<story><title>The Analog Thing: an open source, educational, low-cost modern analog computer</title><url>https://the-analog-thing.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bgribble</author><text>Very familiar-looking to anyone who has been following the modular synthesizer renaissance. Modular synths are basically analog computers, just not well-optimized for precision in most cases. All the basic building blocks of THAT are available as modules from a number of boutique manufacturers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dreamcompiler</author><text>Yes but the emphasis is different. Modular synths typically come with oscillators; analog computers typically don&amp;#x27;t. But if you want an oscillator you can build one out of integrators in a feedback configuration.&lt;p&gt;Modular synths typically come with filters; analog computers typically don&amp;#x27;t. Analog computers do come with integrators which could be considered very weird lowpass filters. Likewise a differentiator can be considered a weird and always imperfect highpass filter.&lt;p&gt;Both typically come with adders, but a modular synth will call this a mixer. Both typically come with multipliers but a modular synth will often call a multiplier a ring modulator (and it might not multiply all four quadrants).&lt;p&gt;(Just to make things more confusing, at RF frequencies the word &amp;quot;mixer&amp;quot; typically refers to a multiplier rather than an adder. In the audio range, mixers are adders.)&lt;p&gt;Modular synths are designed for making sound; analog computers are designed for precise, much slower waveform generation. Its circuits might not even be capable of operating fast enough to make sound.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Analog Thing: an open source, educational, low-cost modern analog computer</title><url>https://the-analog-thing.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bgribble</author><text>Very familiar-looking to anyone who has been following the modular synthesizer renaissance. Modular synths are basically analog computers, just not well-optimized for precision in most cases. All the basic building blocks of THAT are available as modules from a number of boutique manufacturers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcpst</author><text>Yeah- as a long time modular synth user I practically drool over stuff like this. But for the money I can just get more synth modules.</text></comment>