showroom by daylight noise

Her drive

DRIVE, the big knob: how hard she drives the sound. Fully left she's clean, exactly what went in. Turned up, chrome and heat: glossy and dense at noon, held at about the level it came in; past three o'clock a resonant scream comes up into it, and at full she's screaming.
DRIVE, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
LEFT, RIGHT: her sound in. RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty. With nothing in LEFT her radio comes on by itself: an old slow song in the static, through her like anything else.

Wreck her

Each hit crashes, a thud, a crunch of metal and glass going, and lands on her six parts at once, piling on what's there: crushed (the sound decimated, bits gone), dented (a hollow ring for each dent, a grille tooth dark), torn (ragged dropouts), cracked (glassy crackle, a headlight's sector dark), rattling (a loose panel buzzing with the low end) and bent (a slow wobble, her headlights leaning).

WRECK, a button and its trigger: one hit. The button is a full smash; the trigger's height sets how hard, up to 5 V.

She mends

One part at a time, the worst first, and you hear each one: a dent knocks back out at its own pitch and its tooth flashes back, a crack closes like glass running backwards and seals with a tink, the rattle is wound tight in a burst of ratchet clicks, and the crush, the dropouts and the wobble smooth away. However wrecked, she always ends exactly as new.

MEND: how fast. Fully left never: she stays as wrecked as she is. At noon two full hits take a couple of bars; fully right she snaps back in a tenth of a second.
MEND, the jack: its CV.

Jealous

A second sound goes through her to its own out. While it stays under her she leaves it be, untouched. When it gets louder, she runs it down: pushes it under, crushes it, thins it far away, while her own drive surges and her headlights go to full beam.

RIVAL: the second sound in.
JEALOUSY: how she treats it. Fully left she lets it be, whatever it does; turned up she minds it sooner, from 12 dB louder than her down to 12 dB under her at full, and runs it down harder. Past noon she rams it too: a crunch on the rival and a dent to her, which she mends.
JEALOUSY, the jack: its CV.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: her sound, driven and damaged, with the crashes and the mending's own sounds placed where they are on her.
RIVAL: the rival after her.
HURT: how wrecked she is, 0 to 8 V, so a wreck can bend the rest of the rack and mend with her.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front: the jacks, the knobs, WRECK, the 50 white LEDs and the whole circuit, the USB-C in a notch in its right edge. Each tooth has two LEDs and each headlight cell its own, in the cells of a black printed baffle, so a dented tooth goes dark between two lit ones. An RP2350 runs her on both its cores: her drive and her body on one, the crashes, the mending's sounds and the rival on the other.

The SHOWROOM panel mending: a few teeth dark where dents are still to pop, sectors dark in the headlights, its knobs, jacks and WRECK on.

Drag it or use the arrow keys to turn it; click it to take it apart.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Depth: 20.8 mm behind the panel
+12 V: about 80 mA dark, 270 mA at the most, her lights at their cap (estimated)
−12 V: about 5 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 2 knobs, a button

I/O

LEFT, RIGHT: audio in, ±5 V with room to ±10 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty, an empty LEFT her radio
RIVAL: audio in, the same
WRECK: a trigger: rising past 1 V, back under 0.5 V; its height how hard, a full hit at 5 V
CVs: DRIVE, MEND, JEALOUSY: added to the knobs, 5 V the whole way; safe to ±12 V
LEFT, RIGHT: audio out, exact to ±7.5 V, soft past it, never past 8.75 V
RIVAL: audio out, the same
HURT: CV, 0 to 8 V

Engine

Brain: RP2350, both cores, at 46.875 kHz, 32-bit float
Her body: 4,000 steps a second
Light: 50 white LEDs, 200 frames a second
Power cycle: she wakes as new; only the calibration is kept