Chysn's Gear Rant Thread...

[dslsynth]

That's really cool! See also:

Thanks! Didn't realize there are videos from the location. Of cause there are. Think I know why the daylight was quite warm on the photo Richard Devine provided along with his recordings: what a cacophony during day when there are several visitors!

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be much controversy about that. I've dealt with that by prioritizing it above other non-essential things. Still, I've got four kids who all need stuff, so it goes slowly. A little at a time spread over two years, and it wasn't so bad.

Sounds like a plan! I would have to take it in much smaller steps if I decide to go in that direction. Currently I am considering getting the new MBrane when it shows up and that would still "require some planning."

[Razmo]

all those times people have complained in here about not getting a new hybrid synth with digital and analog oscillators again (Evolver like)... just create your own instead

There is a price for this flexibility though: cost! I would definitely have some eurorack modules if I had the money for it. Furthermore, integrated voices usually have MIDI control which opens up for a number of interesting creative applications.

Certainly... I was not trying to imply though, that one should do an Evolver clone... rather just the notion of having both digital and analog oscillators to work with in the same patch, which seems to be the most common reason for people wanting an updated Evolver, plus the true stereo routing... which is also easy to recreate in modular.

MIDI though... bummer... no, not possible, but if you go modular, you have to decide VERY THOROUGHLY if you can live without before taking the plunge really... there are advantages and disadvantages to it I feel, but the weighing between the two depend on the user I'd say... today I actually find it to be a sense of freedom to finally being able to leave MIDI behind (at least when it comes to Sysex, editors and presets) ... I still use it for sequencing though, and CC->CV control.

And yes... it IS expensive... I'm far (very far!) from having the minimum system I really want, and I'm sure it'll take at least a half to a whole year still before I've got the "basics" covered...

[Razmo]

I used the built in filter in self oscillation mode as one oscillator, with the second 1V/O output connected to the cutoff and full modulation amount (for some reason the filter is perfectly tuned at max setting)

As you know, you get a sine wave from a self-oscillating filter. Now, if you run that sine wave through a slew processor (like the Pittsburgh Modular Mod Tools) or a wave folder (like the µFold you've been considering), you can distort it to add harmonic complexity.

If you feel like being returned to the stone age by having no VCO but still have a sample manipulation module there are fortunately so many interesting sounds out there including this set of ringing rock samples by Richard Devine:

That's really cool! See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=472PEHLpwTQ

Yes... except that it's only the filter sine that can be run thru the uFold... it would have to be the control voltage for the filtercutoff that would need to go thru a lag processor to get a glide effect ... My KB37 has glide built in by the way, so routing this to both oscillator 1V/O and filter Cutoff Frequency actualy give me glide on both the oscillator and filter, so I do not need a slew generator for this

[chysn]

Yes... except that it's only the filter sine that can be run thru the uFold... it would have to be the control voltage for the filtercutoff that would need to go thru a lag processor to get a glide effect ... My KB37 has glide built in by the way, so routing this to both oscillator 1V/O and filter Cutoff Frequency actualy give me glide on both the oscillator and filter, so I do not need a slew generator for this

I'm not talking about glide. I'm talking about running audio through a slew generator. You can modulate the rise and fall times to add harmonic complexity to a sine wave. A slew generator acts as a wave shaper on an audio signal. Here's an example of a sine wave through a Make Noise Function:

https://soundcloud.com/beige-maze/lag-sweep-sine/s-ngS9w

[Razmo]

Yes... except that it's only the filter sine that can be run thru the uFold... it would have to be the control voltage for the filtercutoff that would need to go thru a lag processor to get a glide effect ... My KB37 has glide built in by the way, so routing this to both oscillator 1V/O and filter Cutoff Frequency actualy give me glide on both the oscillator and filter, so I do not need a slew generator for this

I'm not talking about glide. I'm talking about running audio through a slew generator. You can modulate the rise and fall times to add harmonic complexity to a sine wave. A slew generator acts as a wave shaper on an audio signal. Here's an example of a sine wave through a Make Noise Function:

https://soundcloud.com/beige-maze/lag-sweep-sine/s-ngS9w

Oh... well I did not know this... cool trick

[megamarkd]

chysn and Rasmo thank you for your replies, I do agree that the old subtractive formula is not a bad one, just with my MS20 I have access to a nice patchable bank of those blocks.  I guess that it's still a good thing to have as individual modules too.  I'm actually thinking I may just grab a couple of drum voice modules with the case now, they are cheap and will give the Beatstep Pro's spare gate outs something to do.  But I'm also looking at what modifiers I will need for the Assimil8er's CV inputs.

[chysn]

I've made my controller decision. Tetrapad is amazing, and everything I wanted in a modular controller. So I'm selling my Little Phatty, which will finance my dual-Tetrapad control skiff. I built the case yesterday. I'm just missing

(1) The second Tetrapad, and
(2) The ALM Boss Bow Tie switch module, which will basically turn the Tetrapad into a quantizer, or a tool for hybrid melody creation (hybrid here meaning "partially composed and partially generative"). More on this technique as I develop it.

Here's my system as it stands today:

[dslsynth]

What low pass gate module do you have, chysn?

[chysn]

What low pass gate module do you have, chysn?

I have the RYO Aperture.

[dslsynth]

Interesting module:
http://ljunggrenaudio.com/products/filter.html

Found this demo very interesting:
https://youtu.be/9WKkA29gOE8

Were somehow expecting you were using one of the Make Noise LPG modules. What made you pick this module over the Make Noise modules? Any idea of what the best LPG is out there?

[chysn]

Were somehow expecting you were using one of the Make Noise LPG modules. What made you pick this module over the Make Noise modules?

Good sub-topic, I could really geek out about low pass gates.

I actually used to have a Make Noise LxD. I got an Aperture for a few reasons. It's based on the Buchla 292 circuit, which I wanted for the system I was building. It can be switched between VCF, VCA, and LPG, which is nice flexibility for a small system. It doesn't bleed at all; the LxD never fully closed, which was disappointing, and that's apparently the expected behavior for the LxD and Make Noise's Optomix.

Most of these LPGs use vactrols, which is basically a photoresistor encased in a tube with an LED. Since LEDs don't shut off immediately, there's a bit of natural "ring" to the LPG, which has a characteristic struck or plucked sound. But they've got some problems. First is, they're inconsistent. If you buy something with vactrols, you're sort of playing the vactrol lottery, and what you get may or may not have the characteristics that you want. Second, they contain cadmium, which is nasty stuff when it's dumped into the environment, and it'll be banned everywhere at some point.

So more and more companies are building things with the characteristics of vactrols without the inconsistency or, you know, carcinogens. Mutable Instruments emulates them digitally in Streams, Pittsburgh emulates them in analog with transistors, Make Noise has a new transistor-based low pass gate. I expect that my next LPG will be an analog vactrol-free module.

But for now, I'm going to hold on to the Aperture. I feel like I did pretty well in the vactrol lottery, and I don't have a compelling reason to get anything else right now.

Any idea of what the best LPG is out there?

The best one I've ever heard is the Rabid Elephant Natural Gate. It's kind of big, and pretty expensive, but it's incredible. It's transistor-based analog, and it has this gorgeous memory effect that changes its sound based on how quickly the gates come in. But that's probably the only real "upgrade" from Aperture. Any other move I make would be lateral.

[chysn]

I got two modules in the mail today. Been a long time since that's happened!

First one was my second Tetrapad. This completes my controller skiff, which replaces my Little Phatty, which also sold today. My brain is just scratching the surface of what I can do with two Tetrapads. The simplest thing is to use one to play a melody, and the other as transposition. With this use case, I'll have a ten-octave range at my fingertips, which is way more than the Little Phatty. More frequently, I'll probably be using one Tetrapad for melody, and another for various kinds of timbral expression.

My other acquisition today was the ALM Boss Bow Tie. This is an 8x1 (or 1x8) voltage-controlled switch. It's a function that I've never seen in a hard-wired synth. One source to one of eight possible destinations, or eight sources, one of which can go to a single destination. Any one of the eight sources (or destinations) are selected with a voltage source. This is what replaced my quantizer. The cool thing is that it can function like a diatonic quantizer in conjunction with two Tetrapads. I can even quantize arbitrary voltages from Tetrapad's Voltages Mode, which means that I'll be able to play the DSM03 like an oscillator, once I do some one-time setup.

The basic patch involves setting up Left Tetrapad's presets in Voltages mode with voltages corresponding to diatonically-tuned notes on the DSM03, one tuned note for each of eight outputs. These outputs go to Boss Bow Tie. Then, on the Right Tetrapad, I set up a Custom Scale that addresses Boss Bow Tie, so that each pad selects a different voltage from Left Tetrapad and sends the trigger to the DSM03's noise impulse. Boom! A playable DSM03!

[chysn]

There's always a little bit of regret that comes with selling an instrument. It's kind of like parting with a friend. I can count dozens of such partings. There were instruments that I liked, but was never inspired by (e.g., Kurzweil K2000), instruments that I just didn't like that much at all (Yamaha SY85), and--in my immediate post-college youth--instruments that I sold literally to pay the rent.

I felt a small bit of regret selling my Little Phatty, but I mostly feel good about it. It sat unused for two years, while I chose to play the modular instrument right next to it. I didn't sour on the Moog tone by any means, but it sort of lost a place in my musical vision.

Also, thanks to the CV out mod, I was able to sell it for slightly more than I paid for it. That always takes some of the sting away.

[dslsynth]

Thanks a lot for your answers about low pass gates. I didn't know about the vactrol lottery, that transistor based LPGs are the future and that the vactrol based Make Noise low pass gates are leaky. All very useful!

Did check out the Rabid Elephant Natural Gate. It looks great and sounds very good. Like the quality goals of that manufacturer. Price is in the same range as several of Mutable Instrument's modules so I will call it expensive but not unreasonable.

Your new modular setup looks great!

[chysn]

I will call it expensive but not unreasonable.

And, unfortunately, impossible to get. It's a tiny manufacturer who made something that suddenly everyone wants, and they're not able to make them fast enough.

Your new modular setup looks great!

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with it. I can't think of anything I'd change at the moment.

[dslsynth]

And, unfortunately, impossible to get. It's a tiny manufacturer who made something that suddenly everyone wants, and they're not able to make them fast enough.

Sounds like they have their Prophet-5 moment. Nice to know that too. Not looking currently for one but its *the* design to get and who knows what may show up as a next generation design from them or someone else?

[chysn]

I've ordered an Ornament and Crime, and it should be here tomorrow. I want to see what all the fuss is about. Because there is, in fact, quite a bit of fuss. If I love it, it will replace my Moskwa. If I don't love it, I'll sell it off, and basically lose the shipping cost, so this is a low-risk adventure.

What is Ornament and Crime? It was originally a digital model of an Analog Shift Register. The Analog Shift Register, or ASR, is sort of an esoteric module with its beginnings, as I understand it, from Serge modulars of the 70s. Imagine a sample and hold, but instead of storing a single voltage, the ASR stores several. Each clock pulse causes the current input to be sent to the first output, and the voltage that was previously at the first output goes to the second output, and so on.

That's maybe a narrow function for a module. But a couple of guys realized that the Ornament and Crime's hardware was really good, with good ADCs, a good OLED screen, a fast processor; and they also realized that its software could be replaced. So they wrote a new operating system, a bunch of "apps," and released this new system as open-source code. The hardware is open-source, too, so a lot of people build these things in several different sizes.

So, it's basically a little computer in eurorack format, on a platform for which I already have some experience writing software. This gives it potential to be exactly the kind of sequencer I want, if I turn out to be willing to put the time into it. I actually don't have much interest in its "built-in" functionality, so I can see myself completely replacing its operating system with my own. Or I might decide that it's a total wrong turn. We'll see....

[megamarkd]

It's modules like that that I'm already drooling over, even though I'm still waiting for my second module to arrive.  The MS-20 gave me a taste of what it's like to yearn for modulation sources though and while browsing for what I (believe) I need for my two-voice drum machine, I find myself chasing down fancy cv generators and forgetting I should just get a simple noise gen next, heheh, but my mind is pretty much made up on my next module being a Make Noise FUNCTION.

Good CV sources are invaluable and I've spend a lot of time mucking around with CV's that are not anywhere near what the MS-20 wants.  I always knew that I should just go full modular and my MS-20 woes will end.  Now I'm there I keep forgetting nothing is stopping me from running into it.  Got a MI Peaks to use as a two voice drum synth to start with, but I've patched it put to run into a Waldorf 2-Pole sitting on the other side of the room to the monosynth!

[chysn]

It's modules like that that I'm already drooling over, even though I'm still waiting for my second module to arrive.  The MS-20 gave me a taste of what it's like to yearn for modulation sources though and while browsing for what I (believe) I need for my two-voice drum machine, I find myself chasing down fancy cv generators and forgetting I should just get a simple noise gen next, heheh, but my mind is pretty much made up on my next module being a Make Noise FUNCTION.

Function was my first module (and I say some stuff about it earlier in this very thread). Modulation sources like this will let you get more mileage out of fewer sound sources, so between the MS-20 and Peaks, it's probably okay to start with.

It's easy to forget that Function is more than a CV generator; it's also a trigger generator. Pay special attention to the end-of-rise and end-of-cycle outputs, because you can patch both of these to the drum mode of Peaks.

[megamarkd]

It's modules like that that I'm already drooling over, even though I'm still waiting for my second module to arrive.  The MS-20 gave me a taste of what it's like to yearn for modulation sources though and while browsing for what I (believe) I need for my two-voice drum machine, I find myself chasing down fancy cv generators and forgetting I should just get a simple noise gen next, heheh, but my mind is pretty much made up on my next module being a Make Noise FUNCTION.

Function was my first module (and I say some stuff about it earlier in this very thread). Modulation sources like this will let you get more mileage out of fewer sound sources, so between the MS-20 and Peaks, it's probably okay to start with.

It's easy to forget that Function is more than a CV generator; it's also a trigger generator. Pay special attention to the end-of-rise and end-of-cycle outputs, because you can patch both of these to the drum mode of Peaks.

Oh yes most definitely will be taking advantage of the eor and eoc triggers.  I was sorta inspired by the DFAM to build a modular drum machine and am sure I'll be using those triggers.  I'll have a read-back in the thread to find your words on the Function.

What I'm aiming at isn't going to be too incredibly like the DFAM but the DFAM is horribly lacking in my mind so I'm improving it
I've been running Peaks in drum mode and sequencing it with a BSP.  Then I'm running through a Waldorf 2-Pole and using the velocity of one of the melody sequencers into the 2-Pole's filter cutoff CV.  ATM I can only do one voice at a time but a Doepfer A-138s is showing up next week and I'll then have a 4in 2out stereo with panning on each in, making it essentially a 2buss mixer to do a bit of simple routing as well as mix the two drum voices with.  I'm currently going through a few issues that is sapping my usual GAS allowance, but the long term goal is to replace the Peaks drum voices with some Tiptop modules and the 2-Pole with a Doepfer A-124 Wasp filter.  Bit tired of that transistor ladder resonant filter squeal and from what I've heard the Wasp filter does a nice job on drums with a unique squelch at high res without going into self-oscillation.
Lastly I'm looking at getting a Thomas White dual LPG.  I've only managed to find demos of it in filter mode and it's not bad, no res control means I'm not going to spend my time making sure I don't take there by accident.  But I'm more interested in the the VCA's really.  I'm sure they will be adequate, I've found that it is a cheaper option than getting two regular VCA's.  The MS-20 is on the other side of the room and currently has nowhere for me to put my frame without having to move the chair!  Need to remedy that even just to run into it's VCA and harness it's AHR envelope.