Blackbox v0.2 Beta

1. License

This program is freeware, which means that software can be freely distributed, modified and copied, but not be used any way to gain any kind of financial profit. Selling and reselling, renting or leasing of this software or parts of the sourcecode is prohibited.

This software is used by users own risk. This means that any kind of damage or accidents which are related to usage of the software are at users own risk. Soucecode is available by request from the author daman_sparks@hotmail.com

2. Introduction

Blackbox 0.2Beta creates sounds in real time. You can have individual setting both left and right channels, change the waveform shape, amplitude and frequency modulation, pan channels, phase shift, change volume, and various other settings. Almost everything is animatiable.

Usage of the blackbox is devided into 2 sections; boxes and sessions:

1. Box is a single setup, it can be single setting or maximum 600 animated settings.
2. Session is group of boxes, which are played one by one.

3. Instructions

# Basics

When starting the program, it doesn’t give any sound. This is for 2 reasons; Volume is at zero and waveforms are at zero. In order to hear something, you must drag waveform slider(s) and volume sliders up. Now you should see waveform changing in shape windows and hear sound.

Waveform section is for crating basic waves and mixing them together. Below the vertical sliders there is 2 boxes, where you can see and change the values in numeric form. Most bottom boxes in waveform section are offsets of each wave. You can change these with horizontal sliders or by numeric.

Try this: Drag any of the waveslider maximum and change the horizontal slider value below it. You should see the waveform travelling left or right.

## Amplitude modulation

Here you have following controls:

Amplitude of the left and right channels, which are by default locked. You can unlock them by clicking “free” boxes. They are locked, becouse they are autoanimated by following setting: Base, Speed, Depth and Offset. Base is the basic level where AM is varied. Speed is the change of variation, Depth means how big the difference from base is, and Offset means how much the phase difference of AM is.

## Frequency modulation

Here you have following controls:

Phase shift of left and right channels which are by default locked. You can unlock them by clicking “free” boxes. They are locked, becouse they are autoanimated by following setting:
Speed, Depth, Offset and Sync. Speed is for phaseshift, Depth is how much shifting is, Offset is the phase shifting difference of the channels and Sync is the linked to speed of AM speed (100 means same speed and 50 is half speed from AM speed). Freq is basic frequency and Tune is master tune. Var is the difference of channels in tune, and Var Sync is connected to AM Speed. All this linking stuff is build so that user can create setups, which are in same sync with am and fm. Basically You build steady patterns with am and fm and get irregularities by changing Offsets, Depths, Syncs and Variations.

4. Understanding the principle

In order to understand what phase shifting means, do the following:

Drag both channels leftmost sliders to top and volume maximum. You should hear single tune, which has no any variations. Leave the Pan into 10. Change now one of the horizontal sliders above leftmost vertical sliders. You should hear to sound weakening and then getting louder again. This is becouse you hear the sum of the sounds and when they negate the result is getting close to zero. Find this zero point. You have found it when you don’t hear any sound.
Now, change the Pan up or down. You hear the sound again. This is becouse the are moving from RL zero towards left and right channels.
Now you can animate this variation; move Pan to 10 again. Drag up FM speed and depth.You should hear sound level getting louder and softer. Drag Pan up or down.

5. Loading and saving

Loading of boxes or sessions are done by doubleclicking the file windows, saving creates file which is named by the box or by session above save button. Always remember to use .box extensions with single setups ja .ses extension with session files. Location of these files are always in same directory where the program is.

6. Setting up a single setup

Modify the sliders and the values and name them other than default.box. Click save. File you just crated should appear the box below. You can create as many boxes as you want.

7. Animated box setup

Bottom most horizontal slider is timeslider. This means, that you can save different values in different place in time. Maximum length of sinle animated box is 600 seconds (10 minutes). Goto frame 0 (you are there by default). Change sliders and hit ‘Set key’ button. Small black line appears above the time slider indicating your saved key. Drag timeslider or use > button to go forward, maybe to 10. Change your slider values and hit ‘Save key’. Hit ‘Stop’ and ‘Play’. Now you should see sliders moving in time. Hit ‘Stop’ and save your box. You can also jump between the keyframes you created by clicking 'Next key' or 'Prev key'. If you have saved a key which you want to modify, just change sliders again and hit 'Set key'. If you want to remove keys, go to that key and hit 'delete key'.

8. Setting up a session

Session is a list of boxes. From box loading window, activate any of existing boxes. Click 'Add' below Files in this session window. Filename is now at session list. Repeat this as many times as you want. You can add and remove files, clear the whole list and play the list. You can save the list you created by clicking 'Save session'.

9. The future
I will develope this further, if there is requests to do so and wishes/ideas worth experimenting. Meanwhile, I'll let this program live of it's own life, hoping that users would share their box and session files with others. Good place to put them for downloading would be EEStimamg download section. Anyway, this is my humble contribution to EEStimmag community, which has given me lots of fun.
DaMan 2002