The Best Modular Synthesisers of Summer 2023
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It’s time to choose the best modular synthesisers of summer 2023! Modular synthesis is the very definition of variety and unending possibility so finding something that stands out in this vast landscape is difficult. But here are five contenders that I feel warrant your attention.
The Best Modular Synthesisers of Summer 2023
I certainly can’t say that this list is definitive. The scale of new modules and modular systems is such that it will often depend entirely on what you’re looking for. So, my choices are not going to be the right product for everyone. In fact for some of my choices I’ve looked at their impressiveness in general rather than what would fit into my own system. I could easily come up with a list of 50 modules that have been fascinating this year, but the brief is to keep it to five. So, I humbly offer up these products as something a bit special.
Erica Synths Bullfrog
I will kick off my selection of the best modular synthesisers of summer 2023, with an interesting synthesizer that’s also directly designed as an educational tool. Education in synthesis is something that’s close to the heart of Erica Synths. The EDU DIY series it pioneered last year opened up the world of circuit design and electronics to many would-be synth engineers. With Bullfrog, Erica Synths is tackling the whole entry into modular synthesis and synthesis as a whole.
The Bullfrog synthesizer has been designed with Richie Hawtin to provide a synthesizer that can offer the first steps into modular, which at the same time is bendable and hackable in all sorts of interesting ways. It’s a simple enough architecture with a single oscillator, noise generator, lowpass filter, VCA and two looping envelope generators. There are also some funky extras like a delay circuit and sample & hold. It’s a solidly simple subtractive synth, much like a Moog Mother-32. However, unlike other desktop synths, Bullfrog is fully modular. There are no background connections or semi-modular normalisation, so to make it make sound you are going to have to patch it.
Bullfrog Synthesizer · Source: Erica Synths
What really makes the Bullfrog interesting is that the functionality is expandable with voice cards. They go into the slot at the top and add sampling, looping, sequencing, percussion and other possibilities. This includes blank cards that you can add components to in order to design your own modifications.
Bullfrog is an inspirational idea that looks fantastic, sounds fabulous and can teach you about synthesis while being a decent and fun machine in its own right. It comes with a fully fleshed-out manual that takes you through the machine and offers classroom resources. It’s also surprisingly big!
Squarp Hermod+
The original Hermod was an extraordinary breakthrough in modular utility and connection to MIDI and the wider parts of your studio. The Hermod+ tackles a lot of the things that were a bit difficult about all that. Mostly that’s to do with how far you had to dig to get through the interface and into the creativity. I have the original and I can tell you that it’s both beautifully versatile and helpful for any system but so tricky to use that I’d often end up looking for alternative, easier routes.
So has the Hermod+ done enough to conquer the interface and let the fabulous features come through? Yes, I believe it has. The basic form is the same with 8 channels of CV and Gate either translating MIDI or pouring out from internal generation, but now you’ve got an additional internal 8 tracks of MIDI. Each track offers polyphonic sequencing that can be MIDI, CV, automation or modulation.
Squarp Instruments Hermod+ · Source: Squarp Instruments
However, what’s important is how the interface has evolved. The screen is much larger, giving you a better overview of what’s going on and making editing much less frustrating. The 4×4 matrix pads give you a functional composing and editing interface, so it doesn’t feel like you’re fighting with the machine. It has a lot of great live performance depth with muting tracks, launching sequences, adding effects and so on. All of it can run your modular and your MIDI studio from the same box. It’s still deep and will have a learning curve, but if there was an award for the most improved product, the Hermod+ would take it, in my view.
- Squarp Instruments at Thomann
- Squarp website.
- More from Squarp.
Intellijel Cascadia
The Cascadia is quite an extraordinary thing to emerge from the Intellijel workshop. We are used to its solid, serious and sensible modular, but this is an exciting collection of modules spun into an impressively fun and creative desktop synthesizer.
Cascadia is semi-modular so you don’t have to patch it to enjoy, but by golly, it wants to be patched. It has 101 patch points, 34 sliders, 16 knobs, 28 switches, 5 buttons and 36 LEDs. It’s an analogue adventure playground featuring a pair of VCOs that push their waveforms through an array of East and West Coast possibilities. It has a stunningly versatile filter but also a wavefolder running in parallel. It has digital envelopes throwing out functions and loops as well as the more familiar shapes.
Intellijel Cascadia · Source: Intellijel
Running through the middle is a ridiculous range of utilities. It’s the sort of stuff that could revolutionise your existing rack. You get to play with adding, inverting, shifting, following, mixing, multiplying, ring modulating, expressing and dynamising through low pass gates.
Out the back are a lot of useful connections, including full MIDI control and effects send/return. Cascadia is very well made and fiercely stands alone while being open to anything you want to patch into it.
It’s a future classic that’s already becoming legendary and has deservedly earned its place on my list of the best modular synthesisers of summer 2023.
OXI Instruments Coral
It’s quite a daunting task to fit multiple polyphonic synthesizer engines into a multi-timbral product that makes any kind of sense in a modular environment. With Coral, OXI Instruments have done precisely that. Coral is like taking the Mutable Instrument Plaits and duplicating it within itself.
Coral has 8-voices of polyphony, which you can share between any of the 10 sound engines. Each voice has its own filter, VCA, modulation envelopes and effects settings. The engines include virtual analogue, waveshaping, FM, wavetable, detuned oscillators, strings and then a bunch of percussion, finishing up with a sample player. All of it sounds great and give you just enough knobs to tweak and change the tone and timbre.
OXI Instruments CORAL · Source: OXI Instruments
It’s naturally most comfortable being played by MIDI but to get on this list, it has to be useful in a CV situation. OXI has done some interesting work on voice allocation so that a monophonic CV input can take advantage of the polyphony with overlapping notes. You can also allocate different engines to voltage ranges so that you can play with different sounds from the one CV input.
While Coral sounds excellent, it’s really the thought that’s been put into the CV side that makes it shine. It transforms it from a competent sound source to a playable, patchable and modulatable machine. There’s already a new sound engine on the website, and more to come.
Blukac Endless Processor
Of all the interesting modules that could have been my number five choice, the Endless Processor from Blukac gets the nod through its sheer audacity. It’s the sort of module that could form the signature sound of your performance. It could radicalise what you thought you were doing and pull beauty and ambience out of noise and chaos.
The Endless Processor is an infinite sound sustainer machine. It captures a sound and spins it out over aeons. It resynthesises sounds to generate streams of everlasting tones that retain the character of what you were running through it. You can stack sounds, and layer them up to create harmonies, textures and drones. You can fade from one to another, add or replace them as the vibe takes you.
Source: blukac
It’s both strange and intoxicating, and there are two of them in the single module. In some ways, it’s a really simple module that has a singular function but what I find interesting is how that function pushes you off into adventures in modulation, sculpting and sound manipulation. May your drones and dreams be endless.
Do you agree?
There are so many more modules and modular synths I could have included in a longer list; the Intellijel Sealegs, the Crazy Chicken Favourite Avocado Toast, and the Worng Acronym just to name a few off the top of my head. But what appealed to you this year so far in terms of patchable electronics? Let us know in the comments.
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2 responses to “The Best Modular Synthesisers of Summer 2023”
Pittsburgh Modular deserves some recognition too, imo. They’ve made some great things lately on their own and with cre8.
I have a really wiered mixture of modules and the part of Behringer modules is growing. The fair prices help while expanding. And it sounds beautiful.