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Sorry @Spencerdeathwaltz for hijacking your Thread

@GarfieldModular

The 4ms WAV Recorder really works great for me. First I wanted to buy a simple Focusrite Scarlet Interface. But I hate using a Computer in my Workflow. Even if it's just for Recording. Then someone hinted me the WAV Recorder.

If you don't want to do Multitrack Recording I can really recommend the WAV Recorder. It's so simple to use.

Yeah, Defenitely check out the Arbhar if you like Granular Stuff.

I think I only scratched the Surface so far. This Weekend I want to try out the Build in Microphone of the Arbhar. I already got a funny Idea for this. If it works I will share it on Modulargrid in the "You" Section.

Thanks again for your nice comments on my Track. It makes me happy :-)

Ahem.. speak for yourself, I think my modular music is excellent hehehe

I did enjoy reading, thank you!!

My take on it is simple, if you can afford it and you have an itch to scratch, then do it - and I wish you good luck!!

If you can't afford it, then don't, and get VCVRack installed on your computer instead - seriously that whole world of awesomeness is not exactly the same, but it is damn close and getting better all the time e.g. MI Ripples emulated recently - WOW!!

I highly recommend a Mutable Instruments Kinks - if for nothing else other than the Sample & Hold section - but you may be surprised with the other sections too!

I would also go through all the Erica Synth Pico modules and read all the descriptions - they are short and to the point. Might give you some ideas.

im in the process of building a eurorack system in a tiptop audio mantis case for my Dark Ambient project.

what i have so far
Synthesis technology E352(is on the way)
Malekko Quad Vca
XAOC Tallin VCA
Tiptop Audio Forbidden Planet
Doepfer A-124 Wasp filter
Ladik m-171 pannable mixer
Make noise maths(will get this next month)
considering either a Z-dsp or Erbe Verb

but dont know much about utilities,what are essential in a setup?preferrably in a small hp size?

I was big into photography once.
I did a LOT of research into what to buy.
I learned that that my needs would not be met with buying 7000 dollars of
camera bodies and lenses. What if I spent six months or two years and did
NO photography? I ended up with a good Prosumer camera that I still love
but can put down with no guilt.

If your that person. Modular is not for you.

If you decide that your modular is a Spiritual Ham Radio and are going to use
it on a daily basis? Buy in hard and deep. If not, get a Neutron maybe?

Yeah 9u.
If you want more.
Your dedicated and will get boats for it.

I think my problem with Maths is that its not something "normal" in a synthesizer.
Not at least as expected if you walked into say Guitar Center and wanted to buy one.
Maths is...far more useful than expected?

I'd have to go for a cheap large Midi module.

Just planning ahead. ^.~

I can't give you a good number, but at least 2. Like most things in Modular more is better.
However two will get you good. If you can do more, go for it. If you can do 3 that will help.
If you can get 3 then move on to the stuff like filters.

I can't give you exact numbers but I think Modular is still in a sorta 70s Hobbyist phase,
there is no real Apple or Microsoft.

Yet.

@.@

Does anyone have any info about when these might be available.
I've been around long enough to know Behringer announces shit and
it takes a long time to actually be on sale, and throw in this Covid stuff...
Just curious if anyone knows.

I'm tempted by the 103 too, as its cheaper and a bit more available here at the moment, but then i think it would be daft to not get the CV control version.

Hi Sislte,

Ha, ha, I love this phrase: "Slavic viking schlager" :-) Well being honest with you, I got a "serious" allergy for "schlagers"-music so I was actually quite scared just those fractions of a second before I pressed the play button of your track...

But I should have known! There was nothing to be afraid off :-) I continue like your creativity in your tracks and as Kel already mentioned, some nice (unexpected) changes.

I hope to hear more of the creativity that you are able to put in your (future) sound tracks! :-)

Good luck and kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Wishbonebrewery,

All right! STO, ADDAC 104 VC T-networks (let me know what you think of it once you have used it for a while, I consider the 103) and Disting's Stereo Tape Delay, wow! This sounds very promising as some superb ingredients for your next track :-)

Thanks for that interesting filter hint about CV swinging between BP and LP, nice idea, got to try that once I find time.

Cheers, Garfield.

Hi Quantum_Eraser,

You are welcome and thank you very much for your kind E-mail with the so detailed answer on your patch and how you made this music. Very interesting to read. No worries, I am not going to copy your music style or this track, I was just wondering how you did it. While typing this message, I listen again at your track, still beautiful :-)

I was actually asking about your recorder, so you did that with the 4ms WAV recorder, wow, didn't expect that :-) What's the technical spec of that one? Ah, 24 bits/96 kHz, okay not too bad, no wonder it sounds good (from a recording point of view). Good to hear that you didn't do any external processing, because I had that in mind as well: I am looking for a physical recorder and then hopefully not having the need for using a computer. Not sure if I am going to succeed, I still might end up with a computer based solution :-(

What is amazing is your nice (relatively) simple approach here: taking some Russian radio chatter (nice one by the way) from youtube and the way you used snippets of Mono is an interesting idea too :-) Yeah, I call that beautiful music engineering ;-)

The way you describe the Arbhar, it sounds like I need to check out that module and see if that's something I would like to use as well, I am going to investigate that module, thanks for the hint and highlighting that here in your track.

Okay, if you don't mind I continue listening at your track, the next click on your track will be the 12th time I am going to listen at it :-)

I hope you will share more of your music and if you ever come with the brilliant idea of coming up with an album you must let us know ;-) Oh yes, and include that above track to that album, please?! Meanwhile enjoy modular, good luck with music creation and greetings from Germany, Garfield.

What's up, guys. Getting into Eurorack and working on slowly building my first rack. I've been working in VCV for about a year, so I've got a handle on what I want in my case I think, but am still a little fuzzy about getting audio out. I'm actually coming into this from purely being a drummer so I pretty much have no experience with audio equipment.

I'm probably going to be just practicing with my system for awhile before I start putting anything into a DAW, so I'm not too worried about that. I'm going to be using headphones quite a bit, but I'd also like to be able to play it directly through speakers as well. Would I be able to do this using just the headphones tile, or should I keep the line-out? Also, what equipment will I need to hook the outs to speakers? Would I need an audio interface, a receiver, or maybe an amp like you'd have for a regular synth? Would love to see some of your audio setups if you have pics! Would love some mixer module suggestions as well.

Also feel free to critique the rack itself too, of course :)

P.S. The plan is to get the Intellijel 7U case wih the on-board outs that hook up to the 1U tiles.

EDITED May 12th 2020, 23:32

Hi Kel,

Yes indeed about "nice all in one solution" that's what I am kind of hoping for as well for this sequencer. That's why I can't wait to try it out at my dealer, if the virus situation allows us... which isn't for the moment. Anyway, let's see when it will be released but I can hardly wait...

Another one to keep an eye on is the Erica Synths - Black Sequencer, that looks very promising too but without that mini-keyboard however instead it comes with 16 encoders that might be good too, so might be difficult to choose from...

Kind regards, Garfield.

Nice!!

I was just looking at your modular and thought you were being very clever - doh!!

Never occurred to me to think of other synths... heheh

You need more modules.

No, not in the current situation I really don't!! All I am trying to do is remind you to have a little perspective. No one has been ripped off - there was just a miscommunication, a bit of a f'up and all has come good. Better than good, with free gifts and apologies and explanations. I understand you were concerned for a couple of days, but I really do not see the problem in the end.

Really... there are more important things in life right now than your modules - you are in an insanely privileged position now to be even thinking of buying anything like this. I know I am usually keen to buy these things too, but there is no way I can do that, not right now with everything that is going on and with so much uncertainty. This is how I think the vast majority of people are feeling. People are scared, losing their jobs, family members dying. I understand it might not be affecting you directly, but people are in shock and panic the world over. It's time to give people a break unless they are actually committing an actual crime. Minor f'up does not warrant this response - not now - not ever really. No one is ripped off.

A bad trader thread should be about highlighting criminals, not falling out over a misunderstanding and someone being a bit crap.

I sincerely hope you are never victims of actual crime if this is how a misunderstanding and bad communication for a few days affects you both. I get you were concerned, sure... rightly so, but not this much surely? Especially not in such a usually caring community and with a paid up member of ModularGrid (i.e. someone with a valid PayPal account) with two 'thumbs up' already?

Please, take a deep breath and let it go? Hey? Come one... we are all synth lovers. We are all decent people, we, like everyone does, just fuck up sometimes!! There's no criminal activity here, so it's time to chill out a bit and have a laugh about it maybe?

What do you say?

I'm enjoying my new gear. I'm saying that Steve, the seller downvoted me, the buyer, for no apparent reason. People not being happy with the way you sell things and the way you communicate is not something you can fault the buyer for. I havent asked for anything unreasonable, if he said he cannot be here for a week, fine. He did not.

People who wanna trade with Steve, its all there, I did not hide anything. It's pretty simple from my perspective: I sent Steve more than 500 EUR and then he disappeared for a week. Then he sent me the wrong tracking number, and disappeared for another week to answer that. He could have just rechecked the number before sending to me, he didnt. It did not go to a wrong address, it went to a totally different country, causing me endless frustrations and calls to the Austrian Post which then told me I'm not even the recipient.

Now I've been trading for years and I've been on here for maybe 1 or 2 years and had a lot of good experience on here, but nothing like this. Somehow other people can just pay attention when selling things, including me.
-- breakline

and Steve still thinks this is not a big deal. So as @Kel_
Good to know

EDITED May 12th 2020, 22:15

Ah! I always wanted an Ion. Such a great sound and value.

Alexis Ion! The best synthesizer ever made (really).

Trying to make this in euro is prob not going to be as dialed into a moog as the subharminicon is. and will prob cost more.

Cool - shame it had to go!

I would revisit - but obviously that's up to you :)

Thanks for the patch tips - I might see if I can think of something similar given I have none of those specific modules hehe

I shared a short video clip on Instagram when I started it a few days ago:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CABd5OCBYNq/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

However... I just unplugged everything and abandoned that track a few minutes ago. I got frustrated and moved on. Haha
I'll probably come back to the sound in a few days, but I couldn't quite get a decent song out of it yet. The Cocteau Twins-ish sound was Voltage Block -> Triad -> Chainsaw -> Milky Way -> LoFi Junky with an lfo modulating volume.

This is not official word I believe not for a few months yet...!

I am curious about it in the same way I am curious about all sequencers, looks pretty comprehensive and a nice all in one solution :)

It is rather excellent - if I didn't have both and having to choose one, I would be keeping them both for sure :)

Always wondered about the Lofi Junke, but reckon I can achieve similar with what I already have - albeit not in such a neat little package!

Love Cocteau Twins.. please share? :)

Yeah +1 from me too - very enjoyable and some unexpected changes :))

Pads - my guess is Plaits into Ringmaker :)

This is great. What did you use for the pad sounds?

I'm enjoying my new gear. I'm saying that Steve, the seller downvoted me, the buyer, for no apparent reason. People not being happy with the way you sell things and the way you communicate is not something you can fault the buyer for. I havent asked for anything unreasonable, if he said he cannot be here for a week, fine. He did not.

People who wanna trade with Steve, its all there, I did not hide anything. It's pretty simple from my perspective: I sent Steve more than 500 EUR and then he disappeared for a week. Then he sent me the wrong tracking number, and disappeared for another week to answer that. He could have just rechecked the number before sending to me, he didnt. It did not go to a wrong address, it went to a totally different country, causing me endless frustrations and calls to the Austrian Post which then told me I'm not even the recipient.

Now I've been trading for years and I've been on here for maybe 1 or 2 years and had a lot of good experience on here, but nothing like this. Somehow other people can just pay attention when selling things, including me.

Made using the new rack. Even the drums are from the same patch (a first for me). A bit of an abstruse melody turn into an arcane FM beat and then into some kind of Slavic viking schlager.

Yeah, the Lofi Junky is basically Boards of Canada in a box. I have to use it sparingly so I don't end up sounding like a complete amateur Geogaddi ripoff. Haha. I'm actually using it on a track right now, though, and I'm getting some deep early Cocteau Twins vibes. It's really cool if used in moderation.

Seven posts from me enough for you to understand it is not cool? My first post was an appeal to your humanity in a time of great stress for everyone - but you are clearly not capable of any kind of compassion, understanding or forgiveness so, either way I am done here, it's beyond the pale!

Please - can you not just go and enjoy your new gear?

If you put this much energy into making music you could have written a track by now and not managed to drag me into a pointless argument in the internet... it is so sad!!

Conversely I WOULD trade with SteveLate - seems like a decent chap who had some problems, I might expect some delay but would be okay with that and give a little bit of leeway - it's not hard to see what is going on here!

You said your piece - got it the FIRST time!!

Or are you insisting that we are all stupid and need telling the SAME thing over and over again!!

It IS shitposting - you are behaving badly - I would not trade with you because of the way you are behaving - get it?

There is nothing "shitposting" about this. This thread is called "bad traders" not "people I don't like".

@farkas I took a look at your rig, and no joke about your wallet lol. Lots of great units in there though, I can see I want a lofi junky already! Take care yourself, and thank you again.

Always glad to help if I can. I have a similar background as you with many years of hardware synth and software experience, but I got a little disillusioned/uninspired with computer recording and stopped making music altogether quite a while back. More recently, I got super inspired by the possibilities of modular and dove back in headfirst. Best decision I ever made (though my wallet disagrees).
One of these days I'm going to have to get Akemie's Castle too. It sounds so good. My only connection to Max/MSP is I know that Autechre make some insane stuff with it. Maybe I'll find the beauty in software again someday.
Take care and have fun!

@farkas Thank you for a very thoughtful reply, and a nice looking, more focused rack, I think I learned a lot already! To the "taking it slow point," I'm not necessarily planning to buy everything in one go, but a few things are kind of early commits for me (e.g. I love FM synthesis and the Castle looks incredible) so I want to lean into them at the beginning and get some early bang for the buck as it were. Realistically, I think I'd probably buy about half of this upfront and go from there.

The only comment I have back on this build is that max has pretty incredible sequencing capabilities (not built in though, you have to build it all yourself) so I probably don't need the Varigate. That said, maybe it'd also be nice to just plug and play as it were and not worry about always needing a laptop for that piece of the puzzle. I'll reflect on that a bit and I'll dig in to the modules I'm less familiar with here as well.

Thank you again for your help!

I quickly put together a similar rack based on your ideas that makes a little more sense for me, personally. It's a bit more expensive, but it seems like it covers most of the bases you might want. The reason people will tell you to go slow is to make sure you get the best outcome for your money. I planned a rack that was extremely similar to yours for my first purchases, and I'm glad I slowed down a little because I only ended up buying one or two of my originally planned modules. My original plan would not have been very fun at all. At least spread out your purchases over a few months... You will start to realize what you really need as you add a few things to your case.
Pamela's New Workout will be the master clock for your rack. This is how you would sync everything together so everything is in time. I'm clueless about Max, but I'm guessing your master tempo would come from Max through the ES9 into the clock input on PNW so everything is linked together (the ES9 also has a headphone output, so the HPO would be redundant). I also have no idea about the sequencing capabilities of Max, so I threw a Varigate 4+ in there so you can do some sequencing standalone, away from the computer.
Batumi and Zadar give you a huge variety of modulation choices with the 3xMIA serving as attenverters. You will want some plumbing, so the Links and Kinks suit that purpose. The Dixie II+ is a more fully featured VCO, and the Polaris filter is more versatile than the Doepfer, giving you something smooth and something more aggressive/acid-y in a single filter. I rounded it out with a stereo effects processor and a Disting to give you a bunch of extra functions. Others will likely have some good recommendations, so think long and hard about their advice.
Have fun and good luck!

Quite frankly your incessant shit-posting is making you look like just as bad - please stop it!

Also I might add that Steve after fing up and ADMITTING fking up as stated above, still downvoted me... What a petty person. Would not recommend at all, even though he did send me what I bought. Seriously, if you cannot trade properly might as well just forget it.

I haven't done anything wrong here. I simply wanted clear communication, which is expected. Plus, its very shady looking you disappear one week exactly after people pay you. But before that you had no problem with communication. Naturally, this place is built mostly on trust. Do not f*ck with that trust.

@cowjj is an upstanding citizen and trusted seller! Buy things from them!

Hahaha, I modified the last patch and I'm still playing with it. STO as sound source instead. I've just ordered a couple of Z-Rails so I can add another row so its all going to come apart soon for a reorganise. I'm relatively confident I could recreate the patch even if the patch leads look a right mess which makes use of the Disting's Stereo Tape Delay.
I'm enjoying tapping off a couple of bands on the VCF too and patching to stereo then CV swings the Cut-off Frequency across the stereo field as it swings from BP to LP etc :)
Hopefully getting some money back from the Faulty Rackbrute case I returned so going to get a ADDAC 104 VC T-networks and a DNI Pro Dot drum sequencer for some light fluttery bleepy goodness to mingle with the ambient stuff.

To me this sounds like some serious A-class movie sound track music! I don't know how you do it... (please let me know how you recorded it, technical details, devices used, etcetera --> I am struggling to find a good way of recording, perhaps your way might give me ideas for my own recording)

Fantastic! Extremely well done, so subtle, so good, this is by far the best sound track I have heard here on Modular Grid so far. The harmony, how it all fits together... I am still not functioning well... difficulties to look at what I am writing with half wet-eyes... speechless...

I have to stop, sorry, you really got me there (in a good way), my most well-meant respect for this track!

Hi GarfieldModular

Oh my God. I wasn't expecting a feedback like yours for my Track. Thanks soooo much. I really appreciate it. You made my day!!

First let me tell you that I'm still just in my learning process in the Modular World. This Track is my second Patch with the Arbhar. It is quite simple. I recorded 4 different harmonically related Layers of Snippets from Songs of the Japanese Post-Rock Band Mono, pitched down with Arbhar. I recorded straight from my iPod. The Length Setting for the Grains is set Low. I used a very slow LFO (Ochd from Instruo/DivKid) to Scan back and forth through the Layer. For the Layer change between the 4 Layers I patched another slow LFO from Ochd into the Intellijel 1U Quadratt (Offset). Without the Offset Arbhar is changing through all the 6 Layers. With offsetting the LFO it changes slowly from Layer 1 to 4 and back. Maybe there's another Way to do this.

Arbhar is not boosting external Audio to Modular Level like the Morphagene does. I just ordered a Pico Input to boost external Audio :-)

The Russian Radio Chatter is taken from Youtube. It's real Chatter from Russian Troops Surrounded by Enemy Troops. That's why the Track is called Surrounded :-). I just sampled it into Morphagene.

Reverb for the Arbhar is from TipTop Audio ZDSP. Reverb for the Radio Chatter is from Happy Nerding FXAid.

Arbhar is such an amazing Module. The main reason I bought it is to mangle around with external Audio.

I recorded the Track with the 4ms WAV Recorder straight to SD Card. No external processing used.

Thanks again for your very kind words!!

Greetings from Switzerland :-)

Hello! I've been making music on and off for ~18 years, primarily with max/msp, but also with a few hardware synths, including a Korg MS-10, and I've decided recently to make the dive into Eurorack after wanting to for years. So, I've put together a first rack. It's a little intense and I'd love to get some feedback on the design and anything that might seem redundant or that might be missing. FWIW I've decided I'm on the Euro train, so while I understand the "go slow" advice, I will not be listening to it, warning in advance :p

I am primarily looking to make drone-y ambient-ish work (including microtonal if possible) and also dance, particularly acid/IDM, driven by my laptop running max, which I think I've prepped myself for with the rack in question. There are 3 synthesis techniques (pluck, akemie, Erica VCO => A-120) that I can leverage (ideally simultaneously with the ES-8), a ton of modulating capabilities with the LFOs and VCA matrix, some additional nice filtering with the Doepfer, and I've wanted a spring reverb for years so the A-199 rounds it out.

Having worked with max/msp for about 18 years now I mostly feel prepped with for a modular mindset, but there are a few points I'm unclear on, so questions:

1) I guess the biggest is, does the design broadly make sense? I feel like it does, but I'd love to hear from others.
2) I'm going to be honest, I'm not quite sure I 100% understand what the Pamela's New Workout does, but it seems critical for properly driving things from the ES-8. Am I understanding this properly? Are there better options that I'm missing?
3) Is a Stages and a Maths too much given that a Maths can also do envelope generation?
4) Is a stereo Mixer (the Erica V2) overkill in this setup? (this one is more subjective but I'm curious)
5) The HPO is added so I can listen in easily, but I think the ES-8 can route back into my laptop, so I'm wondering if maybe the HPO isn't really needed? (not that that's the real cost issue here, but still)
6) Just generally, any recommendations of modules that would fit here, things that are outright missing, or that might be superior to ones I've selected?

I know this is a pretty big rack for a starter and that I've got a lot to learn still, but I've worked with almost all these approaches in the past (just not in this format), and I'm really excited about the potential. Thank you for your help in finding the right answers here!

EDITED May 12th 2020, 05:14