User Posts

For me, the Panharmonium is its own thing. It has its own idea of harmonics and doesn't play well with others if you want things "in tune". The Doepfer frequency shifter is also kind of like that. I use the mini synth voice after the Pan to tame it and maybe chop up the output. That said, it makes sounds like nothing else and when I use it, it dominates: "this is a Panharmonium piece". I'm still learning it, but it's challenging.

Because the stuff I do is almost always auto-generated, the SIG is usually my starting point. I just love it. It's always good for making those moments where you have to stop and listen in wonder at what it's doing. I have the two sequential switches after it so I can use SIG as a selectable chord bank. I'm sort of slicing the four channels sideways into a single channel, then use the adder to transpose the key, the switches to select the bank. That CV/gate pair then gets split back into four pairs by the Shifty, envelopes are made and then it all goes up to the Mob of Emus, VCF'ed, VCA'ed, and out. Takes a lot of wires to set up the patch, but holy smokes, it sounds amazing.

The three thru-zero VCOs section in the lower right is a new idea to play with FM. It’s not quite there yet, but getting close. The OXi Coral is also new. It really wants to be fed by midi, so I use the Befaco CV Thing to give it 8 analog inputs, giving me eight voices in a small space. You can see there’s also the midi i/o from the NerdSeq directly to the left of it. Shows promise.

The NerdSeq. sigh. I use it all the time, and it can do a thousand things, but the interface makes those thousand things hard to find and use. Ten pounds in a one pound sack. It really needs another interface layer on top of what’s there. Clearer documentation would help as well. It reminds me of programming in assembly language. Tedious. A love/hate relationship with that one. Same with the Disting, but for different reasons. If you’ve got one, you know.

I really like the clock section in the lower left. Gives me everything I need including start/stop and reset. One button starts the whole thing. That Multicore there has two ribbon cables on the back that mirror to the other Multicore on row two. Saves me from draping clock and control all over, and the RJ45 connectors still work to bridge to other boxes. Glad that I read the manual for them. And the QAM multiples are great. Well made at a good price.

I’ve got nothing too exotic, very meat and potatoes compared to most setups I’ve seen here.

EDITED Saturday December 14, 16:35

Could use a couple more active mults.
When there's some signals that are "expensive" to generate, it's nice to spread them around.

EDITED Thursday December 12, 00:44

New plan and build:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/modulargrid.net/easymde/227314_42b3df512bbd91a044e7d891c48416e2_1733946669.png

EDITED Wednesday December 11, 21:30

I'd move the Data closer to the middle. It has passthru, so nothing's lost by doing that.
Put the active mult right after the Pam's workout, and the Plog after that. Makes for a powerful combination.
It could benefit having one or two Doepfer a-138n mixers to sub-mix things together.
I found the Victor to be kind of boring and limited in what it brings to the rack, and it's joystick is meh.
Put an Oxi Coral in there instead. It'll give you tonal colors that the system 55 doesn't have.

On the other hand, if you're going Behringer, you could get 3(!) B2600's for what that System 55 costs.
One in each color!!

EDITED Tuesday December 10, 19:18

With that Doepfer supply, you'll be fine. Fill it up.
Putting another power supply in that box gives me the heebie-jeebies
and would make Dieter Doepfer very sad.

Beyond concerns for the electric bill, leave it on. Unless it's a power amp, there's nothing running that hot.
I have a Taiga that runs warmer than most other things in the box, but it's never caused concern.
Transients from power cycling might cause a problem some day. Warm is ok and temprature consistancy
is what helps keep the VCOs tunable over their range. I don't think temps of the EGs or LFOs would be of much concern.
5% off with a VCO is a problem, but in most cases(!), +-5% on EGs and LFOs would be hard to detect.
Ventilation and panel gaps aren't going to help to keep your temps and tuning consistant either.

It's pretty, and the look of it touches an old synthesist's heart in a primal way.
But I don't envy getting that thing in tune with itself.
It could use a few active multiples spread around the case.
Those Boog oscillators want clean power, and there's a ton of 'em there.
Take the hit, buy a doepfer case. It's one less thing to mess with, and will last a lifetime.

I am kind of puzzled by the arrangement of this.
The oscillators on row 3 get mixed on row four, then you have to go back up to row two for VCAs and EGs,
then take their outputs ?? back down again?
Put the i/o interface and the midi inputs up in the left corner where the fixed filter bank is,
next to the sequencers, because they're both your note event sources.
I'd sacrifice some oscillators for more filters. Are there any LFOs at all?

I try to keep things left to right, with a sort of normlization of proximity, so I can use short doepfer yellow wires as much as possible to avoid a drape of wires over everything. I'm building in 3 rows, so what's above and below also matter.
I also try and put a mult after signals that are valuable enough to spread around (if there's room).

Almost all of the racks I see here look like random modules in random positions, that they think are cool.
A wooden box full of interesting strings and pickups and knobs and wire is not a guitar.
How many racks laid out on Modular Grid ever got built?

A side note: See those two Doepfer Multicores, one by the clocks, and another starting the OXI Coral section?
You can use two ribbon cables on the backs to connect them, and they're passive and bidirectional.
Really helps to keep things neat, and the RJ45 connectors still can be used to extend to other cases.
Saves up to 14 long wires to distribute the clocks and triggers, and shorting RJ45 can turn a multicore pair into a distributed multiple.

EDITED Dec 1st, 20:14

Love the Usta and what it can do.
A beautifully built device and lit encoders instead of potentiometers is the way to go with shared controls.
But those slippery pointy knobs are always so hard to use.
Form over function.

EDITED Sep 20th, 20:42

Recommendations on auto-generating synth boxes.
Some 100 series modules, driven by Pam's Pro Workout, in a Nifty Case, makes an interesting auto-noodle box.
It's nothing exotic, but covers the basics, and gives lots of possibilities for the money. Portable, powered,
plus the Nifty Case gets you get two channels of MIDI in.

Smaller, maybe cheaper, but a bit fussier, would be a Pam's Pro Workout, a pair of 2hp Plucks, two 2hp Bells,
into a Doepfer 135-2 4 channel VCA mixer. An optional Disting mk4 could add additional echo fun that
works so well with auto-generation noodles. Substituting the 135-2 with a 100 series 121 dual VCF also works well
for mixing, sound shaping, and adding color. Pluck and Bell are surprisingly musical, sort of polyphonic,
and don't sound generically beep-ey. (and a pain to tune with those cramped knobs, but worth it)
https://noodlehut.bandcamp.com/track/cornishe-excerpt

I like using Pam's because using things like Maths to auto generate quickly gets boringly random for me
even if I tame it with more modules. Pam's is not a sequencer, but can give you complex euclidian beats
with quantized notes, along with some save and restore. And a nice yellow button for start and stop.

Affordable honorable mentions for the mults and offsets you'll find you will want:
Frap Tools 333 Sum and Distribution, and the Rides In The Storm QAM Quad Active multiple, are terrific and accurate.

If you're just starting out, Nazca Noodles are the only cables that consistantly work well for me,
other than those little yellow Doepfer wires, which I love to use wherever I can.
The longer Doepfer wires, and most others I've tried, are too stiff, or too thick, and just get in the way.
Stay away from those cables with LEDs in them. They seem like a good idea, but they'll mess you up every time.

Or you could just get a Behringer 2600 and go from there. Many have. ;)
Get the gray one if you do, the bright xmas lights on the brown/orange one quickly wear out their welcome.

EDITED Sep 15th, 19:49

The rossum-electro site hasn't been updated in around two years. After the $4,000(!) drum machine was announced,
everything went quiet. I think that the Locutus midi i/o for Assimil8tor was the last module. There was talk of black
panel versions of a few modules, but they are rare. Is Rossum too busy with his Sound Semiconductor business?
I've got 4 devices from them, Mob of Emus, Panharmonium, Assimil8tor, and Locutus and they sound great.
I hope they stick around a while more. They have the best documentation in modular.

Frap Tools Usta is great, shame it can only sequence in the forward direction,
but you won't find more beautiful, clean, and well-built hardware anywhere.
Xor's NerdSeq can do nearly anything, but the opaque documentation restricts it's utility somewhat.
Not really a traditional sequencer, the SIG Stochastic Inspiration Generator provides tons of fun.

NerdSeq. Modular, midi in/out(w/a 2hp expander), and some limited FM out all in one.
Can be tough to learn, but deep as you will ever need to build auto noodle patches.
The Swiss army knife of sequencers.

EDITED Sep 13th, 23:51

Here's a unique and terrible idea.
Drop the A-111-6 voice for an A-182-1 switch mult, and two 2hp pluck modules.
Yes, they are fussy to tune and a pain to rack straight, but often worth it.
You would get the stereo you're after plus a handful of polyphony.
The plucks will be fun with Maths, pair nice with Rings, and Clouds really likes them.
For what they are, they can sound wonderful.

You could really use that mult too.
And the Disting UI always frustrates me.
.

I'd put Maths in the lower left corner, before the percussion voices,
and put the quantizer and Circles to the left of the oscillators and envelope generators.
Avoid having wires draped everywhere. I love using those little yellow Doepfer wires.

The Wasp and the 106-5 SEM sound different, but kind of the same.
Substituting an A-101-6 Opto-FET Filter would provide more colors.

You are going to need more multiples.
If you had to sacrifice something for a 4HP Rides in the Storm QAM, what would it be?
Mounting a module from 2hp on the end of a row is asking for trouble.
Always a wonky fit and really difficult to get your fingers in there to tune it.
That voice is already covered, I'd drop it, and with the spare space already,
there's your 4hp for a QAM.

Circles (and techno!!) wants a clock. I know it's costly, but I'd drop the A-136 waveshaper,
and put a Pam's Pro Workout in the far left someplace. Maybe near a mult(!).
The A-136 doesn't give back much for the space it takes up anyway.
Pam's can do a lot of the things the noise generator does too, plus 7 other outs,
in the same space. It could also help with the lack of LFOs here.

--

EDITED Jul 31st, 20:32

I've settled on grouping by voice sets, not by having a row of oscillators, a bank of envelopes...
I did that at first, but now my clocks are grouped together up in the left corner, and audio/midi io in the lower left.
But I try to have modules in the middle near each other that I can link with
those little yellow doepfer wires as reasonable "defaults".
I also need less wires using Doepfer's CV and trigger bus lines in three of the groupings.

I sort of see it as: here's my bass and percussion sections, this group does keys, this row is guitar/lead,
and this is the mix to output. I can always cross patch to oblivion, but I don't have to every time I sit down to record.
Oh, and the Doepfer A-180-9 Multicore works great for interconnecting boxes.

My eyes are messed up with strabismus so I get lost in the weeds when wires are draped everywhere.
Not a kid now I guess, but I don't like wire balls anymore like I used to.
I believe neither did Alan R. Perlman's designs, compared to Moog and Buchla.
(latest build plan here)

EDITED May 19th, 17:47

A pretty sounding and low-hp module is the 2hp pluck.
It's 4 note polyphonic, has an interesting range of tones, and leaves you lots of rack room.
They are always a pain to tune because of the fiddly knobs and 2hp stuff is kinda cheap because they're cheap.
More than three 2hp modules in a rack is rarely worth suffering with their fit and control.

But... feeding it into mavis' external in can make for some astonishingly beautiful arpeggios.
Two plucks together is also nice. For tonal variety, add a 2hp bell.
The 3 together have provided me some "wow" moments where you have to just stop, listen, and smile.
cornishe_excerpt This is Pamela's Pro Workout -> A-156 QNT ->PluckPluckBell + Mavis into a Monsoon to stereo out.

Add a Doepfer A-138 narrow mixer to corral them, or you could add a Doepfer A-138s mini stereo mixer.
You'll also need a mult of some sort. The Doepfer A-182-1 stitchable mult
works great for this, adds 6hp more, and so now with pluck/pluck/bell/mixer/mult, we're still only
at 16 hp added and you've got lots of added fun.

I only wish that someone would make a unified PluckPluckBell with less twitchy tuning.

EDITED May 17th, 16:47

The video interface is intended for displaying the interface on an hdmi monitor, and it does that really well.
The video output is clean and records well. I wish that more/every manufacturer would provide that functionallity.

The video-art mode is low-res, unsupported, unfinished, and mostly undocumented (as of firmware v2.0).
I think Xor just thought it was an interesting hack, and kept what he had in the release, but it's sort of borked.
I got it to do some "things" but I was dissapointed I couldn't do basic drawing with it (draw a pixel/line at XY with this color).
It has a some potential, but also is limited by what the embedded video controller hardware is capable of.
Graphics mode also eats up one of the precious few tracks when using it for visuals.
Video synthesis it ain't, so don't buy it for that, but some audiences might enjoy seeing the tracker interface.

EDITED Feb 27th, 02:55

On Nerdseq, first get some patience because it's a bear to get a handle on 80% of the things it can do.
The company is just one (occasionally cranky) engineer, and the documentation is... challenging.

Instead of getting more modules to feed, I'd recommend getting a Doepfer A-185-2 Precision CV Adder.
It makes combining and tuning CVs from Nerdseq a lot easier than doing it in the Seq's interface.
Much fun to be had there adding CVs together.

NS does a lot with midi too, and I liked the price and footprint of Xor's 2hp midi in/out.
You get lot of utility for the 2hp of space it takes. I put it on a longer ribbon cable for ease of placement and it works great.
The Video/Keyboard works well if you think you need that, but it causes a bit of a ribbon cable rat's nest.
I have a CV-16 Expander, but it's very much a seperate device as far as programming it.
The high effort/reward ratio kept me from using it much and it's back on the shelf.

In all, NerdSeq is well made, reliable and if you need to spit out series of notes that you set up ahead of time,
it's a great choice, especially if you enjoy a tracker paradigm interface.

I just got a Frap Tools Usta today (so beautifully made) and I'm expecting that it and the NS will get along wonderfully.

http://noodlehut.bandcamp.com

EDITED Feb 27th, 02:00

the plan ^^

the build ^^

(yay!)

EDITED Jan 22nd, 18:42