We present an analysis of the cowbell voice circuit from the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer. A digital model based on this analysis accurately emulates the original. Through the use of physical and behavioral models of each sub-circuit, this model supports accurate emulation of circuit-bent extensions to the voice's original behavior (including architecture-level alterations and component substitution). Some of this behavior is very complicated and is inconvenient or impossible to capture accurately through black box modeling or structured sampling. The band pass filter sub-circuit is treated as a case study of how to apply Mason's gain formula to finding the continuous-time transfer function of an analog circuit.

Authors: Werner, Kurt James; Abel, Jonathan S.; Smith, III, Julius O.
Affiliation: Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford, CA, USA
AES Convention: 137 (October 2014) Paper Number: 9207
Publication Date: October 8, 2014
Subject: Signal Processing

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