Flesh Modulation (FM) Effect

Once upon a time, I worked for an Audio IC design company. One of our chips was an audio codec that took an analog or digital input and converted it to various outputs (like a class G headphone amplifier, but most importantly the FM transmitter). Since I was already writing firmware for this chip at work, it was easy to use it for a custom effect.

I bought an inexpensive enclosure (I think it was like $3), some pots, female and male DC power connectors, a power supply, some panel mount female RCA connectors, and a cheap regulator.

I measured the aluminum faceplate of the enclosure with a caliper and drew the faceplate outline in AutoCAD. Using AutoCAD, I designed a simple front panel (just knob locations), and created a drill location template. I printed out the drill location template on paper. I taped the paper template to the aluminum front panel and drilled the knob holes in the aluminum. I used the same procedure for the connectors on the back panel (DC jack, RCA jacks, and antenna jack).

The wiring was minimal, but soldering took a couple of hours because of the required surface mount mods.

I used the Dscope III (audio analyzer) at work to tune the knobs for optimum SNR. This allowed me to add markings on the front panel for optimum knob settings. So, I usually start with the knobs set there, and then start tweaking.

I use this effect for damn near everything. I load drum sounds into the SP1200, detune the drums, and then run the drums through it. I buy cheap synths from Goodwill, and run them through it. The effect adds a really nice analog noise and distortion to sounds, but only adds the noise when sound is present (so, you don’t get a huge wall off noise when you are not playing). It sounds fantastic on vocals (listen to the exrays first album here).

I really like this effect because it passes the sound though the room before is reaches the receiver. It’s kind of like capturing the essence of the room and the people in the room in each of the recordings.