D Beam... Wow

[Dylan Burnett]

Well its basically an infared beam of light that can control pitch bending, vibrato, has no use recording wise, but looks WICKED cool if you use it live. anyway, has anyone else had an encounter with one of these? I just discovered it was one of the many features included in the Roland Rs-50 Synthesizer.

[Liquid Shadow]

I've toyed with it a little on some Roland boards. It's quite the flashy little device...definitely something that would be sweet to use live.

[DT4L]

yeah ive read about that on the AX 7 keytar, ccould you tell me how you use it?

[Taurus]

How exactly does this D beam work?

[Tusker]

It sends an infra-red beam to your hand and measures how long it takes for the light to bounce back, thus estimating the distance. It's cool, but can be a bit of a variable when the stage lights are variable or in smoky/dusty environments. Which makes it more useful as a stage trick than a controller you want to master.

What can you do with it?

On most of the Roland synth's it's simply an assignable controller, so you can do anything with it that you could get the synth to do with other means:

pitch (bend, vibrato, divebomb, detuneetc.)
filter (wah, etc.)
volume (crossfade, gain stating into distortion, etc.)
Plus any esoterica that a dsp does (V-synth has some cosm applications as well as some cool sample modulation stuff)

You know. Whatever you want to do. :D

Jerry

[Drusillus]

I have one on my Fantom-S. On that synth (and the Fantom-X) there's also a dedicated 2 oscillator analog modeling mini-synth hardwired to the D-Beam (separate from the main synth engine), it's great for doing tripped out Keith Emerson impersonations :twisted:

[Taurus]

Thanks Tusker.
Anyone happen to have a picture of the D-beam in action? Im not sure how far i should picture the hand moving on top of this thing..

[Dylan Burnett]

Heh, yeah it's fun. I use it in the "solo synth" mode where it repeats a bunch of notes that you hold down, and also for bending, looks cooler than using the toggle, though it is less acurate. I suppose I could take a few shots of it in action for you.

[Taurus]

kkool i'd like to see that :) So far this thing gives me the feeling of StartTrek :lol: