Building a DIY Cooper Time Cube "garden hose" Echo

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T-rex
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Post by T-rex » Mon Apr 06, 2009 4:15 pm

Here is a link of someone else talking about building one a while back. Fletcher mentions that part of the sound originally was from UREI 1106 amplifiers?

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/12343/0/
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Dakota
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Post by Dakota » Mon Apr 06, 2009 5:00 pm

Hmm... this kind of thing could maybe do an interesting analog reverb if it simulated 3 room dimensions. Might as well spread those 3 delays to proportions that are like an idealized room, minimizing nodes in common and maximizing even frequency distribution. Phi is good for that. (x1.618)

3 hoses, say one @15ft, one @24.27ft, one @39.27ft. Separate pickup elements on the end of each. But one driver at the start going into all 3.

Or maybe one hose, but multiple taps at phi spread points.

Just thinking.

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Post by Praqtice » Tue Apr 07, 2009 4:10 am

thanks newfuturevintage for the advice on lm386. Does anyone know of any better amp ic that doesn't distort as much?

I'll use a headphone amp to get it going etc but I'd like to have the unit so it works standalone. Thanks for all the help on this so far!

The amps used in the time cube were 1109 with a 506 eq circuit. (very nice but too couture for my wallet i think) If anyone has 2 or 4 they can donate please do. (ha)

cooper's notes for tuning and what to do for certain notch/peak frequencies are in the back of that manual I linked before. (very interesting!) still no clue as for the role of the central billet box yet where the pickup is... any ideas?

I reckon a little feedback loop could do wonders! will try this on the design for sure...(!)

Im going for the traditional 14ms on 1 ch 16ms on the other and use em as stereo for haas effect and inline for 30ms...

The way the time cube works inline is the microphone pickup on 1 channel gets fed direct to the driver of the 2nd. Any ideas about this in a standalone box?
Little switch should do but it would need an opamp or something to preamp the pickup of the 1st ch before it gets sent into the 2nd driver. I think.

Apparently the only way to get time variations in hose is to change the atmospheric pressure (ie: shoot it into the sky, this is something we should think about!).

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Post by Nate Dort » Tue Apr 07, 2009 9:21 am

Praqtice wrote:thanks newfuturevintage for the advice on lm386. Does anyone know of any better amp ic that doesn't distort as much?
TDA7052 will provide about twice as much output power before distortion for a given supply voltage. TDA7056 will provide about twice as much again.

If you really want cut down on the distortion, LM1875 looks promising. More external components, but it will drive the crap out of some small speakers if need-be.

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Post by Praqtice » Sat Apr 25, 2009 11:22 am

well progress has been so slow as i've been skint and have had to concentrate on work...(ie:the musical side of things)

have finally discovered the secret behind the time cube's "mystery box" where the pickup microphone lies...

appears to be a t junction that meets the delay line, a tube leading to pickup mic and another line filled with foam and apparently a 1" length of soda straw an inch or two from the t junction... there are also 3 screws that seem to adjust the air pressure.

have been sourcing parts for the 'cube' and am going to get that working before i start on amplifier... ive seen most of the bits through my local hardware shop window now just need to get a day to build the box and ill be away...

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Post by Jon~T » Sun Apr 26, 2009 1:59 pm

I will be watching this thread.

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Post by casey campbell » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:19 pm

i have used the lm386 for years, never knew it to distort, unless you put a 1k pot between pins 1 and 8, and then it makes a killer overdrive.

so, here we go.

1. go to radio shack... purchase an lm386 chip, two .1 microfarad ceramic capacitors, one of their universal pc boards (the one that is made especially to put a chip on).

connect pins 1 and 8 with a wire
connect pin 2 to ground as well as pin 4
pin 3 will be your input signal which is where you will put the .1 microfarad capacitor feeding into that pin.

pin 5 is the audio output....feed from that pin into the other .1 microfarad capacitor, or you could use a electrolytic.... 47mf to 250mf with the + lead of the cap towards the pin of the chip. it's not that picky really.

pin 6 is your voltage. 9vdc will do it. a guitar pedal supply works great for this.

dont worry about pin 7. just leave it unhooked.

feed a line level signal into it, and you got it. what's really cool is that you can feed a guitar directly into it, and it'll be just fine.

if you want the option for an overdrive section, you could put a 1k potentiometer between pins 1 and 8 of the chip. this will make a killer, dynamic sounding overdrive. (beware folks, that if you want to just use this as a pedal that'll feed an amp, then you'll need a 100k resistor on the output). but if you are directly driving a speaker with this amp, then absolutely no resistor at the end of it.

good luck

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Post by nclayton » Tue May 05, 2009 9:42 am

Praqtice wrote:

if you look on the picture, in the centre of the spiral there's a little grey billet box that i can't find too much info on. all i know if this box is maintained at 1 atmosphere and is sealed tight, apart from that i can't find anything. anyone have any ideas what might be in there? or what it might be doing? apparently this part is quite crucial for the sound.
It looks to me like there's one hose going in and another one coming out of that junction box, plus a third tube for the capsule.

My guess it's just a three way junction for the capsule.

If the tube ended at the capsule you'd have it at the end of basically like a pipe organ pipe, which wouldn't sound good, it would be very resonant obviously.

The hose looks different coming out of the box. I bet it's a different kind of hose filled with some kind of dampening material to try to simulate an "infinte" length of hose and reduce the standing wave effect. There might be an optimum length of tube coming out of the junction box, but probably just the longer the tube the better.

I don't know about the box....it's small enough that its resonant frequency would be quite high. I don't know if its volume is important. What's probably important is the ratio of the volume to the length of the pipe going to the capsule, since that pipe WILL have a very short standing wave in it. The box might somehow damp that wave.

Obviously it should be sealed...but that it's sealed and maintained at 1 atmosphere seems unlikely to me, since it has to attach to three hoses which are probably not truly truly air tight at their ends, and also, I really doubt that the green hose is sealed off at the end at all. Probably you just don't want any leaks AT the box.

...my best guesses...probably you can find real information out there somewhere, though...

Ned
Last edited by nclayton on Tue May 05, 2009 9:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by nclayton » Tue May 05, 2009 9:46 am

Has anyone searched AES for information about this? A lot of these kinds of things had pretty elaborate descriptions published there.



PS sorry to bump up a kind of old thread...this just looked interesting.

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Post by jashwa » Tue May 05, 2009 10:14 am

definitely interesting.
so if 1ft= .884 ms of delay, couldn't I figure out how many ms of delay I need to have the delay in time with the song and cut some hose to that length?

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Post by The Scum » Tue May 05, 2009 4:41 pm

o if 1ft= .884 ms of delay, couldn't I figure out how many ms of delay I need to have the delay in time with the song and cut some hose to that length?
To some degree.

Keep in mind that equation specifies a certain humidity and air pressure (altitude) . If your conditions differ, so will your results.

Of course, you probably wouldn't be interested in building the thing if you weren't open to some degree of serendipity.

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Post by Praqtice » Sat May 16, 2009 4:38 am

There's some fantastic information on the frequency response of the Cooper Time Cube and a great explanation of the "wave stub" tube (the green one) and it's use to phase out small reflection in the tube and how it doesn't quite to do it's job right but what it adds...

LOTS and LOTS of info here anyway...

http://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2009/may/ ... html%22%3E

Thanks for the great info on LM chips.

I sadly still haven't started my Time Cube, I have a huge amount of the musical kind of work on + my reel to reel, a channel of my mutronics mutator + the filter envelope in my favorite monosynth seem to have died so I'm still in heavy grievance over all that...:(

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Post by Praqtice » Sat May 16, 2009 4:41 am

The Scum wrote:
o if 1ft= .884 ms of delay, couldn't I figure out how many ms of delay I need to have the delay in time with the song and cut some hose to that length?
To some degree.

Keep in mind that equation specifies a certain humidity and air pressure (altitude) . If your conditions differ, so will your results.

Of course, you probably wouldn't be interested in building the thing if you weren't open to some degree of serendipity.
Yes I am very aware of the effect of pressure altitude, but I figure if I go by Putnam and Coopers measurements my Time Cube will sound as one would in the UK... Saying that, I wonder how the sound in a Time Cube will differ from one country to the other?

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CraigS63
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Post by CraigS63 » Sat May 16, 2009 5:59 am

Could the timing be adjusted by mixing helium or CO2 with the air in it? This this sounds fun.

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leigh
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Post by leigh » Sat May 16, 2009 10:50 am

jashwa wrote:definitely interesting.
so if 1ft= .884 ms of delay, couldn't I figure out how many ms of delay I need to have the delay in time with the song and cut some hose to that length?
Atmospheric variances aside, the answer is still "no". We're talking about 14 and 16 ms delay times here... way too short for a tempo-based delay. (For example, even at the breakneck tempo of 200 bpm, a 16th note is still 75ms.)

Could you cut a much longer hose? Yes, but for the lengths you'd need for a tempo-based delay, that's too much air to drive with the capsule from a 57....

cheers,
Leigh

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