KOMA Elektronik Field Kit Electro Acoustic Workstation

Introducing the Field Kit by KOMA Elektronik – an electroacoustic box of wonders that unleashes a world of possibilities! Play with motors, sensors, contact microphones, radio signals!

Much like a versatile Swiss knife, the Field Kit boasts a plethora of functions, serving you an 4-channel mixer, LFO, a CV-able Radio, Envelope Follower, a sensor interface, and a DC interface – a comprehensive toolkit for sonic experimentation.

Enhance your sonic journey with the perfect companions! The Field Kit so even more fun with an Expansion Pack, Sensors or a Field Kit Eurorack Panel.

For those who enjoy the hands-on approach, explore the DIY version of the Field Kit.

Our Field Kit is the perfect tool for everyone who would like to experiment with electro acoustic sound. Use everyday objects, amplify them and use them to make sound, like our heroes John Cage and David Tudor used to do!

• The Field Kit mixer is optimized to process signals from microphones, contact microphones and electromagnetic pickups with which other mixers usually struggle.
• The DC interface lets your control motors, solenoids, LEDs, other equipment or anything really that can be driven with 9V.
• The CV Radio can receive radio signals (AM/FM/SW) and can be CV’d to go between frequencies or stations.
• The sensor interface converts signals from switches and sensors into control voltage
• The envelope follower let’s you convert external audio signals (like a kick drum) to control voltage, so you can use it to interact with the different functions of the Field Kit
• On top of that the mixer has Tone control (low pass + high pass), an AUX and a Speaker output

The Field Kit boasts 7 separate functional blocks all focussed on receiving or generating all types of signals. They are designed to operate together as a coherent electroacoustic workstation or alternatively together with other pieces of music electronics with the ability to use control voltage signals.

FOUR CHANNEL MIXER

The Four Channel Mixer is the beating heart of the Field Kit, providing a fully functional mixer with individual Gain, Mix Level and Filter over each channel and individual Master- and Aux sub-mixes.

For the noise heads amongst you: the mixer can be used very well for feedback mixing and no-input mixing as well; there is plenty of Gain to play with and the “Tone” (a Low/Hi Pass filter ) drastically changing the sound.

Use the mixer input to receive the vibrations and electromagnetic waves with the electromagnetic pickup or the contact microphone to capture the sounds surrounding you.

ENVELOPE FOLLOWER, CV & GATE OUT

The Envelope Follower in the Field Kit applies two functions to the waveform you send to the input: full-wave rectification (mirroring of negative portions of the waveform) and low-pass filtering (averaging). It can also be used for frequency doubling of a signal, which is a great tool to have in the electroacoustic domain.

In addition to the Envelope Out, the Envelope Follower inside the Field Kit also gives out a gate signal whenever the level of the input signal is high enough. The input signal level can be set with a dedicated Attenuation-control.

LFO

The Low Frequency Oscillator generates periodically varying voltages to be used as control signals. The output waveform can be set with a three-position Waveform-control and gives out either a Square-, Triangle- or a mix of Square and Triangle waveforms.

DC / MOTORS INTERFACE

A very cool function of the Field Kit is the DC Interface. You can use its output voltages to run little motors, fans, solenoids, buzzers and control them with control voltage signals. You can than pick up the vibrations and electromagnetic waves with the contact microphones and electromagnetic pickup.

The DC Interface can be used in 2 modes

• PWM / CV (Pulse Width Modulation / Controlled Voltage). An example of a PWM-controlled device is a DC-motor of which the rotation speed can be set by varying the pulse width.
• Pulse (Triggers and Gate). Pulse-controlled can be a solenoid-motor whose impulse strength/distance can be set with the length of the control pulse.

Other devices that can be used together with the DC Interface could be computer fans, LEDs, relay switches,  etc.

The maximum output-voltage is about 8V. It provides enough current to power an Arduino!

The Field Kit Expansion Pack comes with both a prepared DC-motor and a prepared solenoid-motor ready to be used together with the DC Interface or alternatively you can prepare and use devices of your own.

SENSORS INTERFACE

The Sensor Interface is a nifty toolset to transform the raw signals of a wide variety of sensors and switches into signals that can be used with the Field Kit or other gear. This means you can trigger or control sound by light, heat, humidity, distance, speed, acceleration, proximity, pressure, all depending on what type of switch or sensor you are using! Ideal for sound installations!

The Sensor Interface is made to manipulate the output voltage of analog sensors, like light-, heat- or distance-sensors and convert their signals into control voltage. It can amplify or attenuate the incoming signal and add a DC-offset, so you can for instance set the motor to a constant speed and make it run faster by outputting a higher voltage from the sensor.

EXPANSION PACK

Its all about the things you connect to the The Field Kit! To get you started we decided to offer an Expansion

Pack with a bunch of different sources that you can use and connect to create your own signature sounds.

Find our Expansion pack and more information here.

50 WAYS TO…

With every Field Kit we ship a little booklet called “50 Ways To Use The Field Kit,” which, besides being the official user manual, is exactly what you might think it is: a small book with examples of 50 different setups with the Field Kit to spark your imagination to experiment with the Field Kit on how for instance make a spring reverb, do radio feed backing, sense heat, water and light and make it trigger a sequence of sound and so much more!