Can we talk about modular synths?

[yeatsvisitslincoln]

Holy fuck shit! Guitar through the Erbe Verb is like the perfect thing the make weird upside down like noise. It's AMAZING

[Dark Barn]

Woot. Tracked down a used qu-bit Nano Rand. Had been fishing for a month or two.

[behndy]

nice!

lol. now. find me a Sampleslicer and Natural Gates thenks bebe gurL.

[D.o.S.]

Anyone have a Wiard Jag sitting around?

[baremountain]

So I've been playing with the idea of going with a Voltage Gate & Varigate4. But would a Pam's Workout (old version) work just as well as a Varigate? I like the Varigate 8+ but it's HUGE and I don't really *need* 8 trigger outputs that bad. Can anyone chime in on the difference on user end between a Varigate4 and a Pam's Workout?

[Inconuucl]

Varigate sacrifices customization for live control, me thinks. Different uses and strengths.

[mr. sound boy king]

Anyone selling an IFM Fourses? I would really like to swap out Braids for a Fourses.

[Dark Barn]

So I've been playing with the idea of going with a Voltage Gate & Varigate4. But would a Pam's Workout (old version) work just as well as a Varigate? I like the Varigate 8+ but it's HUGE and I don't really *need* 8 trigger outputs that bad. Can anyone chime in on the difference on user end between a Varigate4 and a Pam's Workout?

Varigate 4 is an 8 step sequencer, Varigate 8 is 16 steps. I much prefer a 16 step sequencer personally. Regarding the difference between Varigate and Pam’s would be the sequencing, and probability per step. Pams mostly isn’t a sequencer at all, it is a clock source, and Euclidean divisor, but you can’t sequence arbitrary steps with it. And you can only affect the probability of an entire output on Pam’s.

[dozicusmaximus]

Anyone selling an IFM Fourses? I would really like to swap out Braids for a Fourses.

I am also on the hunt for some IFM stuff. Mainly Denum. Sprott, and Swoop.

[oscillateur]

Anyone have a Wiard Jag sitting around?

A somehow alternative could be the Worng Vector Space. I saw one at their booth today at Tokyo Festival of Modular and while it's far too big for my system it looks like a cool module.

[oscillateur]

Btw, quick notes from what I saw today at TFoM :

- I tried the Eowave Quadrantic Swarm, it's really super nice. All the oscillators modes are not coded yet (that part is digital) but what was there sounded good. There is a wavefolder and then two filters in series, and depending on the resonance and cutoff frequency of the filters you can easily get sounds that are kinda quiet for some frequencies but much heavier/gnarlier for others. Also, playing several notes at the same time can hit the wavefolder harder, which can give some nice overdriven sounds. I think I liked the polyphonic mode more than the monophonic sequencer mode but both at quite cool. I didn't even patch anything, just the default routing sounded great. The spring reverb at the end is also a nice touch, as it does add a lot to the sound. The touch pads each have a pot for tuning and are quantized to semitones btw, but there is a CV input and global tuning knob that are not quantized. It's super easy to set the pads to the notes you want and then play with them (as long as the thing is grounded, which is the case if you plug it in a mixer or monitors for example).

- I tried a prototype sequencer called Trigger Hacker (5 triggers tracks + one CV track) from a new Japanese manufacturer that was really nice. I'll try to upload a photo later, but it's 12HP and has a 5*5 array of LEDs pushbuttons (the outer 16 being used for steps and the 9 inside for other things), active steps (a la Korg) selection for each track, tap tempo, other options I forgot, etc.

- There was a bunch of Australian people showing their stuff : Oscillosaurus, Cat Full Of Ghosts, etc. Oscillosaurus has a very cool module that should be finished soon that can function as mixer, offset/attenuator, sequential switch, etc. I also bought a tiny 2HP dual passive crossfader from him. Cat Full Of Ghosts have a ton of cool/weird stuff. A really interesting one that will be a kickstarter soon is a small black and white standalone video synth with several CV inputs. Very cool. He also has several analog to digital and binary to decimal/etc. modules that can be great as triggers patterns generators.

- I tried the Malekko Manther a little bit. The synth section is quite simple but efficient (oscillator + noise with a good mixer section, VCF, envelopes, modulation, and a delay at the end) but the main thing is the sequencer, which is super deep. You can record knobs movements for everything and easily set the values for a specific step too. The point is that with just one sound source you can end up with something that sounds like a full drum kit or more. There will be a wavetable-based one after this made with The Harvestman that will have more or less the same sequencer section, that one will likely be a beast... There were still some patterns by Baseck in the unit I tried and it didn't sound like one monosynth at all.

Speaking of that, Baseck is fucking amazing live. He does fun, dancey, glitchy and at times borderline industrial stuff and it's impressive to see the amount of sounds and rhythms he gets out of his modular (he was playing with what looked like a 6U case). The guy has skills, and I really recommend seeing him live if you have the occasion.

Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fisher also played a great set, obviously much more ambient and quiet .

[D.o.S.]

That looks awesome! Just a little too big for my system unfortunately:

[raj007]

Thanks for sharing, Oscillateur!

Does anyone here have or have played the MMG? What do you think about it?

Also, as I spent quite a bit of time trying to decide on a 2nd Oscillator, I realized I was leaning towards a 2-in-1. So, upgrading the STO to the DPO (which arrived this morning). Fuuuuuuuuuuunnnnn

[Dark Barn]

Anyone selling an IFM Fourses? I would really like to swap out Braids for a Fourses.

I saw a post on Facebook, guy selling two Fourses and a few other IFM modules. I’d like to mess with a Fourses some day, in fact maybe someone here has done their homework. Which IFM module is best suited as an LFO?

[MrNovember]

Great notes oscillateur! Thanks! That makes me very tempted to back the Quadrantid Swarm, but that video synth from Cats Full of Ghosts sounds very interesting too. Did they give any impression on when that will be ready for Kickstarter?

The MMG was one of my first modules and it is amazing for rhythmic and percussive stuff. The strike inputs are really fun. I had trouble with the resonance being a little too shrill for my liking, but again, it was early in my modular explorations so I may have just missed something.

Also, I've had all of the IFM modules in the past. My favourite by far were the Swoop, Sprott, and Dunst. Denum would probably be the best for LFO type duties as it's a little easier to control. I don't really remember how slow the modulation got, but I'm pretty sure it had range switches to bring it down to CV territory. I never fully jelled with Fourses. It was just way too uncontrollable for me. I ended up using it mostly as a sound source to make kick drums (it did this well, very organic sounding). I would actually be tempted to buy them all again to make a dedicated IFM rack, but at that point, I'd probably just rather buy a Cocoquantus.