XVA1 Parameters Spreadsheet

The “XVA1 Parameters” Excel spreadsheet is a little powerful tool to become familiar with the effect of every parameter on the sound. While a dedicated, more “fancy” graphical UI would be nice (and will most likely happen once the hardware synth line based on the CMOD platform is completed), keeping it updated when product changes adds a substantial overhead to the main core project.

It is true that programming a synthesizer using a spreadsheet is somehow nerdy, but still quite more comfortable than using a 16×2 tiny display 🙂

On the other hand, different versions of Excel, in combination with different versions of Windows result in the COM experience rather… unstable. it’s not uncommon to get the spinning wheel of death when operating it, depending on if the previous program restored the serial port timeouts and latency timers, cleared the buffers, or if there unread data in the queue.

Actually the same thing had happened to XLoad on the first XFM iteration, it’s just that using C++ there’s plenty of resources to workaround and ‘hack’ all the misbehaviors. But still, was not completely reliable.

That’s why I completely replaced the serial communication using COM ports, to direct calls to the FTDI drivers, where total control is possible. In RC8 I did it for XLoad, and I just completed the Excel sheet using FTDI calls.

Well, this now has to be stabilized, so I would appreciate any feedback on this new sheet behavior. As it opens the driver directly, it is no longer needed to specify the COM port.

Enjoy!