u/Fast_Description_899

Graduated. Have a good job. Woop!

But I’m bored. So bored. I don’t crave stability, I crave the stress and chaos even though it’s bad for me and NOT good for my adult life.

The things I did in undergrad are not sustainable for a working professional. I partied, drank, went out on weekdays, did drugs, etc.

But still I crave it. It’s the feelings of “I want this out of my system” versus “yeah but if I do it, and too much of it, I’m putting my professional reputation at danger”

Did I just grow a mental addiction to that lifestyle?

I think about it often and crave it and miss it but it’s NOT good for me. Baaaah. Maybe I just need more hobbies or should’ve allowed myself to travel. Maybe the world just sucks and I’m stressed. Not sure!

Well hey at least I have means of income and some stability

But goddamnit …..

Doesn’t help I’m not in a big city and all the ppl going out and being irresponsible are sub-21 most likely 😢 like fuck, I miss it, wish I could turn the clock back already even tho ik there’s so much more to live and do, and I hated school while in it LOL

Maybe it’s just an unfulfilling location??? BaAaahhhhhhhhh

My driver was not at fault. It is already on the police report that the other guy was at fault.

I tried looking at a claim through my insurance (because typically I am directly involved in the accident, but not really this time), but it did not really have any option that made sense for this scenario.

What do I do?

Some people say contact a lawyer but why wouldn’t I just go through insurance?

Do I go through my own insurance, or something else?

Advice? And I certainly want to get stuff out of this. I did feel pain after, and it exacerbated a problem I literally made an appointment for the day before. Oh, and I’m uninsured 😍 (heart eyes is sarcasm).

State of the Project (Went back to the planning + learning stage)

Hey guys, I’ve made 2 posts on this subreddit. A few of you have commented on both and I’d like to thank you for the guidance and criticisms. I am back after making myself learn more about my goals and typical applications and/or other projects around the internet. I admit I haven’t gone too thoroughly into other peoples projects but I can safely say I know more about the typical stuff (1V/Oct was a big one, I watched most of Moritz Kleins 4-part series (I’m not done with it because I keep watching it over again for comprehension)). I’m also watching LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTERs 1.5Hr video on a VCO but I’m not too concerned about his implementation for reasons I’ll explain below (although it’s a great video and I’m enjoying it lots!)

Anwyay, needing more advice/thoughts/whatever. I appreciate any discussion whatsoever. Please remember that my goals are a balance of an analog synthesizer (I originally wanted a piano synthesizer that was polyphonic, but I’m thinking to just do monophonic piano now because I truly want to stay fully analog at the moment😊) and improving my electrical engineering/design abilities. My biggest interest is learning how to be a better engineer, and to go from “I wanna do that!” to actually designing around it and doing it!

Anyway, here it goes:

CHOICE OF IC (CD40106B RIGHT NOW)

I recognize the fact CD40106B is not ideal IC for the center of my synth’s voice(s), and I now have learned about the relevance of the CEM3340 (e.g. 1V/Oct CV already, thermal stability is taken care of, and probably some other super important things that I don’t know about) but I don’t want to take that abstraction away from my project. I would like to learn about how to solve those issues, so I’m curious about an IC that is relatively decent for the project (e.g. CD40106B) but doesn’t have as large of a hysteresis range (which I have learned is a factor into why the CD40106B is inherently “not good” for the project) – maybe I’m wrong, but that was my understanding of a reply to a past reddit post I made.

But still, will I end up regretting this? I’m not super concerned about the quality of the output, and I saw on Moritz Kleins project that he got decent results with thermal stability and 1V/Oct tracking… so…. What else could be more important, yanno? You get your input, it performs the expected output, and its stable across some temperatures… I’m obviously a newbie but please tell me if I’m missing anything else for the implementation (tuning wise).

HOW TO MAKE THE CHOICE OF OP AMPS AND BJTs AND OTHER THINGS

Please, electrical designers, enlighten me. Otherwise I will resort to scrolling obscure projects (and I can’t really find any project that is good about discussing the tradeoffs of components, like how I’ve experienced in an Electronics + lab class) or (please don’t make me do this) generative AI. What are the more important aspects of picking good BJTs and op amps? Again I can comprehend why hysteresis of the CD40106B is important but that’s pretty much the only thing I can think of. I’m not super used to knowing about the “features” (?) of electrical components, but again, I ultimately want to get into the groove of being like a “designer.” I understand me asking you guys isn’t particularly designing but I’m definitely a newbie here so cut me some slack lol. I am genuinely very happy with the advice I’ve been given!  

SUMMARY/DIRECTION FOR NOW

So, with that all being said, I’m most likely to continue onward with just sitting back and learning more, plus ordering a few more parts (better potentiometers for sure) just so I can tune an output and feel a little better about having any physical results of the project. I already got a waveform + audio output but apparently my design was horrendous (see my first post of the sub about 2 weeks ago) (for my goals, (which have changed!) lol). I’m still not gonna touch LTSpice for a while, but I’m gonna make sure that “while” isn’t too long.  I HAVE A GITHUB STREAK TO MAINTAIN (jk!)

QUESTIONS ABOUT EXTRA GEAR I HAVE FROM MY NEWBIE MUSIC PRODUCTION DAYS

Also some additional information. I used to be into music though I never became good at anything. Still I have some old equipment, e.g. a Scarlet 2i2 or whatever and a MIDI keyboard (Akai MK3 I think). Let me know if I can do anything interesting with those (particularly the Scarlet, because I’m pretty sure I can use the Akai MK3 as input w/ 1V/Oct, eh? If so, that’s super exciting!)

https://preview.redd.it/k2gqu9ywfq8h1.png?width=2388&format=png&auto=webp&s=bde082f8e7d831aaffce2839836995cefbcd2956

Hey guys,

[I REALIZED THESE NOTES ARE MORE IN C5 RANGE THAN C4, IDK WHY]

I am seeking critiques and advice on my current circuit. I had a component-level post last time with smaller grained details and got a lot of feedback, so I thank you for that. This time it is higher-level advice I seek.

I aim for a synthesizer that I can tune with potentiometers from a base frequency (so I don't rip my hair out during tuning), is polyphonic, has adjustable filtering and switches (to activate low/high/both/none at once), etc.

I refuse to use microcontroller. Fully analog.

I also aim to have relatively good electrical engineering practices. I am of a computer engineering background, and I understand the difference between a solution and a good solution that wont cause downhill issues. While I am a beginner in pure analog electronics, I do hope for my eyes to be opened to better solutions (assuming they're not a huge leap away from my skills lol), even if that doesn't mean I will end up implementing them. Still, it's good to be aware.

Please take a look at my schematic and see that currently I have:
- 3 VCO cores, each generating at a specific frequency (for testing it was C4, E4, G4) [AS MENTIONED EARLIER they seem to be more like C5,E5,G5... not sure if math is wrong or if the circuit is causing these issues... haven't checked the math...]. It works to my knowledge though does not sound good at all. These are obviously just one wave (square right now) each, so no real "voice" (?) to them... (a current issue I hope to look into soon).

- summing stage. I made the voice resistors (R2,4,6) 1MOhm (1e6) such that the gain would be -0.01x, thus there'd be a room for a lot more voices (originally I did 100k, but that only gave room for 3 voices, given that particular feedback resistor value at 10k)

- a second inverting phase, which is optional, but I used it so I could prove to myself what inverting amps w/ feedback do AND mostly to see the original waveform. It bothered me it was inverted so I did it again lol.

I am seeking advice on anything I did that is a bad judgement, etc. Keep in mind that I did export the output to a .wav file and listened to each generated note- so it definitely does work.

[ THE GOALS OF MY IMPLEMENTATION ARE AS FOLLOWS ]
- 1 to 2 octaves of notes (because I want to grow this to a PIANO synthesizer), each note being activated by a button. Octaves 4 and 5 are the current goal. POLYSYNTH.

- I am really interested in actually generating voices around my notes... as you may know, VCOs only generate one particular frequency... How do I achieve, then, an actual "good" sound? Aka something with more soul than a single frequency? Is that viable for this project in the first place? Like I'm so confused how to do this besides adding a million frequencies together but that seems so damn complicated... Or perhaps inputting more interesting information, and that be modulated... I haven't researched this at all so I'm quite clueless how to give my notes more personality.

- I want, of course, enveloping or at least filtering stages. I can definitely do this with a potentiometer and whatnot, I agree. But ... when at what point shall I embark on that? I was assuming post-amplification stage (something that isn't implemented right now... I'm saying I need an audio amplification stage, which I think is true though I'm not sure tbh)

[OTHER TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS]

- CD1040B for schmitt trigger inverted cores

- LM324 for op amp

- 9V DC input

[REMAINING QUESTIONS]

- look at my schematic:

-- see the text asking about diodes? Any opinions? Can I do that? I was thinking it'd prevent the resistors from seeing any current meant for "later" stages but I might be straight up wrong.

-- see how I did DC biasing? Please confirm that's correct. I put it at 4.5V DC beacuse V_Source/2 is 4.5 V.

THANKS :)

Context: US Citizen, multiple internships across SWE and embedded and ML.

I graduated. I am in an internship that does embedded systems and ML research. I have proper experience and am not looking for anything at the moment.

What advice would you, an (I assume) longstanding engineer in the field, give to yourself now, a new graduate?

Like, how do I approach projects? Should I feel confident in my job currently, or work extra outside of it to maintain skills and an edge? What if I wanted to branch to other skills (I want to get into 3D printing)?

One major thing I’m curious about: do people typically target jobs and/or cities and study specifically for those skills just so they can land that specific role? Like I wanna go to a major city. Do people eye their companies like hawks, or just spray and pray applications?

Do you have any advice as overarching as “try to get into defense as opposed to big tech” or the opposite, or what? Idk, gimme some help here and a good perspective into the field.

Anything helps. We (this gen) are lost and scared.

Alright guys … what should my insta caption be for graduating with my engineering degree in electrical/computer engineering?