DirtBox hardware started out as an experiment with the Arduino platform.We wanted to see how far we could take the fairly low-spec’ed Arduino in the synthesis realm. Its limitations made us work hard to get as much as we could out of it, and over time we built a hybrid digital/analogue prototype that used 8-bit digital oscillators that feed through to an analogue signal path with filter, distortion and VCA.
The results we started to obtain sounded great – anything from dirty lo-fi, to ballsy basses and leads. The sound is pretty unique and full of character, much of which is due to the 8-bit nature of the oscillators and the algorithms we’ve been working on. Still in development phase, we hope to unleash a version of the DirtBox hardware soon, but for now check out some of the work-in-progress…
