Has anyone seen the Buddha Machine yet? It's a small plastic music
box (kind of like a small portable plastic radio) from China based
Electronic outfit FM3. It plays 9 ambient drones that are contained
on a chip & are selected using a simple switch on the side of the
box. It also has a built in speaker but other than that it simply has
a mains input, a headphone mini-jack output & a volume control that
also turns the device on. It's an intriguing little object especially
for ambient heads. More details here;

http://www.fm3.com.cn/
http://www.almostcool.org/mr/1608/

(Original Buddha Machine by Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian)


So what does this have to do with the Combinator? Well, after getting
hold of a Buddha Machine myself I decided to make a Combinator patch
based on the device. The patch has 8 loops, 4 different volume curves
that subtly effect the level over time + plenty of controls routed to
the Combinator's 4 rotary knobs & buttons for adjusting the sound.
The original Buddha Machine has a wonderful lo-fi quality thanks
largely to the built in speaker. I've tried to capture this effect by
including controls for simulating the speaker being driven to hard
(which happens on the original device more as you increase the volume
level). All the artwork I used for the skin has mostly come from the
Buddha machine packaging & related artworks I have found on-line. My
Buddha Machine is green (they come in a variety of colours) so I made
the skin the same colour :-)


You can find the patch under the 'files' section - Combinator
Patches - Sound Generators - 'Weird sound FX & other obscure patches'