Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms SV-1 Blackbox - The ideal portable modular synth?

11 Aug 2016 by Jef |

5,0 / 5,0 | Approximate reading time: 2 Minutes

Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms SV-1 Blackbox · Source: http://www.lifeformsmodular.com/blackbox

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The Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms SV-1 Blackbox is a new portable modular synth with lots of very useful features all crammed into a neat package. The SV-1 aims to include everything you need in one unit.

Clean Layout

The Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms SV-1 Blackbox is in Eurorack dimensions, so you’ll find everything you will probably require is included. I think the company have done a good job with the whole layout and design of the synth. It looks clearly laid out from the pictures on their website and aesthetically I think it looks really nice.

Specs

The company is very proud of their Pittsburgh Modular Filter, and they state that the SV-1’s ADSR is quite ‘snappy.’ The SV-1 has full MIDI spec and of course handle CV as well, and get both digital and analogue modulation. You get 53 patch points and 21 knobs to play with, so there’s lots of possibilities here.

Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms SV-1 black box features:

Two oscillators
Modulation: LFO and envelope generator (ADSR)
Tools section (two sub-oscillators, noise generator and Sample & Hold)
Mixer
Pittsburgh Modular Filter
VCA
Two unbuffered Audio or CV Splitter
Line level and headphone output

You also get an arpeggiator and tap temp for the internal clock. Also, the SV-1 can sync to external MIDI clock and be controlled by CC messages, allowing you to assign a controller to parameters within the synth.

Neat

This seems a really neat little synth with many useful features for knob tweakers and synth fans. Of course, you will probably need to know some basic synthesis to get the most out of the SV-1, but I think even if you aren’t a huge synth geek then it still looks like a good buy, as it is nicely laid out.

The demo video below explains in more detail what is capable with the SV-1.

RRP USD $699 plus shipping and taxes

Pittsburgh Modular Lifeforms SV-1 specifications

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=110&v=qjIpzgVjoA8