Axoloti

I recently bought an Axoloti fro axoloti.com.  It is a small (3×7 inch) piece of hardware that renders audio from a designated program similar to pd.  This product is cheap 65 Euros and you can build an enclosure for it.  The environment is different from pd or max/MSP because every is ranged from 0 – 64 or -64 – 64.  Inside the environment is a code editor that allows the user to edit the object and save an instance of it.  Objects can also be created in a program like TextWrangler.  Most algorithms work the same way in axoloti as they do in max/MSP (ring modulation-> two signals being multiplied together) are the same.  That being said, certain objects don’t exist such as clip~, pong~, wrap~, scale and others.  This makes using the axoloti as much about composing and making sound as experimenting with ways of doing things.

On the left is a stereo input (no phantom power) and a stereo output.  Then there is a headphone jack, micro usb to power and transfer data, sdcard slot, usb host and midi in and out.  The sdcard is used to load patches onto the axoloti and use it in standalone mode.

Here is basic ring modulation of two sine tone signals.  The math/*c is a gain control.  The red lines indicate audio rate while the blue is float.  There is also green being integer numbers and yellow which is boolean.  The program allows for immediate understanding of the type of signal that is being used to control different parameters.

Limitations

The sample size is fixed to 48k.  There is only 8mb of SDram so doing anything spectral or FFT based is difficult.  The buffer size is also fixed at 16 samples.

While there are some big limitations with 8 mb of ram, the sound that can be produced has a certain analog feel and the overall capabilities  can create complex sounds and sequences.

More Axoloti patches to come…