Mechen V06 (Review)

 I bought a handheld recorder . At the time i meant to buy the Xvive Portable but later i discovered thru reviews that it has a 3.5mm stereo line in ,and further more some reviews about Zoom H1n describe recording via line in as troublesome that needs lot of attenuation . So i couldn't afford a more pricey recorder and just noticed this recorder at Ali Express - Mechen V06 . Now at Ali Express there are maybe 100 types of handheld recorders ,many advertise crazy resolution but no brand at all ,so i dug a little deeper about this one once i noticed there is actually a real company with line of products . Thanks to a review over at You Tube ,and it is a single one review on this machine i gambled so i bought it .

First i did was using a wrong output from my mixer so my recordings were lacking the effects . Next i had the Noise Reduction at 1 ,there is a scale from 1 to 7 i think ..when it comes to Noise Reduction ,but there is also Noise Reduction off - Thank God ! 

..and it records well . The specs somewhere describe some odd kbs resolution of the recordings , i used the highest bitrate and Sound Forge says it is 16bit 96kHz ,unlike 24bit it advertises.. I never cared about that difference , i grew up with cassettes and making music on Amiga ,so 16 bits and 96kHz is more then enough for me ! 

Thru out these 5-6 recordings i did these past few days i used a Studiomaster mixer to record on to the Mechen  ,the faders are at 2-3 and feeding well this little thing while the gain settings on the Mechen are at 2 ,so you would need some attenuation to record sound from mixer .The recordings are not too loud which is expected and it needs some leveling afterwards ,with these settings the waveform is peak to peak on Sound Forge, but one thing i noticed is that Resampling the recording to 48kHz helps a lot to sort of clean up the waveform . The rest is little bit Soft Limiting and you have a descent WAV recording twice cheaper .

This portable recorder really looks nice with metal housing and a big screen .It is not advertised as studio tool ,and having only one 3.5mm socket that switches internally from being line in and line out can be annoying to some maybe ,but for me it's very easy to just copy the recordings onto my computer .It has 144Gb memory and it will auto shut down when not in use .Really happy with the quality of recordings , it's a winner! It holds well after using it extensively for over a month and making over 50 recordings .

This is recorded with Mechen V06

West Coast Mini

 

Another project that's been sitting on the workbench for years , another single panel synth ,this time in green and yellow knobs and jacks .This project is almost done but i grew tired of synthesizers i guess after 15 years of soldering ,one must grow tired a bit . The enclosure for this is very shallow i meant to make a new enclosure for the same panel and have a PSU integrated in the box . This is Volk comparing to Volca , it has 1 x 258 Buchla ,1 x Low Pass Gate ,1 x High Ripple VCF (Electronotes) ,1 x DUSG Serge ,1 x Serge SSG ,1 x NLC Spasm ,1 x Buchla 208 Uncorrelated Random ,1 x Serge Tripple Waveshaper ,2 x LFO's EFM ,Xmix EFM ,Serge Noise ,and thats alot ! The panel is specious and the thing is ,this is almost complete ... Most of the PCB's are soldered ,,2 or 3 left to complete and wire up . 

Џумбуш Кутија

Another GrooveBox is finished. This time with 4× Hagiwo Sampler Drums, CGS Gate Sequencer, Yusynth Pulse Delay, and Buchla 208 Random. Instead of a regular kick and bongo, there are samplers — that’s the main difference from the previous machine. Together they now hold 240 sounds, each 600 milliseconds long at 48kHz.

The enclosure was something I found lying in the mud at the junkyard. It looks like an old fiscal cash register, or maybe some other device. Sometimes you can find boxes from medical equipment there too. Cleaning off the factory-baked paint wasn’t easy, and this machine changed its face several times before I finally completed it.

As always, some things could have been done better.

Groove Box (ЏУМБУШКУТИЈА)

 

Here is the enclosure for the new Groove Box on it's way . It was hard work to peel of the baked paint . I will not disclose now it's features ,as i wait for a few remaining PCB's from China . I hope this build goes smooth and i keep this machine longer then it will take to record it properly .

Matrix Mixer

 

ooaaauuu

 

One more panel design ...

 

This elaborate single panel synthesizer contains the following modules :

Buchla 258 (Single VCO)

Ian Fritz 6 Phase VCO 

Ian Fritz /R.C. Bass Waveshaper (Electronotes)

Serge Triple Waveshaper 

Paparail VC Aux / Panner /VCA

Yu Synth Dual RIng MOD

Wiard Wogglebug 

Serge DUSG + USG

Serge Smooth / Hagiwo Bazier Curve x 2

Serge Extended Resonance VCF

Serge '73 VCF (Both with summed outputs)

Osamu Hoshuyama Dome Filter

Buchla 106 (Half) + Electronotes VCA

Serge Noise

                                                                  

feedback music

 

This is recorded with diy mixer and pedal.

SInthai Solo

 

This little monophonic FM synth is based on Hagiwo's FM Oscillator ,it's just Arduino with the help of AI and therefore not Duophonic at least , but i decided to keep it , it's got 7 waveforms ,envelope ,pitch bend with 2 semitones ,range and depth controls , there are dedicated cv inputs for all these functions , now there was room on the panel to add a simple envelope generator as there is pulse out on keypress at D1 , but guess i'll just do that part separate ,the Joystick is just voltage source to modulate inputs . It's all done on stripboard .The keyboard is cut out from larger Casio CT660.

***

 

Random Number Generator - Mid Fi Electronics

 

EMU (Universal Active Filter)

 

please contact me if i need to remove this as i don't remember where i found this really elaborate schematic from the Emu Modular 

in case you missed this...

 

   

Serge '73 VCF ,original layout from Serge ,using 2 x CA3080 , i cleaned up this layout to my taste and build this filter using this ..twice ,little tip : if you're using this layout and don't have a metal can CA3080 you can use that chip in SMD with adapter ,using CA3080 in TH can be hard ,this one and few other original layouts from that Serge system can still be found at the wayback machine . Here is Gerber files for this interesting filter , you can see i did not completed the silkscreen since the original documentation contained that information .

This information was already online ,contact me if i need to remove it from this google website .

Bandpass Gyrator Filters or almost an Octave filter

 

Bandpass Gyrator Filters or almost an Octave filter as presented by helge-h here at electro-music forum

i made 4 of these filters as part of my Matrix Mixer ,too bad that more then 6 position switches are really expensive ,but that is the only extra thing you need to expand this filter , i installed the capacitors on the switches as that makes sense to me

SynthesizerUnderConstruction

 Here are links to my other blog . These are all tested working layouts . If you can buy the kit ,it's easier but if you have a few spare parts and need a specific project maybe it's here : SynthesizerSecrets 

SIAM (Siemens Inspired Equalizer )

Preamp and Envelope Follower ( By Juan Bermudes Costa)

Thomas Henry 555 VCO (Slim Version)

Crossfade Panner (Buchla Based)

Experimental Hardware Neurons (By Grant Richter)

Non-Linear Circuits Primal Hyperchaos 

Non-Linear Circuits Jerk

Non-Linear Circuits SPasm

NLC Neuron/Grant Richter's CV Twister

CGS95 Reverb

Serge n-Step Programmer/Sequencer

Buchla Low Pass Gate/Envelope Follower

Serge Wavemultiplier/Overdrive 

Paparail's VC AUX

Hagiwo's Addive VCO

Serge SSG/Bazier CUrve

Serge Triple Glide

Buchla 194

Yamaha GX BPF

Matrix Mixer

 

Matrix Mixer with gyrators as presented at electro-music forum ,this matrix mixer is with a twist ..each of the four stages has one input set to go thru the bandpass filter with rotation switches dedicated for purpose of filters set in the left side ,the upper and lower filter have two settings for resonance selectable via switch ,the 2nd and 3rd stage's 2nd and 3rd input have an attenuator switch ,as well as the 4th channel ,there was not enough space but in retrospect i'd add switchable boost on each channel in a form of additional 10 or 15K resistor at the output opamp ,the gyrator filters as expected make nice sinusoidal tones in feedback .This is really an active matrix mixer from CGS schematic ,each row can be set to unipolar or bipolar mixing and can be used for audio or cv mixing .

----- NOW THIS MATRIX MIXER IS NO LONGER FOR SALE -----

This unique Matrix Mixer with 4 Filters is for sale for 150EU + Shipping ,it works on +/-15V or +/-12V, i can include external PSU if you don't have one already but that might increase shipping costs , can ship worldwide with UPS ,payment with Pay Pal ,contact me for more info on vladribarski@gmail.com

Active Processor

UNTESTED!

 

Serge Triple Glide

 

tested , working!

ARP Quadra phaser (J. Haible)

 

sadly i could not get this one to work , i spent lot of time tracing the bad print layout from Jurgen Haible

building best of cgs