Midweek Modular: Apollo spaceships, Anti zombie detection and clones
3,3 / 5,0 | 
This week we get the control panel pulled from a Battlestar Viper, the detection of warm bodies and Mutable Instruments modules are getting into everything.
We also saw The Vulcan from Hampshire Electronics. A compact 8-voice analogue synthesizer in Eurorack form. It got a lot of comments about the lack of CV patch points; check it out here.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original Paperface modular synthesizer Serge Tcherepnin has redesigned and updated the panels to give us the extraordinary Paperface 2.0. Read more about that here.
Midweek Modular
Bits and bobs of modular that caught my eye this week in the run-up to Christmas. Maybe there’s a last-minute gift you can buy for yourself in this lot.
Tronix Audio Apollo
Tronix Audio are calling it a Spaceship control unit and it certainly looks the part. In reality, it’s some kind of CV and audio signal processing machine. It can mix, bend and shift voltages, it can amplify, attenuate, do maths and tilt stuff.
It’s suggested that this is for fun and experimentation and that you shouldn’t take the precision of the displays too seriously. Sounds like my kind of thing! Looks like a fun thing to have in your rack.
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Music Thing Modular Move
From the minds of Music Thing comes a motion sensor. Move will translate the movement of warm bodies into some switch-flipping action. It flips the connected inputs and outputs either in response to the start of movement or when the movement stops. It detects, pauses and then does stuff. Designer Tom Whitwell says that it’s to encourage you to sit still and listen because if you move, when it’s in Stop mode, it will cut the output.
Confused? Yes, me too, but Tom makes fabulous things and should never be underestimated. Maybe it’s the perfect way to detect zombies?
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Expert Sleepers Disting EX Update
Fancy a few more sounds in your Disting EX? Well, how about four independent Mutable Instrument Braids? Each one features algorithmic models covering FM, wavetable, noise, waveguide synthesis, physical modelling and more. Each instance of the Braids can be run simultaneously and gets its own output on the Disting EX, although the inputs are shared. It also has full MIDI control
That’s totally extraordinary and puts that little screen to good use.
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The firmware update is available on the Expert Sleepers website.
- More from Expert Sleepers.
After Later Audio Quarks and Pixie
After Later Audio continues their homage to Mutable Instruments by releasing a clone of the Elements Modal synthesizer and Plaits macro oscillator.
Quarks takes on the complexity of physical modelling synthesis via the modal synthesis of Elements. It’s identical to the original and so features three generators for bowing, blowing and percussive noises with CV controllable exciter and resonator parameters. While it may have the sounds and synthesis, After Later Audio has decided to go for a very functional look which is not a patch on Mutable Instruments’ beautiful design work.
After Later Audio Quarks and Pixie
Pixie, on the other hand, has a better vibe to it and takes on the multiple algorithms of Eurorack’s favourite digital oscillator. I like the front panel printing that gives labels to the models. Unfortunately, these were made before the new bank that Emilie Gillet put out a couple of weeks ago. However, the new firmware will work fine with Pixie, so it can have all the DX7 goodness.
I’m not sure why the Quarks don’t follow the design of the other Mutable Instrument Clones (MIC) on the website. Maybe I’m missing something.
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One response to “Midweek Modular: Apollo spaceships, Anti zombie detection and clones”
I could be mistaken but I think Quarks isn’t part of the MIC collection cos it’s not a 1:1 clone, it’s 22HP opposed to Elements 34. Very noice tho.