Doepfer reissue Dark Energy for Eurorack in the A-111-5 Mini Synthesizer Voice
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The A-111-5 is a modular version of the Doepfer desktop Dark Energy synthesizer and it’s back. It brings an entire monosynth into your Eurorack as a single semi-modular module.
A-111-5 Mini Synthesizer Voice
Essentially it’s an entire monophonic synthesizer in a module built in exactly the same way as the Dark Energy desktop synth. It has a nice fat VCO with triangle or sawtooth shapes and pulse width modulation. It has FM linked to LFO1 or the envelope and Phase Modulation linked to LFO2 or the envelope. Plenty of room for internal modulation. The filter is a 24dB low pass which can be tracked to the VCO. It has linear and exponential frequency modulation and manual resonance up to self-oscillation with 1v/oct tracking. You’ve then got two LFOs and an ADSR envelope for modulation and a VCA with some mixed scaling.
It’s a solid synthesizer with a lot of functionality packed into a small space. It was discontinued a few years ago and it’s great to see it return.
In terms of interacting with the rest of your modular system the A-111-5 is a little bit lacking. You have the barest amount of patch points giving you just enough access to run the thing. It would have been nice to reveal an extra bank of CV possibilities that the desktop version didn’t have. But when working within itself it’s a really decent monosynth.
The A-111-5 costs €300 or €350 for the black “Vintage” version. Doepfer suggest you could get four for building a polyphonic voice – nice idea!
More information
Video
An interesting video of 6 of these modules patched together.
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