ammoBox

UPDATE

ammobox 1.6 is released, basically just a patch to greatly improve the timecode detections so that there's less 'drift' when scratching. Still not using FFTs to generate timecode, but maybe someday.

DOWNLOAD NOW: ammobox_lite_v1.6.zip

The Name

ammoBox is a combination of word play. Basically the concept of 'battle' wax is that your record is your weapon -- ammobox being a container for ammunition, in this case samples. As well, one of my project alias for Reaktor work is 'loadammo', which (and this is a bit of rare trivia) is actually an anagram..

Comments and Feedback

Ome_Les (translated from Dutch) - "Someone has been very terrible creative with building VST ensembles in Reaktor."

Cory Ronaldo via CDM Blog - "This is such a great thing– completely opening possibilities for those of us already familiar with using vinyl for tactile control."

Roger Linn (Father of the MPC) - "Basically it's like Finalscratch on steroids"

Stories people have written about ammobox

A couple nice mentions from Create Digital Music blog can be found here (detail) and here (original teaser).

Another nice write-up from DJTechTools.com is available here.

Video & Summary

This is the blog page for ammobox, the shift in the way people will think about turntablism. Roughly what ammobox is, is a combination of two techniques, HangTheDJ a universal vinyl time-code decoder, and ammobox:lite, a MIDI triggerable sampler. This webpage is the end-all-be-all of the story behind it, how it works and what the future may hold. ammobox is available for free to Reaktor users, if you're unfamilar with Reaktor you can read more about it on Native Instrument's webpage.

With ammobox you can layer samples into a 'stream' and scratch the stream, this allows for asyncronous sample triggering and layered effects that would be impossible otherwise. Microscopically you could say that ammobox is a 'virtual battle album' toolkit, macroscopically you could say that it's a completely new way of thinking about scratching and the next step in the evolution of digital vinyl.

No digital vinyl product has the capabilities that ammobox does as far as layering and triggering individual samples. ammobox dismisses the idea of DVS systems reproducing the workflow of DJs that has remained virtually unchanged since 1970. Absolute position is dead, relative positioning is the key to creativity. Scratching is not a linear process, it's about rearranging and re-imagining sounds in combinations that haven't been expressed yet. Don't waste your time cutting and pasting, start innovating NOW.

Why this project is cool

• It's the world's first vinyl time-code decoder for Reaktor
• It showcases the techniques of stream scratching (arbitrary sample injection into a single stream that can be scratched, samples can be layered and staggered, samples can be anything you want)
• It showcases the technique of on-the-fly battle record creation

• It showcases the technique of scratching dynamic audio inside a DAW

• It is the first digital vinyl project that escapes from the same DJ workflow that has been unchanged since the 1970s and remains the basis for every digital vinyl product that exists.
• I did it!

Acknowledgements

• CList and herw and everyone from the Native Instrument forums who answered my beginning Core questions.
• Whoever wrote the wikipedia article on Final Scratch
• thephatconductor from Ableton Forums for his donation of $20CD
• stutterbrain for his 10 pound donation
• martin e. from Sweden for his $20 USD donation
• Nathan from Australia for his $20 USD donation

Digital Vinyl: Demystified

When I set out to make ammobox, I didn't know much about digital vinyl systems (DVS), but I found a few interesting sources for information. Specifically the wikipedia entry for Final Scratch. The author laid out the basics of how digital vinyl works that took me a couple readings to understand, my DSP knowledge previous to ammobox was effectively nil.

ammobox

ammobox without HangTheDJ is nothing new, we've all seen MIDI triggering samplers, the slick part is that with Reaktor you can feed the sampler with a variable frequency signal and it will change playback speed accordingly. So essentially 'for free' once you supply vinyl time-code speed, you get a polyphonic sampler that can layer multiple samples at the same time and scratch them all simultaneously.

I rigged up a Roland FC-300 and a counter so I could foot-stomp up/down sample position and retrigger at will, as well setup a MIDI note sieve to trigger samples directly based on their position in the sample map. Continently enough Reaktor has 128 samples per map, and there are 1-128 MIDI notes. This is clearly expressed in the youtube videos where Ableton Live is triggering the samples via MIDI -- Reaktor is doing all the heavy lifting in this case, all Live is providing is MIDI looping which any DAW could provide.

Summary

Thats basically it for now. I've put the videos out, I've released the software for free (at the top of the page), I'll likely add more to this page as time goes on to discuss what other things you could be doing with ammobox. If you build anything on top of ammobox, let me know and I'll link it from this page.

Moving Forward

As stated earlier in this page I think the next step is getting a commercial grade decoding mechanism using FFTs rather than simply watching zero-crossings. I have no estimate on how long this will take to happen, DSP is a hobby, my real job pays the bills -- so far only one person has donated any money to support ammobox so I'm unlikely to be quitting my day job to do this stuff full time.

Too bad though, I think it's clear I've got some good ideas.