Steve Grimley-Taylor (user Monobass on Muffwiggler) is flouting UK trade laws by refusing to refund my payment outside of the PayPal dispute i have had to open against his company Thonk Ltd (www.thonk.co.uk). This is all because he misread a comment i made in an e-mail and is now expecting an apology for a slight which wasn't even given. I am going to place this message in every forum i have access to, so that people can see that the company is operated by a person who doesn't have any concern for customer service, and believes it is ok to drag things out to cause distress and inconvenience to a repeat customer.

Do not buy from Thonk Ltd if you dislike these petty grievance practices and the way they disregard customer care.

Vpme.de Euclidean Circles
inkl. Six Switches
Top zustand.
Paypal und Versand, alles möglich .

Modules not shown:
Turing Machine: I still have not been able to find why I am not getting sufficient Voltage differences on the output between pulses.
Ripples: Starting to Build it! My first SMD project.

My case actually has one more row of 1U then shown.. I haven't bought the rails yet.
I have a Behringer Neutron, an Arturia Microfreak, and an new Dreadbox Typhon.

Modules I'd like to add:
I would like to add direct MIDI In and out.. I am waiting for the Intellijel uMIDI1u to make its way to my local Modular store (Patchwerks.com)

EDITED Aug 21st 2020, 08:35

Advice is advice, whether "PRO" or not. The key is in what you do with it. Audi 5000...

Hi Saramago,

You wrote: Sent a trigger from beatstep to kick, mult it to the doepfer envelope, envelope out to vca but no luck, still a lot of decay.

Hmm, are you splitting many signals from your multiple to the envelope? If yes, is that a buffered multiple? If not, then try a buffered multiple otherwise nothing comes to mind. Which envelope are you using, would that be the A-140(-1)? If yes, if you need a quick response then don't forget to put the switch on the A-140 to M (medium) or even H (high) speed, so the EG can follow your rhythm. Needless to say that the D(ecay) knob should be at 2 or less for your case. The VCA you are using, which one is that?

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

Hey guys, so this is my current eurorack case and im thinking what modules should i go next.

Was thinking about the Shapeshifter but everytime i look and see other opinions everyone says that is a very hard module and very complex . Is it that hard to learn ? I have some elektron boxes , so im a little used to menus . I was thinking ShapeShifter because it is exceeds at FM and wavetable but i allready have a Monomachine so dont want to overlap stuff

Other module could be the Beatbox, 16 channels of samples but i have to get another sequencer for it (have beatstep pro) it only has 8 trigger channels and the other sequence ones i use to sequence Braids, Dixie or Rings .

Thinking also about Warps from MI so i have other kinda of fx unit to mess around with my others VCOs mainly Dixie because is the module i use less

Was thinking also in Plonk, think is gonna bring some nice sound pallete i dont have

Have a 2hp kick , really like is sound but it has allways a lot of decay, can someone please explain to me with the modules i have how to patch so i can cut a lot of decay..? (Sent a trigger from beatstep to kick, mult it to the doepfer envelope, envelope out to vca but no luck, still a lot of decay)

Have some drums in my case but maybe gonna sell them because i allready have Elektron Rytm , so dont want more drums in my rack.

Other machines i have in my studio are Elektrons ,A4, Rytm, Octatrack and Monomachine. Also have a old Korg FM Synth and a MFB Dominion X that is a great synth with a very good sound for basses, leads etc... Has 3 oscillators and accepts cv gate triggers

My kind of music is house, sometimes more Techno or Microhouse

Love my modular modules but dont want to overlap things , so looking for modules that can give me other sound that i dont have

Now because the Coronavirus im not working, so its a great time to get plans and get things working together

Also im not a super modular guy now, have my modular around 1 year so your opinion is well apreciated !

Thanks guys, take care

@joaozinho - great seller, safe packaging and very fast delivery from abroad!

Thank u again! Like I understood, this System will make sense for the start into Eurorack. A second case for sequencing is comming then by the end of the year but first I need to explore all the modules and get them to know. Thanks for your help so far :)

Hey all, here is my 808 kick patch.. With Yarns triggering rené for classic 4/4 kick pattern, the gate out of rené is split with Links into triggers 1 and 2 on Maths. Polaris as a sine wave with cutoff all the way down and reso full up for the base of the sound, Polaris goes into a vca (gain 0, cv all the way up), this vca is controlled by out 1 on maths, also the fm1 input of Polaris on out 2. Maths is acting as an enveloppe with the cycle led off. Just mess around with the enveloppes parameters on Maths to taste. The VCA out is going trough Rosie, and Rosie to my soundcard. Hope you like this patch :D

You are waaay too kind!!

Anything stereo all comes from 3 things which various signals go through, mono signals go into --> Erica Pico DSP, 2HP Verb and Monsoon Clouds ==> Stereo out. I don't have any way to pan anything at the moment.

Thanks

EDITED Apr 6th 2020, 07:55

Hello Wishbonebrewery,

Yes! Yet another track from you, always nice to listen at :-) I sat in my "listening chair" and soon I had the feeling I was sitting inside a huge kind of old fashion clock. I was very intrigued by the sounds you produced. Nicely done!

One small remark, but it might be just me, did I hear it correctly that most of the sounds were either in the stereo-middle or on the left channel? I don't think I heard much on the right channel (other than the stereo-middle)?

I like your picture as well, those pictures getting nicer by each time and the number of patch cables are increasing too, isn't it? :-) I love that, your patches are getting more complicated and your compositions keep intriguing me. So, impatiently, I am waiting for your next track!

Thank you very much for sharing and good luck with your music, kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Sislte,

Then I am not only looking forward to your next track but to your next video about your most recent modular case too ;-)

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

That case has filled out quite a lot since that video was recorded. And I have another, hehe.

Thank you very much for listening and commenting. It means the world to me! And thanks for the tip about Pyrolator, I'll check it out.

"Trying out some Drone stuff, all 3 outputs on the Make Noise STO used into Mutable Veils which is also mixing in some 2hp Vowel and some fairly random samples played in via the Disting mk4, all that then goes into the Monsoon Clouds. Clouds is then Modulated via DPW Design AV-1 (Lovely bit of kit), then there is some subtle 2hp Pluck and Bell going on. Part of the modulation comes from the Noise Engineering Clep Diaz and part from the WMD / SSF ADSRVCA on looping mode kinda LFO-like. Pitch from the Pittsburgh Modular MicroSequence is messing with the samples in Disting."
Cheers

You're right, Links is a mult. And a clever one. But I would advise 1 Links plus 1 Buff Mult (for example), saving room in the rack, and getting up to 6 outputs with that one... It's a question of philosophy, variety of species ;)
Disting surely merits its nickname. But like a spare wheel, I hope you won't always need two.

Thanks for sharing ur thoughts. Is‘nt it possible to use Links as a Mult? I choose 2 Distings because everybody say its a swiss army knife and can do so many things, or am I wrong?

This is a cool setup, for sure. Just a few things I was thinking about as I looked at it: Are the two filters necessary, or would you find any value in replacing one of the filters with a wavefolder like the uFold II? You can patch into your MiniBrute filter if I remember correctly. Also, the Happy Nerding 3xMIA is a 6hp 6 channel mixer/attenuverter/offset/etc. that you may find useful. Finally, I've got a Phonogene (earlier version of the Morphagene) and it's kind of fun for sample manipulation, but if I had it to do over I would have just picked up a decent delay like the Mimeophon instead. Would save quite a bit of hp in a small case.
Just my thoughts, but you know what might work best for your sound and style. Good luck and have fun!

There's actually only one change I think I can suggest here: swap out the Pico Atten for a Pico A Mixer to submix your VCOs before sending them onto the filters. Losing a couple of attenuators is a decent tradeoff for being able to mix your oscillators and beef up your sound with detuning, etc. Plus, I couldn't find a similar set of attenuverters for that 3 hp space; those would've been preferable to the mixer, honestly, because you'd also get the ability to invert modulation signals in addition to rescaling their levels...and inverse mod signals can be quite useful, especially inverted envelopes.
-- Lugia

Yes, an attenuverter would be great. I've been looking around and it seems like Patching Panda has a dual 3hp attenuverter with additional sum and inverted sum outs.

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/patching-panda-flipanda

This could be a good replacement for the Pico Att, what do you think?

Regarding the power supply, I guess I could move the modules around and try to have the power suple next to a modulation source instead. Anyway, as I understand, having it like this could potentially add some noise into the audio path, but it would n0t damage the module itself, right?

Thanks for your reply Lugia, I really appreciate it.

What kind of music/sound are you going for?
-- farkas

Most of the time I'm going for kind of techno and downtempo. Drums are coming from an external drum machine, drumbrute impact, that would be clocked by the pamela's.

Modular drums can be pretty cool, but they can also be quiet expensive, so for now I guess I'll keep using the drum machine.

Two major points, IMHO:
- First, a lot of overlaps here (especially 2 Distings, 2 Links, Quad Vca plus Veils...)!
- Second, you will surely need at least some universal tools like: one buffered mult, one reverb, and a proper drum module (such as Basimilus, or ADDAC 104, see that video: )

I really enjoyed this content, production is really really good. I'm unsure if you wanted to make a piece of art but in my eyes, that is what you achieved, on top of the message itself. Well done, wish I had your talent for video, thanks for sharing !

Audio Damage Eos would be a treat... kinda rare though I know...

Hi Funbun,

Fair enough and I get your point. Good luck with your videos!

Kind regards, Garfield.

Yes, that's my AE Modular Starter 2. I have other modules on order, but this is the basic starter setup.

Well, my videos are about the stories I tell. The storytelling comes first. Everything serves the story. In this case those few shots of the Starter 2 gave the story all it needed. I'm trying to make true documentary films on my YouTube channel. Just sitting there looking at the modular doesn't serve the story.

EDITED Apr 5th 2020, 00:26

Hi Funbun,

Yes you are right, health care employees must be under huge stress now, so it's nice of you are making a video with music for them.

The modular system in your video, is that your AE Modular system? Looks pretty nice and neat :-) I wouldn't have mind to see a bit more of that in one of your videos!

Kind regards, Garfield.

Hi Sislte,

Thanks for sharing your music and your video. I liked your video, gives a nice overview of your modular system :-)

I like the Crenulated Orian, nice track! Messy? I feel it's all right, it's very creative. The creativity you put in your music is lovely to listen at. Unglued? Perhaps at one or two spots but it doesn't really disturb me as a listener. I took the efforts to sit in my "listening chair" and I was swinging in my chair on your music, so yeah, I liked it! :-)

Also those "Plaits random sounds" were nice and enjoyable to listen at. Overall I feel this is a good piece of music and I will be honest with you, I am jealous :-) Jealous that you can make music that currently I wouldn't be able to create/make it. So keep up the good work and I look forward in hearing your next track! :-)

Oh yes, by the way, this track (especially the, roughly, first half of it) reminded me a bit of the music of Pyrolator, for example the Wunderland album. So, nicely done!

Kind regards, Garfield Modular.

Hi,

I talked with AL Joelson from Cre8audio about the NiftyCase and NiftyBUNDLE. I saw these at the NAMM show and thought the build quality was great. I'm also considering it as a first case for myself.

If you are interested, here's my article on it https://synthtalk.net/articles/the-cre8audio-niftycase-with-al-joelson?=mg

Thank u so much for your reply! Helped me a lot! Why I have Plaits? lol Plaits was my first Oszilator and I dont really like it as well. Feeling like I clickt trough Presets all the time.

Wogglebug- u a right again! Though about selling it, but sumetime i need a little Woggle in my Patches. Marbles is a bit more organized.

Thank you for your opinion and tips u gave!

Perfect module, I have two!! This module has two types of saturation, one mode awesome for drums (I love it) another for raw sequences (very interesting effect).
Yeah we have M/S it takes me to professional equipment.

EDITED Apr 4th 2020, 14:09

Looks like a solid mutable inspired rack!

I personally don't think you'd need Plaits AND TelHarmonic -- having had both, I would go with TelHarmonic. That's not to say that they are the same, they certainly aren't. However I personally found Plaits to be kind of boring and not something I reached for. One thing I like about Make Noise is that they break it out where you have control over everything. Plaits is nice if you want to have Gameboy Sounds, but otherwise... meh...

Regarding Mutable, I might also suggest checking out some of the 3rd party builds that shrink the modules down to 8hp. Rings and Tides could both be found in 8HP and remain just and functional and accessible.

You have a Wogglebug and so I don't think you'd need Marbles, unless you really want staged out random voltages, which is of course fine if that's what you're going for. You wont need two Links... Chances are you wont even need one. I would go for Mults instead.

Not sure why you have 2 quad VCA's, again I'd go with Intellijel over Mutable -- better build quality IMHO.

That all being said: At the end of the day it's your rack! You might have a vision / sound in your head and based on who you are into, you might have insight into why you built the way you did! When I started, I based my rack on what was already existing -- Verbos Performance, Make Noise Shared Systems, and PGH Modular Systems. Very linear in patching, VCO into Filter, into VCA, Envelope, Delay / Reverb, out, before I started doing the gymnastics! And then it was a matter of figuring out which VCO, Filter, VCA I liked, fit and could acquire! Modular is largely about the journey, and sometimes we forget that there is a destination -- you'll get there! I can also promise you that what you are starting on right now... while almost be nothing like what you end up with!

Happy Patching!

Finally i set up my first little rack and I want to know what you are thinking about it! My Genre is minimal Techno and ambient stuff. I also own 2 Drummachines, Behringer Model D, Octatrack and MPC Live.

Actually Iam planing a second Rack for Sequencing and a few more Effects. Anyway. What do you think about my Rack right now? Is it usable for what I want to do with it? Did I forgot something important to use the Modules?

Thank you so much for your help! Stay healthy! :-)

One of my favorites: powerful, versatile, intuitive. My modular brain in many patches. Complemented by Bloom, a perfect duo.

Thanks so much! I definitely understand its a very long process and journey I'm willing to embark on and i'll continue to ask myself Those questions. Im ready for the years of turning knobs and bleeps and bloops, gotta start somewhere!

There's actually only one change I think I can suggest here: swap out the Pico Atten for a Pico A Mixer to submix your VCOs before sending them onto the filters. Losing a couple of attenuators is a decent tradeoff for being able to mix your oscillators and beef up your sound with detuning, etc. Plus, I couldn't find a similar set of attenuverters for that 3 hp space; those would've been preferable to the mixer, honestly, because you'd also get the ability to invert modulation signals in addition to rescaling their levels...and inverse mod signals can be quite useful, especially inverted envelopes.

The other irksome part here is the presence of the power supply module right next to an audio module. Normally, that's something of a no-no due to the potential of noise creeping into the audio chain due to close proximity to a noisy element of the system. You'd actually want that next to something that's a modulation generator, utility (non-audio) module, etc, but right now it looks like there's no recourse for this.

My initial advice here would be to proceed SLOWLY. The process of creating a modular system isn't simple, and you can't distill everything down to a few seemingly-apparent choices and slap something together off the top of your head. If you spend two weeks on MG and toss together a single build and say "that's that!"...well, that's what I would call a "hideous mistake".

There are two things you MUST know before proceeding down this long and expensive rabbithole:

1) Your own work. What about it suggests to you that you need a bespoke device to take it to the next level? IS this a proper course of action, or are you just following hype? Are there specific elements that a modular system would bring to what you do that you feel are necessary, given the expense and technical requirements? Those (and more!) are all questions you need to be asking yourself before proceeding here.

2) Synthesis. Do you know your synth architecture "basics"? As in, what HAS TO be there, as opposed to what might wind up being an expensive space-waster. Or moreso, what do you have to have to make a modular work on its most basic levels...while leaving stylistic considerations out of things at this point. That's important, because the best way to proceed here is to build a basic system, then start augmenting it. Plus, when doing this, OVERSIZE your rack selection...because the next step is to take the unworkable mess that results and pare it back down once more to arrive at something more workable. Remember: you can always shrink or enlarge your MG racks, but it's not so easy to do that if you've gone all in on hardware before getting sorted on here. And that "do/enhance/undo/repeat" method, done again and again, is how you whittle down 7000+ module choices (in Eurorack alone!) to a set that YOU can work with perfectly. But it's NOT an instant gratification exercise; expect to fiddle with MG builds for potentially months before the "real deal" pops up on your screen, the one that says "OK...whip out the plastic!".

So, it's not a simple process to create something like this, which is one reason that I and others here often dissuade starting users from bonking around in the Grid for a couple of days and then declaring that they've found "IT". Because, quite often, that "IT" is aptly-described by that term...as the result isn't what you'd exactly call a "synthesizer". Take your time, ask questions, explore, and again, take your time. It may have taken you (like many of us here) years or even decades to develop your craft; why should the process of creating an instrument that's ALSO "you" take a few days?

Huh, makes sense. I didn't think that it'd automatically adjust levels.

Hello world! Recently dove into the deep end of modular synthesis and am looking for done advice as far as what are the best and/or affordable modules to start exploring.

I’m thinking of getting Doepfer A-100LC6sw case to start off with as ii was recommended a bigger case is better to start with. As far as modules people mostly recommended doepfer modules as well. Im looking to create ambient and glitchy type soundscapes with my system so i want modules that would give me some weird sounds. It was also recommended to look into building modules myself but i don.t know too much about reading schematics.

Exited to be a part of the modular world !

My music:
Sadnoise on spotify

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/femifleming_/

What kind of music/sound are you going for?

So This is my current rack, which I'm using with an Arturia Minibrute 2S.

So far so good. I intend to get rid of the Minibrute at some point and replace it with some more modules, I'ven been trying different options and I came up with this one that I think would work fine for me.

Would this rack be any good?

I know a larger rack would be much better, but I already own the Rackbrute and I plan to keep using it until I run out of space. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'll need to get a second rack if keep going down the Eurorack rabbit hole.

When you press multiple pads, cellz starts arpeggiating between the notes.
I can't find any documentation on whether the speed of this arpeggio can be clocked.
Yes, the speed can be set with the left knob, but can it be clocked?

You're not going to be bored, there are tons of modules here to get to know and explore. I would suggest (as many others before me have) taking your sweet time, as your goals are going to change over time—modular does this to you, and before you know it you'll be aching for utilities, mixers, quantizers (you might want to keep Braids for this), and all kinds of things that keep the voltage flowing in interesting ways.

Alright Devices Zzzorb in Black and Gold would be lovely

Best stereo mixer in eurorack. No noise, clean design, nice knobs. Make knob.farm rich!

...it's an exceptionally rare case where some filthy-rich fruitcake hoards Trent Reznor/Richard D. James quantities of truly exquisite gear and can't/won't do anything with it. In the majority of cases, people are spending their own money on readily-available equipment. Equipment they sell at a discounted price to YOU if/when they realize they're not making it as Prurient 2.0 or whatever. This is truly a non-issue.
-- jingram

Dunno about that "non-issue" part. Sure, others' mistakes might fuel the used module market. But at the same time, I would be a bit nervous about buying a used module from someone who got it because "it looks cool" and NOT because of what it does, what it can do with other modules in a build, and so on. What if "I never could get the sound I wanted out of it" actually turns out to be "I plugged the ribbon into an unkeyed header backwards and hopefully you won't notice that when you buy it"? Definitely seems like a latent issue to me.

I'm not trying to put a stop to wackjobs like the Swiss Guy With Too Much Damn Money above, though...although, from experience, they're A LOT MORE common than one might think. There's still a lot of synths hiding in stashes in Japan, for example, because you had buyers over there scooping up gear from all over when their economy was still on a roll, and then squirreling it away in climate-controlled vaults and the like back in the 1990s. Much of that hasn't seen the light of day since. If the majority of it still works and isn't dead due to component degradation, I'd be surprised. "Synth-flippers" are another flavor of synth-hoarders, also...they go around scooping up anything that they think they might be able to curbstone, but in the process these types wind up stashing away a lot of gear that might've been usable for a musician...but which they see as "parts hosts", scrapyarding literally tons of devices. Now, yes, there NEEDS to be SOME of that going on...but the scale to which I've seen in several cases (a couple of them quite recent, I note), there's no real love for the instruments there, as they just get dumped all over the place and often never see any use or, sometimes, never even get broken down for parts. But again, you can't "fix" that...it's shitty habitual business practices at work, and I've seen that particular set of practices more times than I'd care to count since Mark Vail's effin' book wrecked the used market in the mid-1990s.

What I am trying to rein in, though, is people jumping into this and then finding out that they'd mistakenly leapt into the "1,000 feet" end of the pool, with a lot of general frustration following shortly afterward. That's not good for music, period. Plus, the systems bought in that way tend to NOT go up on the market, because the original purchaser is...well, sort of embarrassed, as a rule. So that doesn't supply much of a backflow into the used market, either.

How would one drop levels down or raise them up with the 4I/O? I'm not seeing any knobs to adjust levels like on some of the eurorack pedal interfaces.
-- Thatdummy

It doesn't use them. Instead, the 4I/O is a bit more "automatic"; all voltages are constrained to the AE's "operating window" of 0 - +5V. For additional gain inside the AE environment, you'd then use the 2SIGNALAMP to get more level, and on the "outside" you'd just need to turn down your effects' gain, since the voltage difference between the AE standard and typical line level isn't as potentially extreme as in other modular formats. See here for more: http://wiki.aemodular.com/pmwiki.php/AeManual/4IO

But where does "using gear 'incorrectly'" end and "using gear in a way I don't like, or under conditions I don't like, or to create sounds/styles I don't like" begin? How big a problem is someone with their Altoids tin shaker-thru-DigiTech Death Metal harsh noise project, really, even when they branch out to buying boutique equipment?

It makes no sense to labor that particular point as it's an exceptionally rare case where some filthy-rich fruitcake hoards Trent Reznor/Richard D. James quantities of truly exquisite gear and can't/won't do anything with it. In the majority of cases, people are spending their own money on readily-available equipment. Equipment they sell at a discounted price to YOU if/when they realize they're not making it as Prurient 2.0 or whatever. This is truly a non-issue.

The one exception, perhaps, being common, "overnight cult successes", most of which are purely hype-based gimmicks to begin with (Sitar Swami, anyone?). And we have only the Internet Buzz (Bull) Machine to thank for that.

Yea, I was just thinking the USB module could be used to power the pedals that would then interface with a different module. How would one drop levels down or raise them up with the 4I/O? I'm not seeing any knobs to adjust levels like on some of the eurorack pedal interfaces.

Hey. Not sure if you're still thinking about doing this or not, but you should know about Kong.
https://bastl-instruments.com/eurorack/modules/kong
"Kong amplifies the drumpad signal and also converts it to trigger and velocity CV signals"
So this would get 2 drums into the modular environment without much hassle! from there you can do whatever your heart desires with those signals.
All in just 5hp.
Imma get one forsure.

The USB module is just a power connection for things like controllers, etc that can be powered over USB. It doesn't pass any signals.

The problem with interfacing AE to anything else is that the AE likes to see a very specific range of incoming voltages, namely 0 - +5V...and this goes for ALL incoming signals, whether they're CV, mod, trigger, gate, or audio. This means that you either have to use a buffering module such as the AE 4I/O or a Soundmachines Nanobridge to constrain and offset signals properly. Plus, you have to establish a groundplane between the AE and other devices, sort of the same thing that's needed with a banana-patcher such as the Kilpatrick Phenol, Serge format gear, et al. Without that last detail, you won't have a signal return and your connections between the AE and whatever it's hooked to won't happen.

Actual Buchla format (as in their split-signal patching method, which separates CV/mod/clocking from audio) would be doable...but again, buffering would be necessary, and in this case you'd be dealing with two different buffering methods: one for the CV banana jacks, the other for the 3.5mm audio lines. Messy but possible.

As for pedals, sure...you'd just use a 4I/O to drop your levels for the pedal's input, then raise them back up to synth levels when they go back to the AE.

A better Panel Selector

Every click on the tiny arrows in the Panel Selector now actually shows a new, different panel version.

In the former approach the system just rotated through every version change of a module data entry, no matter if only a text was changed or in fact a new image was uploaded.