In reverse:
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Use the left input! It will then be ‘defaulted’ to the right as well, meaning you can use the two outputs independently (for stereo patches).
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There is built-in power conditioning in the OWL, but being a digital design it is somewhat prone to pick up PSU noise. There are various tricks you can try, such as clipping on a ferrite [1] near the jack end of the power cable, but the best bet is to get a less noisy supply. We’ve had quite good luck with cheap wall-warts that we’ve tried so far, but one or two has had very low switching frequency, right in the audible range, and there’s nothing much that can be done to filter that out completely.
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We initially intended to implement a bootloader which emulates a USB key-drive, allowing you to drag and drop firmware images using Explorer/Finder. However we found that the built-in DFU bootloader offered much better reliability. What we still intend to do is to try to implement dynamic patch loading, so that individual patches can be loaded (as opposed to the entire firmware image). However, since a patch is not just a bunch of settings, but actual compiled code, this will be quite a challenge and will require us to master PIC/PIE (position-independent code / executables). There’s definitely a job there for a talented volunteer, if anyone wants to take it on!
Actually we have a few different plans for making it easier to code for and use the OWL. An integrated, easy-to-use environment such as the Arduino or Processing IDE would be great. There’s also Mazbox’s live coding project, OwlLive, which is still slow-cooking in a pot somewhere. And who knows, maybe a complete visual coding environment, like PD, Faust or Max, one day. We can’t make any promises at this point, but the future will very much be shaped by people like yourself giving feedback, contributing and helping to push the project forward.
[1] http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/ferrite-clip-on-hem3012-n89ab
