All Posts

Thank you. It’s looking like maths is hard to get ahold of right now. The the non linear envelope follower sounds great for me. And the out put too. I have the rainmaker already that I’ve been using for tape loops and sound samples to mix with my other hardware samplers. But I wanted to try to build something of a effects unit to run audio through. Mostly taken advice from the few friend sources I have that have been into modular. Thank you very much for taking a look at the space I have available and for the tips.

On an unrelated note, do you have any experience with the Pittsburg double helix? It’s not something that I was looking for, but came across one from a friend that is quite a deal considering it’s selling price.

Again, thank you very much. It’s all a lot to take in and I appreciate your help and advice very very much

-Garrett

Lugia is correct and I have both the Bionic Lester and Dual Borg filters. Both are superb and can work like independent filters or in parallel modes. The Bionic Lester has a lot of preset options or you can customize them.

@Lugia,

Well that is certainly encouraging news as one day having Serge and Buchla in my studio would be super awesome! Buchla is starting to come out with more affordable versions of their systems as well.

I enjoyed it a lot! Although for "proper" techno I think you need a stronger kick, maybe this is the influence of the drone origin?

Hello Lugia,

Thank you very much for the insight information, very interesting. I wrote down the Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte album on my "to buy list" :-) For the Pet Sounds I can't find an available copy though.

Kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Ffraserr,

In your My Modular section, make sure the Rack Lock is switched off and then make sure the Panel Selector is switched on as well. Then you go to the bottom of any module (those that offer more than one different front panel) and you got there a left and right arrow icon where you can click on to browse through the different front panels.

The Wogglebug (2014 version) that's available now is by the way the default if I am not mistaken, so not 100% sure what you mean?

I hope this helped and kind regards, Garfield.

You ought to! After all, this is the first album where they used the "tannerin", a ribbon-controlled theremin, on "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times". "Good Vibrations" usually gets the nod for that, but the truth is that this other track came out first, despite both of them being cut on the same set of sessions.

Those aren't what I'd recommend for dual filters, frankly. Better choices can be found with Intellijel's Morgasmotron or Malekko's Euro version of the Wiard Dual Borg.

But at the same time, you can do most of what you've mentioned with any two separate VCFs. The functions you're describing are ones which the vast majority have patchpoints for, and you can make them behave as a duo with a few patchcords.

Serge is getting cheaper, thanks to Random*Source's efforts, and the fact that they've opted to make the Serge gear PROPERLY modular. Hardly anyone can afford $3k-4k Serge panels, but if you can break all of that up into more financially-possible chunks, well...

Classic Make Noise Wogglebug. What's up with the image?

You are making me want to listen to the Beach Boys!

Hey,

Looking for a versatile dual filter. Both of these filters seem really cool in their own rights but limited demos of the Bionic Lester have not made this clear cut.

Would probably prefer the one that can accomplish most of these...
- Really nice acidic liquid sound
- Self oscillation and pinging for percussion
- ability to run both filters independently
- options for running both in series or parallel
- destruction and unconventional distortion
- format filtering(vocal vowel sounds)

Interested to hear what people's experiences with these are. What did you like/dislike about either?

Very cool story and would love me some Buchla. But for what one Buchla oscillator costs, I can buy a lot more Eurorack gear that does way more. Same with Serge.

You may ask here: http://fpb-synths.de/kontakt

EDITED Jan 4th 2021, 15:40

We're not in a cult, are we? Haha

EDITED Jan 4th 2021, 15:41

Hahaha yes, 20 minutes is not a short one. I must say this one started out as a drone but clearly something went wrong along the line, I'll try hiding the drumbox next time so I'm not tempted to add a kick on it.

Nice! I've been working on some long form acid jams myself, if only I could remember to record them...

It's voodoo, really...while I can understand stereo field depth, how Brian Wilson and Chuck Britz got that depth in a MONO mix still mystifies me...along with a lot of other people. "Pet Sounds" is so full of audio mysteries, one could (and many HAVE) spend one's entire doctoral dissertation in audio engineering studying it and breaking down what can be gleaned from it. Some of what I hear, though, seems to involve the amount of reverb added to different layers along with some very hi-tweak level settings. But there's a problem there, in that what they used for reverb weren't clear. Mark Linett thinks they used plates, but from my experiences with my own Ecoplate II, I'm more inclined to think that we're hearing a combination of those on some isolated parts, and the rest is piped thru United Western's chamber. Nevertheless, the album only uses tape slap and reverb for processing, and there's some indication that they actually printed the reverb on the original takes in many cases, not opting to add all of it in mixing.

The biggest problem, though, lies with Brian himself...this album marked the beginning of his acid-fueled mental decline, something which would go full-blown when work on "Smile" was under way. And since Chuck Britz died in 2000, the actual details of HOW this was mixed are rather lost now. It's known, though, that this was mainly done on 4-track machines, not unlike what The Beatles would also use on "Sgt. Pepper", and "Pet Sounds" may well have pushed that decision by them and George Martin. So, yeah...this album remains an amazing audio engineering mystery in a number of aspects; reading how Mark Linett had to re-piece together all of the master reels for the stereo mix in the reissue's liner notes just sounds like utter madness! Nevertheless, the album is a frickin' monument...it's arguable that ALL prog started from it, given its popularity in the UK and its similarities to the first prog albums that would start to appear in subsequent years. But in the USA, it was largely dismissed when it came out...it's only been in the past 20 years or so that the importance of "Pet Sounds" has become lots clearer. Frankly, I'd put it right up there with Stockhausen's "Kontakte" as a body of work that requires careful (and rewarding!) study.

Hi Lugia,

Thank you very much for the recommendation of Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (2001 reissue), I couldn't find it that quickly (the right reissue version that is), so I have put that on my CD/LP wish list, hopefully I can find it one day (here in Europe).

That's indeed very interesting to get that front-back depth without the use of stereophonic mixing, however in "our case" of a Eurorack, any idea how to do that? Or is this some kind of "secret-recipe" (like top chef-cooks also wouldn't tell us their recipes) for audio engineers not telling us how to do it? :-)

Thank you very much and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Exposure,

Wow, 20+ minutes :-) As you might know I am not too much of a Techno person, however I do feel your track is pretty good here because for a Techno track, you have tons of variations and interesting sounds used here and that's not always very common with (classic) Techno. With the 20+ minutes you fulfil a "very important new requirement" here on this forum (drones should be at least 17 minutes long), only turning it into a drone/ambient kind of thing and then it's perfect ;-)

Thanks a lot for sharing this and kind regards, Garfield.

My suggestion for listening to get a real sense of how stereo field depth (or field depth in general) to work would be to pick up a copy of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds", especially the recent (2001) reissue that contains both the original mono mix by Chuck Britz and Brian Wilson, but which ALSO has a new stereo mix made by Brian and Mark Linett. This is a great opportunity to really deep-dive and study HOW these mixes work, because the stereo version went back to the source reels for the new mix, so in BOTH cases, they're working from the same recorded material.

What's really amazing is how the stereo field behaves...and then contrasting that with the 1966 mono version. In both cases, there are a lot of "depth cues", but this just makes the 1966 mix even more jaw-dropping, because Britz and Wilson were able to give an apparent front-back depth of field WITHOUT the use of stereophonic mixing. It's hard enough to get that feel out of a stereo mix (M/Sed or not!), which frankly makes the 1966 mono mix a work of pure genius. Seriously, this one album deserves to be carefully studied by ANYONE working with audio engineering, whether they do electronic music or not!

Hi Klngvrhltnss and Lugia,

Interesting tread! How to place something in stereo right or left field is kind of half-way understood however getting something beautifully placed in the middle, so it sounds perfectly well in the stereo sweet spot is getting less clear to me. Then, even more unclear to me is, how to put for example one instrument in the front-middle of stereo and another instrument in the back-middle of the stereo field; I have no idea. With that I mean that you really can hear that one instrument is "closer" to you while the other instruments seems to be more far away from you (i.e. away from the listener). Any information on that would be very welcome. Preferable within Eurorack but if that's getting too difficult then out of the Eurorack is fine too.

Thank you very much in advance and kind regards, Garfield.

Get an FX Aid XL instead of the Milky Way. I have both.
You can thank me later ;)
-- farkas

good looking out Fark, I actually just watched a vid where someone was using two of these. they seem dope

EDITED Dec 20th 2020, 00:23

Very nice sounds, but the tune potentiometers are very sensitive. It's a pain to tune them right and they change the tuning from touching alone.

A Buchla 400!? Man...those are not common AT ALL. You should go back and see if his has the usual touchplates or if it has a black and white keyboard. If it's the latter, I only know of ONE offhand which was built for Mark Isham! It'd be amazing if that's the one he's got...

I don't use this on my modular gear, Instead, what I find useful about M/S "abuse" is its ability to spread the mix and, thanks to some phasing trickery in the typical M/S network, the ability to cause the stereo image to exceed the left-right boundaries. So I tend to use these on submixes when I need a 'wider' result, and on some more ambient stuff, I'll put a M/S network plugin on the mixbus to make that stereo field sound massive and deep.

Mind you, there are some risks to this. One thing it'll do is to make your mixes VERY mono-incompatible. Also, you have to keep an ear out for phase cancellations that the M/S network settings might be causing in more extreme settings. Plus, if you want to put something processed like this on vinyl, you'll have to use some serious low-end summing to mono to make the track's low end under control. If that's not done, your lathe engineer will be cussing you up and down, because out of phase BASS results in a situation where the cutting head cannot physically cut that to a lacquer...and REALLY extreme out of phase bass can, in fact, wreck the cutting head!

Ahhh, OK...hm, what I'd do would be to drop the Pam's right off the bat, because you don't really need timing and/or more modulation with that Maths in there. Instead, you need a proper input module and something isolating for an output because, if you're using external inputs, you have a higher possibility of AC leakage and other sorts of crud coming in on the outputs.

So...drop the Pam's. Then, you need to get a Nonlinearcircuits Envelope Follower (which also contains an input preamp and a 1/4" input jack) and a Happy Nerding Isolator. This leaves 2 hp (like it has now), and for that, my suggestion would be York Modular's Lockhart Wavefolder, which would also give you some selective distortion capabilities.

The envelope follower will output a modulation CV based on the input amplitude, which you'd find useful with either the Rings or the Wavefolder. And the output module features transformer isolation, which means you've got some "iron" in the signal path which would play nicely with a bit of overdrive to it, adding some nice euphonic warmup to the outputted signal.

Those two aren't really for percussion, though...instead, that pair of 4 hp modules are ones I selected so that you can have massive, slab-cracking BASS. The two slightly detuned VCOs plus that suboscillator will have the capability of generating POUNDING low-end. Also, when you're dealing with that sort of bass sound, you want simpler waveforms which will have more kinetic energy at their fundamentals. Think "Miami bass", but taken to a more violent level.

Get an FX Aid XL instead of the Milky Way. I have both.
You can thank me later ;)

not that anyone is still paying attention but this is a revised revision B^)

Yeah Mylar is a cool dude and so relaxing to listen to that soothing voice except when he gets excited lol. I mix the mindless lets just patch shit and turn knobs and dials and observe what happens with study and reading then patching. I also try to apply DAW principles to my patches to create an actual track. Last night, my new Acid Rain technologies Maestro module arrived which is super fun that lets you create tracks with lots of modulations in separate swim lanes. I was excited to see a modular company build a product that brings DAWlike performance to modular. Creating song like chain patterns with my new WMD percussion modules and Plaits into Rings was a game changer for me.

Hello, this looks like a great utility module!

I took a few minutes and straightened your uploaded images, to fit better in the 16hp of modulargrid. It's not perfect, but feel free to use these for anything.

Images for Threshold, VCO-3A and Gate Step-Up
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ahbric9xuyrb3xv/AACYn5kULsTtSEGyO_wlSPKCa?dl=0

best,
Alex

Thanks @Exposure for your kind words. Very nice to hear that....
All the best

Thanks Garfield

Most of the percussion sounds were capture with a JRH microphone plug into a Mikrophonie module.

a simple way to make a high-pass from a low-pass is to invert the low-passed signal and add it to the unfiltered signal. I guess this is exactly what the Doepfer Wasp is doing.
-- the-erc

Thanks @the-erc for explaining! This makes perfect sense. Good to know, that it's not a malfunction but a principle based behaviour.

@GarfieldModular Let's talk about tips and tricks for Mid/Side processing in Eurorack in another thread.

EDITED Dec 19th 2020, 11:43

I've been playing around with Mid/Side processing in Eurorack, lately. As it's not easy to find helpful information on that topic, I thought it might be a good idea, to start a thread here, for discussing and collecting information.

Mid/Side processing is a commonly used mastering technique (more info here and here), but can also be used in modular synthesizers, to enrich/enhance/manipulate your stereo image. The basic principle is based on splitting a stereo signal into one sum (Mid) and one diff (Side) signal. These are mono signals of their own, which can be processed independently and differently, before being combined, to form a stereo signal again.

In Eurorack this can be done with modules such as the Worng LRMSMSLR or Shakmat SumDif.

I usually use this method inside my system to gain a wider stereo image, by splitting my master stereo out and processing the Side signal as follows: cutting its low end, boosting its mid frequencies and raising its volume. Works pretty well (apart from that irritating but logical behaviour described and clarified here).

I think it's a great technique to play around and get creative with. I would be interest in how others judge and use this in modular synthesis. What are your experiences, tips or best practices regarding Mid/Side processing in Modular?

EDITED Dec 19th 2020, 12:02

I think I've heard Mylarmelodies say he practices as if he was performing in front of an audience. So just set a time box, lets say one hour, and keep going no matter what.

When jamming I sometimes stop and repatch, tweak a sequence or whatever. I couldn't do that in front of an audience, you can't stop the music and have to keep it interesting over time. I might try this kind of practice next time, it's a bit like sacguy71's mindless patch approach.

Lately I'm also enjoying some podcasts and talks, the one Mylarmelodies did with Surgeon was great, and all the STOOR's Knob Twiddlers Hangout series are also fantastic, even if they are not specific to modular synths.

I recorded some long loops into Ableton and arranged it like a dj session. I wish I could do it all from the modular instead of using the computer, but I think I would need a few more voices and mixers to do it all in just one take.

Well done Rassell!! I'm loving it and I'm also getting that J.M Jarre vibe. Sounds very professional and the video is fantastic as we get to see what's going on with the modular.

Thanks for sharing.

Hi GarfieldModular,

thanks a lot for your very kind words. I feel very honored... it makes my weekend even better...

All the best

@Lugia,

All good points.

Creative process is what led me down the modular hole. My Schlappi Engineering Angle Grinder and 100 grit modules arrived today and they were a joy to just patch and tweak for some otherworldly tones. I am still reading manuals and videos in between but the experimental side is what I really enjoy the most. I like these weird do cool modules that regular synths and computer VSTs cannot achieve without great programming efforts where a couple patch cables will do the trick for 1-2 modules.

Some filters invert the signal. This is the cause of the stereo image flipping in mid/side chain.

Here's the maths. There should be a lot of dividing by two to make this work exactly, but for simplicity I'm going ignore that. To start with :

M = L+R
S = L - R

Normally I retrieve the stereo signal by doing the same trick again :

M + S = (L+R) + (L -R) = L
M - S = (L+R) - (L -R) = R

But if I pass S through an inverter to get

S' = -S = R - L

When I recombine I now :

M + S' = (L + R) + (R - L) = R

which is not the side I was expecting!

Incidentally, a simple way to make a high-pass from a low-pass is to invert the low-passed signal and add it to the unfiltered signal. I guess this is exactly what the Doepfer Wasp is doing.

EDITED Dec 19th 2020, 03:07

Hi Klngvrhltnss,

Thanks a lot for the information and the hint, I will give that a try with my SumDif module :-)

I read the link you provide, not all yet, however one question arises... how to take a voice more into the front of the stereo view and how to put for example another (less important sound perhaps) to the back of the stage?

Sorry, that I can't help you with your question. Thank you very much and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi @GarfieldModular, I'm splitting the stereo signal into its sum (all info, that is the same in L and R) and its diff (all info, that is different in L and R) signal. Those are mono signals of their own, and can be combined, after processing, to form a stereo signal again. That's the wonders of Mid/Side processing, a commonly used mastering techniques. In Eurorack you can do that with modules such as the Worng LRMSMSLR or Shakmat SumDif.

EDITED Dec 19th 2020, 11:29

Hi Rassell,

Wow, that's something nice there man! You got a lot of surprise sounds in there that I really like :-)

Oh, and then your video with a beautiful view of your modular setup and seeing you here at work, that's so great and so enjoyable to watch! I like the "bird view" moments in the video as well, nice touch :-)

If you would tell me you are in real J.M. Jarre or Vangelis (your music sounds a bit too modern for Vangelis, so I would go for J.M. Jarre) and you are just using here a nickname, then I would believe you! :-) This is serious good stuff and very entertaining!

You must be nuts to start from scratch and break down this setup, it's so nice! It hurts me that you tell us this ;-)

Now I finally got a good beginning of this weekend (thanks to you!), thank you very much for sharing this and kind regards, Garfield Modular.

P.S.: And I am going to click on the play button again, there is so much to discover here in this track of yours!

Hi Defragmenteur,

You got some interesting sounds there :-) I am especially impressed by those almost kind of percussion sounds that kind of tick-tack through it, sounds very intriguing!

Thank you very much for sharing this and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Klngvrhltnss,

I have difficulties to pronounce your name ;-)

To be honest, I don't get your point here. I am most probably not understanding what you try to say: How can a mono-filter like the Doepfer A-124 Wasp filter inverts your stereo image. I am having difficulties to understand that...

Kind regards, Garfield Modular.

I've been playing around with Mid/Side processing, lately. I'm using the Worng Electronics LRMSMSLR to split my stereo signal into one sum (the Mid) and one diff (the Side) signal. Thus Mid and Side can be processed independently and differently, before being converted back (added) to a usual left/right stereo signal. This can create some interesting, special and great effects. I use this method inside my system to gain a wider stereo image by processing the Side signal as follows: cutting its low end, boosting its mid frequencies and raising its volume. Works pretty well. However, I came across one problem, that made me wonder:

Running the Side signal through certain modules inverts the stereo image, i.e. sounds that are in the right channel before processing are in the left channel after processing and vice versa. I investigated that mostly with my filters: North Coast MSK 009, Doepfer A-124 Wasp, Noise Engineering Viol Ruina. Pretty interesting results. Using the MSK 009 inverts the signal, no matter if the HP, BP or LP output is used. Using the Viol Ruina outputs does not invert the signal. Using the BP out on the Doepfer Wasp inverts the signal. Using the LP/HP out on the Doepfer Wasp inverts the signal, when Mix is in LP position (ccw), but does not invert it, when Mix is in HP position (cw).

I understand how filters function in a analytical/mathematical way, but I'm definitely lacking electronical knowledge to comprehend what could be causing this different and strange behaviour.

Can anyone help to clarify?

EDITED Dec 18th 2020, 23:27

In case anyone is still looking at this thread.... here's some revisions I might shoot for before giving in to a bigger case

EDITED Dec 18th 2020, 22:54

I played around with this for some days. And now the end is near, I will start from scratch tomorrow. Here ist what I came up with...