Next year: I'm giving up on the Marbel Machine 3 because I couldn't get tightness below 2 nanoseconds.

Testing your theories in the prototyping phase will increase the odds of successfully creating a functional marble machine! Great job Martin! The only thing I might add to the conversation is DOUBLING the speed of the programming wheel ONLY decreased the std dev by 1 ms total. This slight advantage in std dev seems too costly from a music programming perspective. You may need to create a decision matrix to determine which route really is the best option to achieve your goals.

@milamber319

4 ай бұрын

I'd add that the program needs twice as many triggers on the half speed variant. This means that 2 triggers will be a total of 1ms further out than 1 trigger. If he did the same test but put 2 triggers on the slow version to match the play speed of the faster wheel then the std deviation is going to even out. Or at least it will be less noticeable as the effect will cause a microscopic pulsing.

@milamber319

4 ай бұрын

IE. If you are playing at 1 BPS and the wheel is doing 1 RPS (1 trigger per rotation) and it's got a variance of 1.5 ms. And, the slow one is playing 1 BPS at 0.5 RPS (2 triggers per rotation) with a total variance for one rotation being 2.5 ms then the variance on the slow one between triggers will be 1.25ms . Which is better. However, the downside of this is that 2 triggers will go out in sequence and then back in sequence causing a slight pulse. It's a matter of whether it's noticeable enough to eliminate. I doubt.

@SaiTaX_the_Chile_boi

4 ай бұрын

It might be a decrease of 1 half or a decrease of 1.

@Herdatec

4 ай бұрын

There is this business bullshit saying: Is the juice worth the squeeze? Here I'd say no

@ghostdog0424

4 ай бұрын

Not to mention the dangers something with the needed mass rotating at twice the speed poses should it fail, as well as the far greater strain on the mechanism. How will you stop it? How long will it take to spin up? How long will your gearing and shafts last at those forces? Torque can run away from you fast, and I don't want to see a story of how the programming wheel turned its axle into a twizzler

What you missed (or didn't mention) was, that there are diminishing returns. Look at your results: 2x1.41=2.82 > 2.37 . This means that in absolute terms, yes it is tighter. But the gain is not linear, it has diminishing returns. So you might find a point where working on the tolerances or increasing the spring strength (make the mechanisms more snappy and settle faster) might have more of an impact than pure programming wheel speed. on the other hand, lessening the spring strenght might reduce the drag on the programming wheel (it will flex in itself and the gears if it has to exert power, that might lead to increased tolerances that you can't see while the parts are not running if you look only at the machining), so there might be another tradeoff that is worth looking at.

@SoraHjort

4 ай бұрын

And even outside of mathematics, one should also take in account of Tighter vs Finer music. A slower speed allows for finer music, smaller programming pins, allowing for more notes on a programming wheel. A faster wheel means the music gets less and less fine, to add to the diminishing returns. Look to the old music machines of the past, notice how they generally go at a snails pace. Chasing tighter music is good till it starts affecting the music. Plus the mechanical stresses put onto the machine at higher speeds will come into play. There are a lot of perspectives one must look at, when you get an imperceivably small change can affect the whole system in a much larger way.

@JonathanKayne

4 ай бұрын

The true engineering comes when you decide at what point are those diminishing returns not worth it any more. Martin seems to struggle with saying "good enough" which is an Achilles heel for an engineer.

@CasualCoreK

4 ай бұрын

Spins faster, sounds better, but holds less music... did Martin just reinvent the 45 rpm record?

@dduncane

4 ай бұрын

@@JonathanKayne yeah, knowing or more guesstimating when you need to say stop, this is enough is hard for most engineers. We have a saying in French that roughly translate in "the best is the enemy of the good", when you want to go for the best of the best, it often comes with issues down the line you haven't properly forecasted or with a exponential complexity.

@johnnyjohnson6643

4 ай бұрын

Martin shows little sign these days of letting himself be stopped by something like diminishing returns. Unfortunately.

I think you might be close to the sweet spot already. The original speed with spiral/stepped tracks looks very promising

@Maxwell_Twist

4 ай бұрын

They've been at the sweet spot for a very long time.

@Lennard222

4 ай бұрын

I think stepped tracks will be the way to go. Most music already is kinda loop based. And stepping up to a different lane could go to a different part of the song.

I really enjoy all the testing Videos! But I wanted to give my thoughts on this one. Variances in the range of 2 ms are practically nothing to the human ears and brain. In my experience, very few people Start noticing the delay at around 3-5 ms, most at around 10. So doubling the speed of the programming wheel (and halfing the Song time) just to get an already amazing timing from 2 ms down to 1 is nowhere close to being worth it. Noone would notice the benefit of having the fast programming wheel, but only half the length of the song will have a pretty big impact on the possibilities of the entire machine.

@algodude8713

4 ай бұрын

that is true, but consider that every other part of the machine will also contribute a variance. While the variances may cancel out, they may also not (they're random after all), so it is generally a good idea to optimise each part of the machine as far as practical

@mateusbmedeiros

4 ай бұрын

Yeah, for me it's clear he's trying his best to get "as tight as possible" in every step exactly to counterbalance all the potential small problems that can add up in every step of the way, which I think is a specially traumatic point on his experiences so far.

@user-es1bx6wk7f

4 ай бұрын

For the weehl he could also use kind pf a belt to make it longer without taking to much space don't you think?

@richardearl9711

4 ай бұрын

Increasing the wheel speed also increases the energy required to turn it, which increases the chance of failures in the drive system due to the increased strain. I think for the most part that any variances seen here are due to play in the prototype system, more than the speed of the wheel, if the system is designed and built well the wheel triggers will not move relative to the wheel, and will therefore be consistent in their operation, this will mean that the all the notes will play tight relative to each other and the song, assuming the Bowden cables and gates are equally well designed and consisitent in their operation.

The older marble machines have shorter, smaller pins and the wheel turns much slower. If you double speed your loosing half your playable duration for a minute change in accuracy. Good to know but i think as you know its probably a better idea to just make it slow. Especially since you can improve the tolerance on your final tour ready programming wheels instead of 3d printed clip ons on a 3d printed wheel. Imagine in that case how much smaller the timing difference will be.

How you've approached this challenge this year makes me super excited for what's to come. There is a noticeable shift, which seems more sustainable, realistic and constructive in the long term. I verifiably believe!

I have loved your experiment videos perhaps a bit more than the CAD videos. That being said I am always super excited whenever I see a new wintergaten video on my feed. Thank you so much for sharing the process with us it always gets my mind racing with ideas of weird contraptions.

Faster wheel will give tighter timings, but cause you to need a larger wheel making manufacture more difficult and less programming time.

@ShimmeringSword

4 ай бұрын

A larger wheel in itself gives faster and as such tighter timings, and also more programming. So maybe the better starting point is how big can/should the wheel reasonably be, then that will help answer how much speed is allowable with the available programming.

@gary_rumain_you_peons

4 ай бұрын

Or he can put the spacings closer together. Or program it in a spiral like how some of the old machines did it.

Thanks for sharing Martin! Always a joy to follow along in your endeavors! Happy New Year!

I think that you should test if the drive is tight with variable load. Since the amount of note played and so the marble that get lifted is not constant the drive will receive different load, depending on where you are on the song. On the mmx this was not an issue because it was hand cranked and so you compensate the different load with a higher torc from your wrist. This is not the case on the new machine, so it MAY behave differently

@tuomasperttula3651

4 ай бұрын

I think Martin should decouple the marble lifting and the music playing parts of the machine. You don't need millisecond accurate marble elevator, only the gates need to be tight. And removing extra parts from the actual music machine makes it easier to make it work right. The elevator part might not even need a flywheel.

@jm-ol8ms

4 ай бұрын

Hi, lifting is the one thing. I wonder (sorry, I didn't see every of your really interesting videos) if the amount of gates - which are played at the same time - impacts the tightness of the music. Or said in another way: how many gates can be triggered at the same time without slowing down the programming wheel too much so that the next beat comes at the right time. Best regards Jürgen

@tuomasperttula3651

4 ай бұрын

What if you had a two part trigger? Right now the programming wheel is doing double duty, loading a new marble, tensioning the springs and triggering the release. Only the last part is timing sensitive, others only mess up with the timing. What if you had some kind of ratcheting, constantly spinning "reloading wheel" that would immediately reload the next marble and tension the springs, leaving the programming wheel to operate only basically hair triggers? That way you'd also have as long a "hold time" as possible, which was a positive thing in previous tests.

@U20E0

4 ай бұрын

@@tuomasperttula3651+

@jlon1066

4 ай бұрын

@@tuomasperttula3651 Having everything under tension all the time might significantly increased the wear and tear on all those parts. It’s a cost/benefit analysis with most every parameter you change.

I love the testing and project prototyping videos and explanations :D

Happy New Year Martin, look forward to seeing all of this hard work and research pay off in a beautiful new gen Marble Machine!

Be careful with going fast; mechanical parts have inertia and will "float". Will you have to worry about this? Probably not, but do keep it in mind.

@sethjones5250

4 ай бұрын

Yes, and this can have an effect on the overall programming density, as well as the size of the programming wheel. A 10 meter radius wheel will have pins move past triggers at 20 times the velocity of a 1/2m radius wheel if both are spinning at exactly 60 rpm. A larger wheel at 1rpm will put more stress on the pins and triggers than a smaller one at the same rpm, but it will also have more angular momentum. A better way to deal with the problem is likely to dispense with plastic pins and Bowden cable trigger mechanisms and go with pneumatic punch cards, or electromechanical triggering using solenoids

@MikkoRantalainen

4 ай бұрын

@@sethjones5250 I think the idea was to make it fully mechanical. If you accept electronics, crystal stabilized CPU is always going to be more accurate method and will be easier to implement, too.

5:30 These videos are less all-over-the-place than then MMX videos. The way Martin worked haphazardly on things that took his fancy on that project was always bemusing to me. This new method of working - real engineering - is far superior, and much more interesting to watch.

May I suggest using bike parts like a brake disk and brake pads for the governor. This way you can have a "more constant" pressure, force, and timing from it with easily changeable replacements for parts that WILL wear down and mess the timing.

If the marble is being dropped twice as quickly, wouldn't any measurement of variance half due to it being spread between two pulses rather than one? The slow test should have had two triggers so that the resultant drop rate was the same. I think the result indicated no significant variance.

@selectthedead

4 ай бұрын

I agree tightness should be independent of speed. Should the tightness not be mathematically weighted with speed to make it more representable? We all know if you double the speed any error from before halfs

@durandle9226

4 ай бұрын

it indicated a worse variance with the higher speed 2x1.41=2.82 > 2.37

@selectthedead

4 ай бұрын

@@durandle9226 thank you

Thanks for the thought provoking video as always Martin!

You've said it already, but it's worth saying again - the biggest lesson from these tests has to be, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Lots of very smart people in the past have looked at many of these problems and solved them.

I love this series so much. Hope you never give up!!! Happy new year!

i love , more than your results , your process , your approach, your curiosity, your enthusiasm. thanks for continuing to share your journey

I'm not a musician, so maybe I'm way off base here. But I wonder if "tightness" really is the be-all-end-all. I know when it comes to jazz for example, there's a lot of expressiveness that comes from playing music just *slightly* "behind" the beat. Some people even do it deliberately. I wonder if "tight = good" is essentially a bias that comes from music made with a program rather than being played by a real person. (Of course I know you're a very accomplished musician -- it always blows my mind how you can pick up an instrument and make something up when testing these assemblies). I guess my thinking is like...even if the machine is a little "loose", maybe that's fine? The wheel obviously loops, and if I'm not mistaken, all the instruments are on the same wheel, so it's not like the programming will get progressively out of sync. I guess the worst case I can imagine is that the music might drift slowly across the course of the song, but I wonder if it's actually a problem (maybe it gives the song character ;) or adds a human element to what is otherwise a very mechanical result). Is there a particular (cascading?) problem that is solved by tightness? Could that problem be solved in a way that doesn't require computer-level precision in the music? Just curious about what you see as the endgame in this particular area.

These design prototyping videos have been super super interesting!!! Please continue with them in the new year

Very nice progress! I'm looking forward to the future!

Thanks for video. Always a pleasure to watch.

The videos have been VERY illuminating of the inside thought process of the project. Keep them coming (You could make the videos longer and more indept ;) )

Happy New Year Wintergatan, you are my favorite mad scientist!

Solution : Make the circumference of the programming wheel proportionally larger. In mathematical terms, you'd need to double the radius of the programming wheel if you double its rotational speed, but you can compromise : You gained about 55% in precision when doubling the speed, which means that you can also make your programming pins proportionally shorter without losing precision from the original radius.

I am so pumped up for this series. It's a bit like watching you grind XP and level up in real time.

Two Wintergatan Wednesdays in a row! Am I dreaming?!? Are we back to regular weekly updates?!? If so, that gives me massive hope that you are feeling more confident this design you're working on is going to be the winner!

Once again we are all with you Martin! Keep it up

after checking on you after 7 years when you made your Wintergaten machine, its good to see you still uploading

I am still confused why music has to be tight? It just needs to be in sync with itself rather than to a bpm. And if it's slightly out well that's where musicians can make up for it. Maybe all you really need to incorporate is a conductor's baton on the machine to keep the beat.

@r-a-ray

4 ай бұрын

The drops ARE being tested relative to “itself”.

@martynbrown8210

4 ай бұрын

@r-a-ray so it really comes down to having the mechanisms doing the same thing each time? And then moving the marble dropper closer/ further from the target ( to be in time with the baseline beat)? Once that is done is it that perceptible?

I want to see a test with more marbles per turn, the load of the marbles and mechanism has to stay below the pre-load on the governor friction plate or things will begin to slow down. The power side of the system will need to be quite beefy if there is going to be a lot of load on the machine. Given that the governor is friction and heat based it's paramount that you find a material that will remain consistent even if it heats up during a quiet part of the program. If your braking material changes coefficient through the operating range this will shift the tempo depending on the program load.

Feels like more and more procrastination with stuff that probably don't matter ... I might not have the full picture, but been seeing more and more "tightness" and "divergence" and other mathematical terms that honestly just makes me feel like it's chasing the wrong problem

HAppy New Year Martin!! Upward and onward!

Great video as always! It might be worth considering long-term and short-term tightness separately. It could be that a faster programming wheel is tighter for individual notes because inaccuracies in pin placements matter less, but not tighter for maintaining BPM over a long duration!

I am so very excited for this project. Watching the experiments and seeing the results is so satisfying! This is the kind of stuff they should be doing in schools to awaken interest and light the fire of inquisitiveness in young minds!

Good grief that prototype setup is rickety as heck. Stoked that you’re pushing through Martin. Can’t wait to take my unborn children’s kids to your world tour premier

And still no idea what the power needs / losses from the instrumental section of the machine will be... Hint: it'll be huge seeing some of Martin's previously shared thoughts. Never seen an engineer start a project by sizing and tuning an engine without any idea what the application requirements are (torque, power speed, weight, etc) 🙄 Power / energy in this day and age is a solved problem. Bazillion mechanical solutions developed in last 200 years. But a marble machine with instruments ? Not solved and really cool. That's what he should be starting with, then design the power system accordingly, thanks to the modular-sections approach he presented a while back. Oh well, entertaining 8(!) years series anyway. Will be rooting for the 4th incarnation of this mythical beast 😂

someone has mentioned it out but i hope you will also test this whole system once this system is attached to the other mechanical groups of the machine such as multiple instrument hitting pins, marble lifts, and more, that could possibly have an affect, other than that, keep it up and we got you for support!! Go for the world tour!

@nilsdock

4 ай бұрын

What we need is a marble gate design that takes a minimal amount of energy from the programming wheel. Otherwise it will always change its tightness depending on the amount of notes played per revolution.

@MauriceOfInfiniteAtrocities

4 ай бұрын

@@nilsdock alternatively you could create a programming wheel with enough energy that it doesn’t make a difference. A lot more mass or speed will do the trick. An inelegant solution to say the least, but a solution nonetheless.

I think Martin's goal is not to finish the marble machine but the marble machine is just an excuse to do unnecessary tests that won't matter at the end. 😂

@br52685

4 ай бұрын

All that matters is keeping KZread engagement

Impressive work! Great success 🎉

Happy New Year, Martin!

awesome research and testing to build! Happy New year!🦌💌❤️👍🎼🙏

Super excited for the processing. It's great to see the prototyping as it happens.

Love the videos Martin! So happy I’m early!

Fun fact: this is also not a new problem. Something you could draw on for inspiration for finding the best compromise is the speed of recording media like tape. Tape recording of analog signals has this exact same problem the faster you pull it past the tighter the signal capture can be. Modern tape has digital signals recorded onto it. Imo this is closer to your drum design than analog tape recording. It may be possible to mathematically find the point where you get the best return for the minimum speed increase.

Have been following for a long time. The approach that you are taking to mm3 is much better and I’m really enjoying that you are taking your time to explore all the elements of the machine before trying to create the machine. Every video I’m feeling more confident that you are really making good progress and will end up with much more versatile machine than before. I’m quietly hoping that you’ll end up making each instrument a self enclosed module, just plug into the power and timing mechanism, could end up with a whole orchestra. Makes me wonder just how many channels the flywheel can support and if adding more channels will alter the tightness.

Happy new year Martin ❤🎉

your videos haven't been all over the place. you're experimenting and trying to tick off all the boxes to improve your current 2 marble machines to make an even better version. i've enjoyed watching every little random vid you have posted. as i can see you are making progress, keep it up ^.^

Love to follow your designs and experimenting for the marble machine. Little tip for working with data sets, you had a diff. column which is great, but you should use it to find outliers and then try to find the cause of this. Would have allowed you to find the error in your initial results😊

I don't understand why there should be variation due to the programming pin/bar when it's always the same? From my understanding: if there is variance, it is because the speed of the wheel is not constant. Even the governor will react with a delay introduced by friction and dynamics. A faster wheel will be tighter because the variation in speed is not tightly coupled to the speed itself.

Just having a little fun recording my own hypothesis before watching the rest. I suspect that the faster wheel will make negligible difference as it is the start and the end of the programming features that has the effect so it would seem the only error could be in its length. Now the fun part. God I love these videos!

Great video. One small thing. In the beginning I think you mean Hypothesis. Theory is for once you have experimental data to backup your original hypothesis.

I am super excited about your project - in fact I have been, since the first iteration of the marble machine. I think 1.38 ms is beyond insane in terms of tightness. In my DAW i have to live with 128ms latency, and up until now I never ever had an issue with it.OK, granted, it is a steady delay, so no fluctuations here. But being away a tenth of a second (me) in regards to a thousandth of a second (you) from ultimate tightness is - mind boggeling :)

I love seeing the prototyping and experimentation phase. Looking forward to more in 24.

it feels like Martin has the expertise to do incredible mechanical musical machines. Of course a marble machine is like the ultimate challenge so good luck with it

You said that a faster programming wheel would decrease the timing error from the imprecision in the programming profile manufacturing. But that is not what you measure with this test. I think that a better approach for this is to just calculate the timing error. If the wheel rotates with period `T`, have a radius `r`, and the programming profiles have a standard deviation of `Δx`, the timing standard deviation should be `Δt = T*Δx/(2*r*π)`. Assuming `T = 11.3 s`, `r = 300 mm`(guessed this one), `Δx = 1mm` (for reference), the timing error should be `Δt = 0.006s`, so about 6ms of error for each mm of error in the profile.

An happy new year man:

this is where the change from a programming "wheel" to a programming "tank tread" starts and it becomes closer to a player piano (which is a mechanized music playing device) Have you looked at player pianos and seen what lessons they have?

Man the people with milliseconds hearing 20k years in the future are gonna be so stoked ! Just kidding, I'm super excited for the next machine and tremendously enjoying the ride so far, the prototyping is super interesting. Thanks for sharing and happy holidays to y'all

Hey I know I'm like the 500th guy giving a suggestion. What I'd figure would really improve the music tightness, is instead of direct drive, some sort of temporary wind up mechanism that stores and keeps the tension more or less constant. Yk kinda like those old music boxes

Martin, you really shoud test usage of programing cards, like in the programmable looms like "Jacquard Design Machine" where you can have linked cards going thought a wheel and making contact with the machine, this way you could have much more music lenght to play

@lasskinn474

4 ай бұрын

don't be silly, that would make sense. I think he thinks the spectacle of big pin wheels is necessary for some reason

@cyberdeckcipher

4 ай бұрын

@@lasskinn474 the linked cards can interface with the machine going through the wheel

@justinnaramor6050

4 ай бұрын

@@lasskinn474 Well, pinned wheels can be re-programmable whereas punch cards really can't. A single programming wheel vs multiple punch cards for each song... which do you think is more efficient? Multiple punch cards is a lot of extra things to move around. Plus, if you make a mistake in the musical program you can easily just reposition the misplaced pin. Punch cards do certainly allow for longer music, but at the cost of the sort of convenience you get from programming wheels with pins. There are pros and cons of both. Maybe Martin likes the logistical benefits of having a single wheel which can be re-programmed instead of carrying around multiple punch cards. It's a little narrow-minded to assume the use of pinned wheels is purely for aesthetics, honestly.

@osculant

4 ай бұрын

@@justinnaramor6050punch cards are super cheap, you can have a ton of redundancy. Because they can be laser cut, you only have to worry about making errors in your master. Also has he addressed how he currently plans to change songs? Will he be transporting several boxes of programming wheel pieces? Or several programming wheels themselves? And someone will have to repin them, potentially introducing error. Punch cards make sense in every technical sense. It’s just less entertaining.

@justinnaramor6050

4 ай бұрын

@@osculant I don't think he's gotten to that part yet. One step at a time :)) But that's what I'm getting at, if he were to just have a single wheel (not several of them, that would be too bulky compared to several punch cards), that's only one thing to carry and to program. Plus, I think Martin also wants to challenge the assumed limitations of programming wheels instead of abandoning them for punch cards. I'm not saying I personally want Martin to stick to pinned wheels, of course. Just simply that they do have their benefits compared to punch cards (and not strictly speaking in the technical sense here either).

Methodical, piece by piece development wins the day, Martin. Always remember the race between the hare and the tortoise ... slow but steady wins the race. 🐢 Happy New Year to you! Looking very much forward to your progress in 2024.

keep up the great work cant wait to see the final product!

@samsabruskongen

4 ай бұрын

There won't be a final product. He is making it more complicated instead of less, and is procrastinating on "tightness" to a degree that's imperceptible to most people.

@TigreDemon

4 ай бұрын

Been following for 7 years now, he keeps on heading in the wrong direction all the time by doing things that are not progress. He's been talking about "tightness" for god knows how long even though there is not even a machine yet. It's called pre optimization and it's probably not even a problem in the first place ...

@m00str

4 ай бұрын

Afaik tightness was never an issue with either marble machine, the issues were reliability and those were caused by massive over engineering of parts that could have been simpler. He is just creating new stumble opportunities with all of this. Also: double the programming wheel speed means half the music length. All for 1ms to 2ms deviation. That's ridiculous at best and intentionally sabotaging the project at worst. It's horrible to see how martin transitioned from a great inventor to a procrastination master

@Kucharskov

4 ай бұрын

Guys above are so right... Martin still fighting with "idea of perfect machine". But what we all need is just another a little bit better marble machine than MM1 and second performance with music! Nobody cares about ball size, dumpening using rubber band with glue or stretched by mechanism, 2ms tightenes or sometimes ball drops.

@thomasbecker9676

4 ай бұрын

@@m00str He's figured out how to crate KZread content, and therefore monetary income, without actually making progress.

Until now, I have not been physically sick for a very long time, but now my days are running together because of this. I see there's a new video here, so I must realize that today is my favorite day, Wednesday. This is the best calendar. 🤗

No worries about being all over the place. I just assumed you were building out the prototype and following your ears and intuition. It’s been a fun journey!

Happy new year!

To increase the length of music, make the programming wheel a spiral instead of a circle. To address it, you will need a corkscrew read head which rotates next to it, reading further sideways as it turns and engaging the beginning of the roll again when it has made a full rotation. The control signals would have to be linked down the center of the read head tube and out the end. Perhaps this much additional mechanism would introduce too much error of its own to be worthwhile. But there are other possibilities for extending what is essentially a physical "piano roll".

Consider having more then one programming wheel, that turn at different speeds. By turning the playing of wheels on and off, and using different multiples you can get longer compositions out of the same length of wheels. You could even have a track on one wheel that starts and stops playing of other wheels.

Halving the play time for that tiny improvement seems like a bad trade off, I think a faster wheel could cause more problems elsewhere.

I have never once heard of faster things being more precise

i think you should test with asymetric placement/timing of notes. so you will see any problems if the symetry is hiding a problem.

I think to solve the programming length, you could substitute a program Belt for the wheel. This would allow for very long sequences (think player piano). I also think devising a 4 way chain link for that 'belt' that you could 3d print would be a creative solution. I'm imagining two types, a blank space (no note) and a play marker (play note). Linked on the 4 sides to the neighboring links. Thus programming (and changing) would be as simple as clicking the links together to form the belt. I envision that a 10m long belt could have a complete song encoded before repeating; even at the higher drive wheel speeds. While 10m sounds long and large amount of space, a clever arrangement of idler wheels would reduce the footprint that the belt needs. Cheers and Happy New Year!

suggestion that have already been covered but what about multiple programing wheels? most songs are composed of paterns that repeat at various points in the song. while I dont know how complicated it could be; having multiple programming wheels which each have a patern being governed by some form of control programming wheel. potentially this would allow for longer songs as it would break it down into components which could be triggered by the control programming wheel.

2024: Dies Finished Prototypes: Marble Machine from 2016

Excellent research and progress. However, I think your conclusion of the reasons why the music might slightly differ than what may be happening. The faster spinning program wheel means it too acts as an additional flywheel. This means the refinement of edge of your installed programming pin and the reading lever which it slides off of on becomes twice as fine & potentially half the friction since it is in contact with the program reading lever for half as long as well. If you were to increase the weight of the programming wheel and make sure the edge of the programming pin was made of a blade of metal instead of plastic with a sharp edge, you may see vast improvements in timing consistency without the need to make the program wheel run twice as fast. Changing the reading lever to metal may also increase the trigger edge consistency. (Note, a lase cut programming pin on the program wheel means a narrow blade which will allow you to insert multiple adjacent rows while keeping the reading lever as plastic allows you a negative grove in the plastic, like a reverse vinyl record to keep tracing of a multiple-revolution program wheel for really long complex songs.)

At this point I don’t even care about the tightness of the music as long as it’s roughly as accurate as a person it should be ok

Add a "clock" ? To take an analogy out of the computer world, the I2C bus for instance, you could opt for a construction where the programming wheel has a relatively large time window in which it can set the notes up and a separate clock that does the actual release of the balls in a timely manner. That way any wear or other small imperfections of the programming wheel become less important as only the clock needs to tick with the precision you need. I'm sure there is someone out there that can design a simple mechanical clock for this purpose.

Once again, Martin is trying to achieve Six Sigma with music tightness. I would love to hear his band play to Six Sigma. It's virtually impossible.

@justinnaramor6050

4 ай бұрын

Tightness of the machine is a non-negotiable issue. The machine being tight on its own will allow the operator to make it sound loose. Timing deviations caused by the machine itself, where the operator himself did nothing whatsoever to cause said timing deviations, is indeed a big deal that must be taken seriously. This literally has zilch to do with perfectionism, period. Why does this fucking community as a whole not understand this?

@Chibs

4 ай бұрын

@@justinnaramor6050 Lovely tone and generalisation there Justin! And probably because that's not what people are saying at all. There's tight and there's tight enough. 1ms or 2ms isn't going to be an audible difference in the actual music.

@justinnaramor6050

4 ай бұрын

@@Chibs Um, it is indeed what people have been saying, throughout the whole marble machine project really. This goes back to the Marble machine X even. Just read the comments on any marble machine video where the topic of "tight music" is discussed. Folks have repeatedly claimed Martin is removing the human character from the music which is not even remotely the point. The point is that if timing deviations do occur, it should be because the operator made a mistake, or he intentionally added variance to the timing, say, by offsetting the pins on the programming wheel such that notes play early or late, or faster or slower. Not because the machine is erroneously causing the timing to deviate even though the operator did nothing to cause it to deviate. All of this also applies to the issue of dropped notes, which the community at large also completely misunderstands. So, no, I don't think I'm generalizing one bit.

i love the short update format

personally i dont think the accuracy improvement warrants the reduction in song legnth. theres also the fact that too accurate takes away the soul of the machine and makes it too synthetic

You could try experiementing with lower friction materials on the programming part, like metal against plastic, oiled, laquered wood, oiled wood, a bearing that is rolling, etc

I can't wait for the final result. And Happy NEW YEAR!! 2024!

@thomasbecker9676

4 ай бұрын

You're going to be waiting for a long time.

Increasing the speed gave the test wheel more momentum, so it was also affected less by the resistive force (no matter how small) of the triggering mechanism. I would test a heavier wheel at the lower speed to compare to. But the heavier the wheel, the more carefully it will need to be balanced.

It may not spend as long inside the error window, but by increasing the speed like that id imagine there wouldnt be much change if not worse by the increased amount of repitions in the error window. So it may spend 1ms inside the error but it may hit that 1ms window twice as much nukifying any real effect. Though rotational error windows arent a true measurement that i know of. Lmao But for example: 1 rotation = 2sec 1 rotation = 1ms loss That would mean doubling the speed would bring that to 1 rotation = 1 sec 1 rotation = ~.5ms However its doing a rotation twice as fast meaning its still netting a full 1ms loss just on ever 2nd rotation. So i really dont see how this would make it all that much better if at all. Plus over longer times that ebtire result may drag out to being worse seeing as it has that many more oppertunities to fail. Super interesting though.

Love your marble machine

If you increase the diameter of the wheel you wil get faster programming profil speeds and more space for programming at the same rpm

Happy New Year🎉

Hey Martin, you're an absolute inspiration for never giving up on your dream! I have a question for you. I'm in love with the arrangement of La Valse d'Amelie from MMX which is the only one song produced with MMX which I know. Why don't you use the MMX for what she can do? I'd love, and I think so everyone here on comment section, to hear more from it! Even if she has limitations she is still a capable wanderful piece of art!

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking your ADD method is better than rabbit hole fixation of the past. Keep doing what you're doing, how you're doing it. Fix little things a little bit, then circle back later with a fresh mind.

I think you should consider what factors in the programming wheel interaction dominate the "tightness" and how can you best control them. For example, you've shown that rotating the wheel faster has a positive effect, but is this because the tolerances on your parts can be greater, the variance in wheel speed is lower, or some other factor? You may be accidentally uncovering some other factor that could help you in a much greater way.

I know this has been discussed before, but I think it’s worth emphasising again. I think your measure of tightness should take into account the BPM of the muic. Essentially you doubled the speed of the BPM here, so obviously the absolute time of the tightness will improve with a factor of two. That’s totally expected. But if you normalise it against the BPM the tightness hasn’t changed at all. I don’t know, for me at least such a BPM normalisation makes sense and should always be applied. Any thoughts?

@durandle9226

4 ай бұрын

if you normalize for the bpm the higher speed was actually worse 2x1.41=2.82 > 2.37

@Utube2Itube

4 ай бұрын

@@durandle9226 Yes, that’s very possible, from this one test. I didn’t actually do the exact calculation when I wrote the comment. But this kind of small difference is probably down to measurement errors. The two numbers are within the same order of magnitude and are virtually the same, and that was my take home message. If you would repeat the test enough number of times (large sample size of the test) the numbers would probably converge to be virtually exactly the same.

What I think will be a great idea is if you would record yourself playing and export this to the marble machine so it’s humanly tight instead of machine tight. So depending on how tight the machine is will determine how good it can replicate a human

Have you looked at the structural integrity of the rotating parts at all? As an aerospace engineer, I can't help but get nervous for you as your speeds increase a bit. Keep up the good work. Loving this new process and approach you are taking. I hope you get into some analysis of the physics, stress, strain, fatigue creep/wear, life of the parts, and such things at some point. It is easier than most people think to do a quick check of such things, particularly if you are serious about the world tour hardware. Best of luck!

@thomasbecker9676

4 ай бұрын

Aerospace engineer here, and I've tried to give advice for years, and it gets ignored. It's meaningless though, as this new marble machine isn't going to get built, let alone used for an appreciable amount of time. There is no analysis, but there is reinventing the wheel, quite literally. Martin ignored the rightful concerns people had about a homemade flywheel.

@jamessiewert3561

4 ай бұрын

@@thomasbecker9676 gonna have to come back to this comment if the machine does get built. Nothing in life is guaranteed but I think he'll do it. Also this isn't the actual flywheel?

@thomasbecker9676

4 ай бұрын

@@jamessiewert3561 No, this is the programming wheel.

Gott nytt år!

Hy, You could make a second fast spinning wheel. The first slow one enables the note to play and the second fast one triggers the release of the marble. Just like automatically actuating mute levers. Sg

@algodude8713

4 ай бұрын

This. Currently the one wheel is responsible for both loading the marble into the dropper, and actuating the dropper. Split these into a main wheel that only has to be accurate to the nearest 32th or whatever, and a dropper wheel that is firing every 32th to release any marble in the dropper. You'd need some way of tightly placing a marble into the constantly releasing dropper, so possibly a 2-stage dropper mechanism could be used. The current dropper could be retained and the high-speed dropper would be positioned below. While this would increase the overall complexity of the machine in terms of parts, it would reduce the demands on any singular part, which IMO would avoid any impacts on reliability and practicality.

@tatu5371

4 ай бұрын

I would not use a constantly releasing dropper. The mechanic of an electrical switch works by stretching a flat spring until it tips over. The programming wheel could build up the tention and the trigger release it. Without tention nothing to release. Sg

Suggestion: decouple the marble release from the music wheel, so the wheel determines which marble gets released, but the actual release is done by another mechanism, analogous to a clock in electronics. This would mean the wheel could have an error approaching half a beat (half a clock) whilst still having perfect timing. Because the (mechanical) clock now controls the timing, it should be possible to adjust the relative release points of each instrument to achieve close to zero smearing because of latency reduction. Happy New Year!

@tonib9261

4 ай бұрын

@@Hit_me_up_Official_Wintergatan ok?

Can I suggest spinning different parts of the programming wheel at different speeds? Vibraphone programming wheel could be spinning at half the speed of the drums as the drums will be much more sensitive to deviation, whereas the vibraphone will be more forgiving and benefit the most from longer loops