Any suggestion for layout here or missing vidal modules.. I've layed it out into 6 voices and drums with modulation close by.. cable management seems to be an issue.
Thanks in advance
Radar
Hi Radar. What kind of music are you doing? Do you have any external gear?
Edit: Here's a link to the rack instead of a pic.
Hi, I'm leaning towards melodic ambient electro. I have a RD-8 close by and a lot of other synths, but I'm trying to keep the modular isolated as a standalone multi voice instrument..
outboard mixing and effects are patched so modular voices can sent to their own own channels outside of the rack. with sends to a timefactor and space, with a analog heat on the master bus..
Nerdseq handles voicing and clock source. when I say handle I mean I'm still new to the nerdseq.. 😂
I think you've already pinpointed the concern I would have with this rack: the layout and cable management.
I would probably group this by function, i.e. all oscillators/sound modules together at the top, then filters and effects, then modulation, and all sequencing and mixing at the bottom, with sub-mixers and mults interspersed throughout.
Your rack may be a little voice heavy, but unless you feel like you could use more VCAs or a 3xMIA or something like that, I don't see much trouble with your module choices.
Have fun and good luck!
Thanks for the words.. actually maybe I thin on VCAs... I was intending to use plaits and braids internal VCA, as with the airstreamer milky way, Javelin, Mogue, carbon which leaves the quad vca available for everything else.
I have purposely built separate voices to keep me disciplined somewhat, so that I stick to certain voice structures and combinations.. at least until I get familiar with everything..
I also had to move modular around as the two arturia PSUs are limited.. this arrangement does balance the loads so no individual bus is running at more than 80%..
The two rack brutes mounted together does leave a handy gap between the top and bottom sections where I can route cables from the lower deck around the back to the top sections..
I think i bought to much to be honest so I may test this out and in future reduce the HP count..
Thanks again..
OK, now...a simple question: If I were using this system and I wanted to invert, say, an envelope. Not an uncommon thing; you see this quite a bit with EGs for VCFs, like on my Jupe-6. Soooooooo...where are the attenuverters? Yeah, I know...attenuators and the like are dull and boring and they've not got all the blinky lights and crap, but try using the "big stuff" without them and you'll discover the exercise in frustration that's waiting for you here.
Also, the idea of having SIX voices AND percussion in a system this small is...uhm...ambitious, but in a build this size, that's a REALLY BAD idea, since you're either going to have to cut corners (and this is where a lot of new users majorly screw up) and remove important things, or do the sensible thing and realize that you simply shouldn't try to put that much in just 352 hp.
I would suggest losing ALL percussion in here, because it's far cheaper and, in truth, less frustrating to simply use a standalone drum machine that's locked to a central clock. That'll open some space. Then I think you might want to swear off that six-voice architecture; sure, you COULD do that, but your likely results will either result in six badly-implemented voices, or...well, something like this, where there's very few "helper" modules even though the voices are well done. You're simply going to have to scale this back. Also...
"I have purposely built separate voices to keep me disciplined somewhat, so that I stick to certain voice structures and combinations.. at least until I get familiar with everything.."
A better method to learn your system would be to put it together gradually...after, of course, correcting what's here already. By slowly building up from a very basic module set to the intended goal, you'll gain a much better appreciation for the instrument and also, you'll realize that there's not exactly such a thing as a "voice" in modular in the first place. It's not fixed in that way...but it's very open-ended, so if you wanted it to all be ONE "voice", you could do that. Moreso, you can have different "voices" interacting and affecting each other, as you'd find in generative works.
One last thing about VCAs, also...there's TWO types. The ones you usually see as "add-ons" in modules tend to be basic linear VCAs...but we don't perceive apparent loudness as a linear function. The decibel scale is actually logarithmic...works in powers of 10 so that +10dB is a doubling of the apparent loudness, which is how you get to the Threshold of Pain so quickly. Anyway, those linear VCAs don't work like our hearing apparatus, but EXPONENTIAL ones actually do behave in ways that our hearing recognizes as changes in amplitude that one would find with acoustic instruments. Hence the little per-channel "shape" knobs on Intellijel's and Mutable's quad VCA modules, as well as any other derivation of Mutable's Veils. If you're using the VCA for modulation or early in the signal path, you'd turn that to linear. But for audio, you've got the exponential VCAs, so you turn that "shape" knob to the other setting. But the real fun is in the fact that you can change their behavior to cause the VCA to do something that shouldn't happen in acoustic instruments, or you can have one of those VCAs handling modulation (linear) and right next to it, two handling a stereo audio feed (exponential). And sure, you could get some module that has all sorts of extras in them like that...but can you REALLY control all parts of it, or has something been "kludged" so that you can't...but it makes things "simpler" (and ultimately, it doesn't). Keep this in mind when reworking this.
Thanks for your lengthy reply.. there is definitely a sense of "kludged" going here..
I'm a synth nerd and I guess I have attempted to treat modular in the same linear vain.. Ocs, filter, VAC, ENV, LFO way..
And as a newbie to the unbound do what you like world of eurorack I just have jumped in eyes close and bought all the modules that tickled my fancy..
I agree.. about the percussion.. I just chucked in grids and tiptop hats for good measure.. my A4, MD, OT, RD-8, RD-6, Volca Drum, and my other Noise Engineering BIA, BI rack have drums well covered.. one of my original rules was not to do drums in eurorack.. it's expensive and better sourced else where..that said the nerdseq has dirty 8bit samples, 2hp has a perc Chan, and disting has two... so with samples chugging around I figure I could use this racks for all in one..
still need to mod the RD8\6 for trigs.... nerdseq can handle a lot of outs with the expanders..
but being modular.. I kinda wanted to keep it all faithful..
With regards to the VCA linear exponential situation, definitely that need to be experimented with..
that said.. Im probably looking for choppy gated tunes.. and hence sort trig spikes into sources may work out ok..
Note.. this is a real rig.. all modules exist.. and the HP limited for space and logistic reasons...
I really am happy I posted this question as I have no one to bounce ideas of.. other than YouTube examples.... but I do live in the same town as nonlinear circuits..
Soooooooo...where are the attenuverters? Yeah, I know...attenuators and the like are dull and boring and they've not got all the blinky lights and crap, but try using the "big stuff" without them and you'll discover the exercise in frustration that's waiting for you here.
-- Lugia
To be fair, Maths can serve as attenuverters, though you then get into the whole "but now you can't use all the neat functions Maths can do" argument. I always recommend the Happy Nerding 3xMIA for any and all racks regardless of size. Such a handy module.
Warm Star's The Bends is also a handy but overlooked module for CV controlled attenuverting and matrix mixing.
