onsdag den 13. maj 2015

Debut album released on DIY audio player

For my bachelor-degree project I decided to pile together various recordings and compostions collected during the past years I've been under my alias Dögenigt and make an album.

For a long time I'd been thinking of an alternative to the digital release or vinyl and what have you and I discovered a tiny circuit based on a miniature arduino-like chip (ATtiny85) which can be programmed to read lossless quality sound files from an SD-card and play them (in 44.1 kHz 16 bit) via the PWM pins.
So I decided to go ahead and build the circuit into a small audio player to be built into some casing as my album and have the project and journal revolve around that.

I've been working on the project for the past couple of weeks - it's all in the papers I wrote.
Link to the paper in danish: http://data.xn--dgenigt-q1a.dk/DIEM/opgaver/BA3-Bachelorprojekt.pdf
I tried to translate into english but failed to do so. Let me know if you have success!

Images from the project:

Wave-player based on ChaN's circuit and code:
Runs of 3.3V and outputs sound directly to jack output in 44.1 kHz 16-bit sound. So far, only mono as more digital pins are needed. The PWM-outputs on the ATtiny85 each create an 8-bit signal, when 2 are added together they make 16-bit. For stereo 16-bit sound 4 digital pins are needed. We didn't have enough time to do this but I know of a guy who did it with an ATmega328.

    Finalized player with batterypack, speaker and SD-card.
 
    Simple version of the player with no jack output but screw terminals instead for power and output.

    Player cased inside VHS-cassette :-)
    ChaN's (simple!) circuit


The album is already online on my bandcamp as digital download but in the future I will have the release available on this platform as in the pictures above. The whole album can be bought for $10 and of course streamed for free. All the tracks are made with my homemade gear. Enjoy!