Midweek Modular: Acid filters, punchy mutes and CV generators
5,0 / 5,0 | 
This week, we get some juicy filtering from ADVA, Patching Panda gets percussive with Punch MG, and Larix Electro generates CV with Ritournelle modules.
It was Knobcon over the weekend in Chicagoland, and it all seemed really chilled. There was none of the news frenzy that we tend to get with Superbooth and other shows. But that was also a bit frustrating as many new things were being talked about, but very little hard evidence emerged. However, there were a few bits that we covered.
Pet Rock, a module controlled by the moon, definitely made an impact. There are three new mixers, one from Noise Engineering that we saw last week, one from 1010music, which has Euroracked its Bluebox digital mixer, and one from BoredBrain that’s solidly analogue. The most intriguing module of them all was the Meta Module from 4MS which can run virtual Eurorack modules taken from VCV Rack. So, a virtual modular within your modular. It’s also really interesting to see that Dreadbox has reissued the Hypnosis effects box as a semi-modular Eurorack module and simple DIY kit. Very much like the Dysphonia and Dysmetria.
Midweek Modular
Otherwise, here are a few more glowing embers from the beach barbeque of modular synthesis.
Plum Audio ADVA
ADVA is a massively multimode filter with some rather nice extras. It has seven modes to play with, starting with a 6dB Low pass, winding up to 24dB, then entertaining a couple of Bandpass modes and finally, a 12dB High Pass. It has a distortion circuit on both the input and the output, so you can drive your way in or fatten out the self-oscillating tones as it leaves. It also has an internal noise generator and a VCA. So, it has everything you need for a nice fat filter in one compact module.
It’s also running a digital control and routing system. You can modulate between filter modes with CV and use the slightly weird two-headed knobs to control different things.
I’ve been looking for a compact and juicy filter to fit into a smaller case, and this could be it, particularly as it comes in 3U and 1U options, which could be very handy.
- Plum Audio website.
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Patching Panda Punch MG
This feels like a mashup between the Baslt Instruments Aikido, Befaco Percall and one of the many gaters from Paratek. Punch MG blends a VCA, decay envelopes and mutes but groups them and automates them so it can produce all sorts of dynamic percussive sounds. So, you stick waveforms into the top and then use triggers to fire the decay envelope set by the Time sliders.
My understanding of the mute groups is that you can tie channels together so that if it gets a trigger from either, then they interact with each other in interesting ways. It’s a bit like a choke system where rhythms can emerge from one trigger, stopping the sound of another channel. You can even run two modules together for 8 channels of intertwined muting action.
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Larix Electro
Fresh out of France comes Larix Electro with a fist full of new modules. There are a couple that come under the Ritournelle name, which look very interesting indeed.
The first is the Ritournelle CV Generator. It’s a compact 16-step CV sequence generator with CV-controlled parameters. The sequences are generated through the method of Sample & Hold. There’s some complicated stuff going on to keep the content predictable within the context of a changeable tempo. But as far as I can tell, you can modulate the sequence length, spread of values, root note and complexity. You can also loop something you like. It feels a bit like a Turing machine.
You can add two extenders to the CV Generator. The Attv-4 adds four attenuators to the CV inputs, and Shift-R adds 8 trigger outputs, which somehow pull triggers from the sequence.
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The other is the Ritournelle TRIG Generator. Unsurprisingly, this generates trigger sequences. It has up to 8 steps and uses Euclidean and Binary or Gray rhythms. Again, you can push it around using CV control.
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These are both quite fascinating.
- Larix Electro website.
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