual, any requests let me know. I've been building a list of them that I break out and work on in my spare time when I'm not trying to get something fixed or a new idea working with the setup.

[video=youtube;qG4DH-XoM8o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG4DH-XoM8o[/video] Been wanting to do this one for a very long time. I'm really happy with how it sounds. This is definitely my favorite. I broke the lamp in the head assembly while trying to do some concussive maintenance to realign the rails to limit the sound of the grinding and buzzing. Believe it or not, not even random people on eBay have lamps for these damn things. I found someone selling an assembly from an OfficeJet with a very similar looking lamp, so it might work. If it doesn't I wanted to get another scanner anyway, so I have another ScanJet on the way. I'll then have two scanners, and if I can't get this light replaced I'll swap it out for LEDs.

Scanner sounds amazing. Can it bend notes like the HDD?

[QUOTE=UnknownDude;51109589]Scanner sounds amazing. Can it bend notes like the HDD?[/QUOTE] Don't think so. It might with the right programming, but the hdds are able to bend notes based in specific effects applied to the note it's receiving (some MIDIs have a bendy/warpy effect). When a stepper receives those instructions it just knows to step so many times, but the HDD is receiving an actual audio waveform so it can easily replicate the effect.