thanks for that.i just ordered an a188 - not being a fan of flanging
and having leanings towards lofi, i went for the 4096 stages :)

the advantages of the tapped version are obvious enough (at least,
after reading your comments dieter), but i did wonder, why the
irregularly spaced numbers of stages if i only had one clock speed
on such a unit, i think i'd find a lot of uses for mixing, say, 1024
and 2048 stages to produces rhythmic patterns. but any
mathematical/musical relationships between 662 and 396 (etc.) remain
hidden to me.

maybe a question of what's available from the bucket factory not
important, i'm just curious.

second question. i notice the 188 is available as module without the
buckets. are the various BBDs available separately (i.e. without
module), and would it be possible for a user (without physics degree)
to swap them

cheers,

stu

--- In Doepfer_a100@yahoogroups.com , <hardware@...> wrote:
>
> > Hallo group,
> >
> > are there any disadvantages in a BBD having more stages is 512
> > "better" than 256
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> > stu
>
> From the technical point of view the quality is worse for longer
BBDs as the
> signal losses, noise and clock suppression are worse due to the higher
> number of "buckets" represented by very small capacitors in the pF
range.
>
> Another point of view is the sound that can be generated with a
longer or
> shorter BBD. As the typical clock frequencies are in the 10kHz...100kHz
> (200kHz for shorter BBDs) range for all BBDs one obtains different delay
> times for BBDs with different numbers of stages. Shorter delays are
used for
> flanging or chorus effects and Karplus-Strong-Synthesis. Longer
delays cause
> audio delay effects. You find a detailed list of delay times with
reference
> to clock frequencies and number of BBD stages in the A-188-1 user's
manual.
>
> The most flexible solution is a tapped BBD (as used in the A-188-2)
as one
> has available six taps with stages between 396 and 3328.
>
> Best wishes
> Dieter Doepfer
>