This one-credit, 12-week seminar is designed for students who wish to expand on knowledge and experience gained previously from a Maker course by studying solid state electronics that are used for audio signal processing. Specifically, we will examine circuit designs that are behind effects used in contemporary musical compositions and performances. Our focus will be on the theory that explains how electronics circuits work to process audio signals, such as clipped waveforms (commonly known as distortion, fuzz, or overdrive). Students will gain experience in electronics theory, circuit design, audio processing, and circuit assembly/soldering skills. This seminar does NOT count as a CS Elective. Pass/Fail grading only.
Students are expected to work in a number of different ways during the course. In one part of the course we will cover fundamentals behind circuit designs. For this portion we will work with mathematics and LTspice, software that simulates circuits. Another portion of the course will focus on hands-on building the circuits for audio signal processing in the lab. Finally, students are expected to self-study, report, and present on a subtopic as a final project (with a partner).
You don't need to know how to play an instrument or know music theory to succeed in the course.
Prerequisites: CICS 256 or COMPSCI 335 with a grade of "C" or better.
Lectures/Labs
TuThu 10:00-11:15am @ LGRC104 (CICS MakerSpace)
Instructors:
Prof. Brian Levine (bnl at u know where)
Prof. Rui Wang (ruiwang at cs dot u know where)
TA/UCAs
None
Office Hours:
Brian : Tuesdays 2pm-3pm Makerspace (LGRC A104)
Rui: Fridays 10am-11am CICS Makerspace (LGRC A104)
The set of topics is listed on a separate page.
This course is graded Pass/Fail only. You grade will be computed from two components: (A) a few assignments that will almost all in-class lab work and (B) a final project that includes a presentation. There are no exams. Component (A) is worth 60% of your grade, and component (B) is worth 40%. To pass the course, students must achieve a 70% grade or higher across the weighted components and must achieve 50% of all possible points or higher in each of the components.
[If you miss]
Lecture attendance is required and is a component of the lab work grade: having more than one unexcused absence will lower Component (A) by 2% point by each absence. Submission of the final project late is not possible and will result in a zero grade (and thus failure). Lectures and lab sessions will not be recorded. If you miss a lecture, please ask a classmate for notes.
You are responsible for successfully managing your time and effort in a way that is required to pass the course. The time from when an assignment is announced until its due date includes the time you may need for other commitments. Homework will not be accepted late for partial credit. We accept only excused absences; see this list of acceptable absences published by UMass. Things such as vacations, weddings, visiting family, unexpected traffic, mild illness (e.g., sore throat, headaches, cough, runny noses, etc.), supporting a friend or family member through their tough times — and other very reasonable challenges that we all face — are not accepted by UMass as reasons for class absence or missing a homework deadline. Further, as a computer scientist, you should be familiar with OneDrive, Google Drive, Git, RAID drives, and other backup and redundancy solutions —loss of data for any reason isn't acceptable.
The good news: the course is only 1 credit: the homeworks will be commensurately light and you need only a 70% to pass (again, there are no letter grades, it's pass/fail only). You'll be fine.
All that said —if you are facing circumstances beyond your ability to cope, please come see us ASAP so that we can offer you help. Life is hard at times; we are old and we have personally faced and perserved through many challenges; we'd like to help you cope with the ones you are facing. It can be done. You are resilient. In addition, you can seek support from the many great support services UMass offers including the CICS Academic Advising Office, the CICS Academic Dean of CICS, the UMass Dean of Undergraduate Students, and UMass wellness (both medical and behavioral) support.
Please note that Levine is a Mandatory Reporter in terms of TItle IX; see the Course Policies page for more detail.
Required:
Tracking Down your Dream Tone: Build Your Own Guitar Effects Pedals by Sascha Suhr. 2023. 211 pages. (ISBN-13: 979-8816771382)
Optional:
Practical Electronics for Inventors (Fourth Edition) by Paul Schewrz and Simon Monk. (McGraw Hill, ISBN 978-1-25-958754-2).
Available from the UMass Library as an eBook via O'Reilly Safari
Or available online from the Internet archive as an eBook.
You need to buy a pair of (cheap) headphones with a 1/8 in. (3.5mm) plug/adapter. Like from the 1980s. Bluetooth won't be of use.
Bring a laptop to class. Let us know if you don't have one.
Thanks to generous funding from the College of Information and Computer Sciences, we will provide all other materials for you! You'll leave the course with two guitar pedals to keep. Rock on.
This seminar is not about creating sound that is damaging to your hearing. We will not use loud amplifiers in lecture, and student work will be based on headphones to keep the room noise levels minimal. You should know that headphones can damage your hearing. Please read this information from UMass and other schools before starting any coursework:
This course will use a number of web-based services. It is your responsibility to log in and set up accounts.
Per the University Email Policy, you are expected to check your email regularly – at least once a day. I will use your UMass email address as your point of contact in all online tools we use (Canvas, CampusWire, and Gradescope) and as my primary means to contact you individually outside of class. Group announcement will be posted to Piazza, which by default will send you via email whenever an instructor makes a post. Please don’t use email to ask questions of me or the TAs; it won’t get answered in a timely fashion. “Usual” questions about course content or simple logistics should go through Piazza. Especially for questions that other students might benefit from seeing the answers, please use Piazza.
For all other special requests, please use the Google Form listed on our Canvas site. We cannot handle the logistics of emails, DMs, phone calls and the like going to different course staff haphazardly; we need these special requests to be centralized. Special requests include questions about missed deadlines or exams, notifications of serious illness or injuries, or the like, containing personal information. These requests will be reviewed by graduate teaching assistants or the instructor, not others, and we will respond to in a timely fashion. If the inquiry is too personal to submit through this form, please submit a note through the form indicating that fact and also contact the instructor directly by email. In particular, do not use Piazza Direct Messages (DMs) to contact me (Brian) – I do not check them regularly.
Course staff typically respond to Piazza questions within about one business day. The instructors do not guarantee that we will respond to communications after about 5pm or on weekends. Course staff tend to get a high volume of questions when a deadline is approaching. If you contact us at least two full business days before an exam or deadline, you are guaranteed a reply before the exam or deadline. Otherwise we’ll do our best, but no guarantees.
Piazza is an online course management system. It will be used as the main hub for communication in this course. Lecture slides, labs and solutions are all posted in Piazza. All questions and answers should also be posted in Piazza. You are responsible for visiting Piazza frequently to see updates, or subscribe to email notifications. Please check Piazza features to get an understanding of how to use it. Please observe the following guidelines:
You should use Piazza to ask technical questions and get advice on projects. But you may not post assignment code or solutions to Piazza, either in questions or answers to others’ questions.
If your post must contain code or solutions, make it a private post, which is only visible to the instructor and TA.
Your question may already have been asked by someone. Before posting, make use of the search feature to see if your questions have already been answered. You should only post after thinking through the problem and clearly articulating your question.
You are encouraged to help other students with answering questions.
The course staff (instructors and TAs) will monitor Piazza and answer your questions in a timely manner. If a question has already been answered in a previous post we may not respond to you right away (hence it’s important to learn to use the ‘search’ feature).
Course materials are posted to Canvas. Canvas is not used for tracking your grades.
Gradescope is used for managing and grading all submissions, including exam. Gradescope allows us to provide fast and accuracy feedback on your work, and allows the TA and grader to parallelize grading tasks and use a standard rubric for grading faireness. This also frees us from handing back papers in class! Regrading requests can be easily submitted and handled in Gradescope.
Because the lectures and labs are taught in a classroom with no desktop computers, you must bring a laptop to each lecture and lab, in order to complete the LTSpice programming exercises in class and lab. If you don't have a laptop, or your laptop stopped working, please contact the instructor immediately to arrange for a loaner laptop and we'll do our best.