Midweek Modular: Chaos, Euphoria and stereo oscillations
4,0 / 5,0 | 
As Make Noise revealed its stereo oscillator, CubuSynth gave us Chaos, and ST Modular took on some west coast Euphoria. But what other things of modular interest emerged this week?
Make Noise has been quiet, so we expected a big splash from their first module in ages. The XPO was more of a mild splash, a welcome, refreshing plop of a stereo VCO with useful wavefolding and logical connections to the QPAS and X-PAN stereo modules. Solid, rather than stunning. Read more about the XPO here.
On the other hand, ST Modular wowed us with this fully formed semi-modular Euphoria synthesizer. Inspired by the Buchla Music Easel and looking wonderfully dark and smart, it features 14 modules and lots of slider control. The only downside is that it’s only available as a quite intensive DIY project. Read more about it here.
CubuSynth offered up a dual analogue VCO called Engine. It runs as two independent oscillators ready for complex modulations, but I liked the way it emphasised more than the clanging of combative FM. The Chaos feature would introduce randomness to various elements, and you could link the VCOs to play in perfect unison. Read more about it here.
Midweek Modular Bits and pieces
Here are a few more bits and pieces of modular news and coolness that I’m pleased to shine a light on for this week’s Midweek Modular.
Fully Wired Electronics Dual Passive Attenuator
Fully Wired is a newcomer to releasing modules but not to the business of making them. Head modular person Dan has been building modules for Stochastic Instruments to help them through the backlog of SIG orders. He has plans for a whole series of modules, but the first one to emerge is the unassuming Dual Passive Attenuator or DPA.
Attentuators are almost every module designer’s first crack at the game. But the DPA does have a little sprinkling of magic sauce to make its existence worthwhile. Dan has included a switch to select either a linear or logarithmic response for each channel. Linear is preferred for control voltages, and Logarithmic is better for audio signals, which immediately makes the DPA more versatile than most. The two channels are also normalised, so anything you put into channel 1 will also come out of channel 2. Useful stuff.
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DPA is 4HP, passive and includes two knurlies for £30.
- Fully Wired Electronics website.
Arcaico tease a new module
Arcaico tells us that they’re working on a spectacular trailer for their next new module. It will feature stop-motion animation, which sounds like a lot of work but also looks pretty fabulous. The module in question can be seen in the teaser, but it’s difficult to make out the details. However, it looks a lot like s complex dual oscillator to me. What do you think?
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- Arcaico website.
Weston Precision Audio 2V2 Dual Analog Oscillator
Dual VCOs are the thing of the moment, whether in stereo or complex configurations. Weston has a new one coming out called the 2V2. It operates as two independent VCOs but with some interconnections that increase the fun and/or complexity.
Each VCO can handle exponential or through-hole linear FM for those clangy and complex tones and even has a separate input for enveloped modulations. Alternatively, switch into dual oscillator mode and enjoy a bit of hard or soft sync or free running detuning. It doesn’t have to be complex.
Weston 2V2
The 2V2 should be available any time now for €274.
- Weston Precision Audio website.
Superbooth Modular Synthesizer Ensemble
One of the things that Superbooth likes to do is gather together a bunch of modular musicians into a Modular Synthesizer Ensemble. I know, you can imagine the sort of noise and nightmare that would produce! But wait, Superbooth Berlin has just released a short glimpse of the Ensemble in action, and it’s actually really good. I hope they release a lot more.
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- Weston 2V2: Weston
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