blskk  /  terraininstagram  ·  source  ·  v63c

TERRAIN for Digitone II

An unofficial OS for the Elektron Digitone II, with a synth machine that plays a point running across a landscape. You build it here, in your browser, from your own copy of OS 1.12.

FIG. 1  Page 1 of TERRAIN, as the Digitone draws it.test it here! ↓

01What's in it

TERRAIN
Wave terrain synthesis. A point runs over a surface and the height under it is the sound. 64 terrains in 8 banks, with warp, FM-style mod, phase distortion, a drum page and sync. It sits right under SWARMER in the machine list.
Pages
Five of them, made to look like the stock ones. Push an encoder to see its value.
Negative screen
Flips the whole screen. It's in SETTINGS › PERSONALIZE. P-locks still show the right way round.
Mod graphics
Also in PERSONALIZE. TERRAIN's drawings slide to the new value instead of jumping.
Boot
Three intros that take turns every time you switch on: GLITCH, RITO, FOURIER.
From dnfw
The mods I wanted from dn2_firmware_explore: more LFO destinations, LFO ONE/HALF that hold, arp on MIDI tracks, SHUF and RAND arp modes, arp offsets in scale, MIDI out from audio tracks, reload confirm.
FIG. 2  The five pages, as the emulator draws them. Click one to see it in negative.

02Test it

Drag the knobs and the cursor. Play the keys, or A–K on your keyboard.

03The parameters

Five pages, eight knobs each. On the Digitone you can push an encoder to see the exact number.

SYN 1  ·  the map

TUNE
The pitch, in semitones. Same as TUNE on any other machine.
BANK
Eight sets of terrains. CLSC is the plain stuff, HARM sounds like organs, EDGE has steps and corners, CHAO is the messy one, FM is FM, FOLD folds, BITS is digital dirt, CHEB is all clean harmonics.
TERR
Picks a terrain inside the bank. It doesn't jump, it fades into the next one, so you can sweep it with an LFO. The name shows up top right.
WARP
Folds the sound back over itself. Turn it up slowly, it goes from warm to metal pretty fast.
POSX / POSY
Moves the cross around the map, and the whole path with it. Grab this one first: same terrain, different spot, different sound.
ZOOM
How big the path is. Small and the point barely moves, so you get something close to a sine wave. Big and it runs over the hills and gets bright.
MOD
Lets Y push X around, a bit like FM. The path ties itself in knots.

SYN 2  ·  the two axes

TUNX / TUNY
Each axis has its own tuning against the note. Same pitch on both gives a line or a circle, an octave apart gives a figure eight. Anything else gets clangy and bell-like, which is half the fun.
WAVX / WAVY
The wave that pushes the point along that axis. SIN is smooth, TRI goes straight, SQR jumps between two spots, SAW goes one way and snaps back.
PHSX / PHSY
Shifts one axis against the other. With the same tuning on both, this is what opens a line into a circle.
PDX / PDY
Phase distortion, the old Casio CZ trick. Bends the wave to one side or the other depending on which way you turn. Brighter, a bit resonant.

SYN 3  ·  the land

ASPT
Stretches the path wider or taller. Left for X, right for Y.
ROTA
Turns the path around on the map.
GRAN
Instead of gliding, the point hops from square to square. Lo-fi and steppy.
CURV
Bends the path near the edges. Positive throws it out onto the hills, negative pulls it back to the middle.
ERSN
Erosion. Sands the terrain down, so it gets darker and softer.
RIDG
Ridges. Sharpens the tops, more edge and fizz.
WIND
The path drifts across the map by itself. Slow movement without setting up an LFO.
FDBK
Sends the height back into X. A little is grit, a lot is chaos.

SYN 4  ·  drum

STIM
How long the pitch drop at the start of each note takes.
SDEP
How far the pitch drops. Zero means no drop. Turn this and STIM up for kicks and toms.
N.HLD
How long the noise stays up before it fades.
N.DEC
How long the noise takes to fade.
BASE
Where the noise filter starts, at the bottom.
WDTH
How wide the noise is above BASE. Narrow sounds like a hissy tone, wide is just noise.
GRAN
Grain of the noise. Fine hiss at the bottom, crackle at the top.
N.LEV
How loud the noise is next to the tone.

SYN 5  ·  phase, sync, key

PHASE X / Y
Fine phase for each axis, −1.00 to +1.00. For when PHSX and PHSY are too coarse.
SYNC X / Y
Hard sync. The axis runs faster and restarts with every cycle of the note. Off at zero, sweep it for that tearing sync sound.
KEY PHS X / Y
Higher notes shift the phase, so the tone changes a little as you go up the keyboard.
KEY PD X / Y
Same idea for phase distortion. Brighter on top, or darker, depending on which way you turn it.

04Build it

Get Digitone_II_OS1.12.syx from Elektron's website and give it to this page. It is checked, rebuilt and checked again on your computer; nothing is uploaded anywhere. Any other file is refused.

Nothing loaded yet.

05Install

Send the downloaded file to the Digitone II the way you would send an official OS update, for example with Elektron Transfer. To go back, send the original OS 1.12 file the same way.

This is a personal project shared as it is. Elektron did not make it and does not support it. Back up your projects first.

06Under the hood

ProcessorsA ColdFire MCF54415 runs the screen, the keys, the sequencer and the settings; TERRAIN's pages and the mods live there. A SHARC+ ADSP-21569 makes the sound; TERRAIN's voices run there, next to Elektron's machines.
Main OS3,121 KB → 3,354 KB of 4,095 KB. Our code and page drawings sit after Elektron's code; theirs is only redirected at a few points.
DSP817 KB → 900 KB of 1,024 KB. About 7,600 SHARC instructions for TERRAIN, 2,300 for the adapter to the stock voice engine.
DSP loadBlocks of 32 samples at 48 kHz. Eight TERRAIN voices take 76% of a block in the emulator; every build is tested against an 85% line.
MemoryThe Digitone's 128 MB of DDR, like the stock OS. Negative screen, mod graphics and the intro turn are three bytes at the end of the saved settings.
UntouchedBootloader, updater, boot data and the file's meta section are byte for byte Elektron's 1.12. Only the main OS and the DSP image change, so a normal OS update always takes you back.

07Changes