First rack, need audio out help

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 Nashtyboi,

Welcome to ModularGrid :-)

Consider the 1U - Audio I/O module from Intellijel, that provides you proper audio input and output possibilities, then you don't have any worries there. The output you can then take to your mixer or directly to your audio interface (to DAW). If you want to use monitors/speakers (and not only headphones) then take a (small) mixer, you can then take the main output of your mixer to your monitors and one of the sub-outputs to the DAW.

For building a new rack (assuming you have no external synth gear already) please keep in mind a minimum classic setup of something like this: 2 VCOs, optional a ring mod, 2 filters, 2 EGs, 2 VCAs (1 lin + 1 exp) and don't forget to add at least one better two LFOs. For more details you also can have a look at a post between Metal_Serra and myself in the post called "First modular rack build" also here in "Racks"-forum where I go into more details, this is for most of the parts applicable here too :-)

Good luck with the planning and kind regards, Garfield Modular.

Alright thanks so much for the reply!

Looking at the module you suggested and definitely looks good, but would I actually need this line in? I have Ears to process any external sounds so I figured I wouldn't need it

Hi Nashtyboi,

Fair enough, then just get an audio output module, Beface Out v3 is quite nice; it has headphones output too, so you can ditch that headphones module then ;-)

Kind regards, Garfield.