TubularCorporation

I really have to finally focus on learning more about electronics this fall and build some filters.

The Tidal Quad looks amazing but it's also long gone and I have no idea where you would ever find one, much less how much it would cost or if any were even sold.

Good to know. I had a friend who swore by his Electrix Filter Queen but I've never really messed with them. I've always enjoyed the Warp Factory for sound design weirdness that doesn't sound like conventional vocoder but that's the full extent of my Electrix experience. "bland and tame with weak distortion" is pretty much how I've always heard the MFC42 described for years, too, although I love mine.

That's crazy, I swear a few years ago the typical price of the MFC42 and Filter Factory were the opposite of what they are now. I've never used one but I hear good things, and the Electrix Warp Factory I got a few years back is really solidly built.

If you're willing to switch platforms and can do some DIY, people have already mostly worked out CV i/o for the Axoloti.

Wow, I just checked MFC42 prices. I knew they'd gone up but I didn't realize they'd gone up that far.

This is a pretty good rundown of the MFC42's features in its natural habitat (filter house). He does miss a few things like the L/R phase control on the stereo channel and inverse linking the mono and stereo filters' cutoffs for effects like modulated crossover and stuff., but he gets almost everything. Leave the annotations on!

They're not that popular and probably not what you're after but the Akai MFC42 can do some stuff. Pre and post filter gain for driving it, plus a separate overdrive. I wouldn't call it warm but it' pretty useful. I think they've gotten expensive though,

? i've had a minibrute for 2 years now, no issues A friend of mine just recently got a minibrute and it seems pretty solid for the money. I got a micro and out of the box the digital section was completely broken and the pitch wheel was at the very least spectacularly miscalibrated (no change at all across most of its range, then jumped to maximum bend in the last 10% or so) so I just returned it and used the money to buy an Anushri kit. I liked the sound of it, though, and I may have just had bad luck. ahh that sucks, sorry to hear. i did hear the first run of the micro had some ootb issues but nothing that drastic, usually just a sticky key or loose knob It's fine, the Anushri kit was like $35 less and I love it.

Not familiar with them, but they look cool.

Yeah anything with faders is too big for convenient live use IMO. Alto stuff is pretty terrible in my admittedly limited experience (mostly related to repeatedly fixing a friend's powered PA speakers that were so hastily put together that wires were vibrating themselves loose until eventually it died - also their tech support tried to charge him $50 for a new fuse). Honestly, Behringer stuff is probably comparable to entry level mackie stuff at half the price. I've used a bit of both over the years and I haven't noticed any huge differences in build quality at least, although I've never compared them side by side.

Oh yeah, that's a lot more than the US price, on both of them. It's still not cheap here at $199 (it's amazing to me that someone threw one in the trash) but that's still at least $50 less than what you'd pay when you adjust for exchange rates. At that point I'd get a low priced Soundcraft or something.

I was never much of a Mackie person before but I found a completely working, older 1202 in someone's trash last year and their whole thing where muting a track actually rots it to a second stereo output pair is REALLY useful. I keep the second set of outputs patched through a filter and then routed back to a stereo channel (or an aux return depending on how many channels I want to keep free) so any channel/channels can instantly be routed through the filter. An 802-vlz would cost more than the Alto but it might be wort it, for that and also because a lot of Alto stuff is really just rebranded cheap OEM Chinese or Southeast Asian stuff so the Mackie might be more reliable. It's always hard to say with that OEM stuff, some of it is great some of it is junk. EDIT: honestly, in the Alto price range I'd either go for a Behringer (since they own their whole production chain) or gamble on one of the mystery brands from China, since you might get a lot more from your money compared to getting something that may well be made in the same factory, then branded, imported and marked up by whichever venture capital company owns Akai/Alesis/Numark/Ion/Alto this year. Something like this one (randomly chosen example, no idea if it's any good or not and remember most electronics that can be shipped out of China can't legally be shipped IN TO China, so if it's shipping from China you're not likely to have any possibility to return it)

Btw fuck yeah that's a great little piece. I definitely enjoyed the bleepy bloopy rising stuff about 6:00 on, but it felt a touch raw compared to the rest of the track. Could really be a standout song though man...and it that's you doing 'just a presentation' then damn. I've got nothing new to add, just another vote for this sounding great. Honestly, I'm still enjoying my ancient Red Panda bitcrusher, although I only have one working stereo dock so I have to swap it in for the Verbzilla if I want to use it in stereo.

? i've had a minibrute for 2 years now, no issues A friend of mine just recently got a minibrute and it seems pretty solid for the money. I got a micro and out of the box the digital section was completely broken and the pitch wheel was at the very least spectacularly miscalibrated (no change at all across most of its range, then jumped to maximum bend in the last 10% or so) so I just returned it and used the money to buy an Anushri kit. I liked the sound of it, though, and I may have just had bad luck.

I just want to have my stuff moved and unpacked so I can use it again.

For what it's worth, the person who I sold mine to is OK with it. I enjoyed it, it was the problem I was having with it dropping the gate on the first step after you pressed play that killed it for me but sometimes I miss it. The grounding issues were kind of a hassle but you could work around them. It was definitely fun.

On the one hand modular would be a lot of fun, on the other hand this was recorded live in a windmill with a Roland D10 and a sequencer more than 25 years ago: Obviously, if you aren't a sucker for anything Hawkwind-related like I am you might not be convinced by this.

Yeah, that's about where I'm at too. Actually for me, I think when I finally take the plunge it's not going to be a eurorack setup, it's going to be a few small, single purpose semi-modular things kind of cobbled together from different modules and stripboard projects. Most of the bare PCBs I've collected over the last few years are different analog drum voices and the first thing I'm going to do is build all of those and stick them in a box with probably a couple filters, a little mixer and a midi-to-trigger interface, normalize it all so it can work as a MIDI drum module with no patching, but also have patch points, and direct ins and outs. That'll be enough of a project for this year and if it goes well I'll probably do a modular sound processing thing of some kind like Chesney was talking about and eventually a Klee Sequencer(got the boards years ago but never built it because all the pots and switches add up fast and I don't have much to sequence with it). Plus I finally got a set of crOwBX boards a while ago so there's that. All that is more than enough to keep me busy for another year or so at the speed I move, and it's modular enough for me. I'm just not interested in making or listening to purely abstract music anymore to go full eurorack or anything but a few small pieces of modular kit would be fun to have around. The thing that gets me these days is golden-age-of-MIDI early to mid 90s digital rack gear to be honest, but I've got more than enough of that and it's starting to get a little more expensive lately anyhow. Anyway, whatever I end up doing I'm sticking to the "if I want it I have to build it or trade for it" rule I set for myself with guitar stuff years ago.

Yeah, the price and the baggage that comes with it (i.e. it seems to be a world plagued by rich-kid-syndrome, not that it's unique to that world by any stretch of the imagination and not that it means modular isn't really cool, it's just kind of the synth world counterpart to the boutique guitar world - a good handmade guitar is a wonderful thing but it's simply the nature of the business that a lot of them end up in the hands of blues lawyers and it's the nature of the business that a lot of really, really cool odular systems end up in the hands of "guys doing guy things" to paraphrase Legowelt - it's rampant where I live so I'm maybe a bit overcynical about it).

My friend who lives downstairs from the place I'm moving into in a few weeks is just starting to get in to modular. Just bought a Mother32, soldering equipment, and has a small Eurorack case in the mail. I gave him an old Eurorack power supply I built a few years ago. I'm doomed. He's going to infect me.

I bet they'll go for it, they are great and are really music friendly (there has been at least one hip hop album produced in there and a few bands have practiced there over the years, as long as you aren't an ass about it and work with them and the neighbors then it's all good) but the guy I'm replacing was kind of a problem and they actually padlocked the access hatch to stop him going up there and messing with the wiring, so I'm going to give it some time for them to get to know me better before I bring it up, haha. It's perfect though, there's a little hatch with a ladder about 15 feet from where my DAW will be set up, I'd just need to stick a half decent budget monitor speaker and a half decent cheap mic up there (good enough to sound OK but cheap enough that I wouldn't mind leaving it up there all the time in the elements and probably eventually ruining it) and run the cables down when I needed to. EDIT: the downside is a lot of my heat will be going straight up that hatch, too.

I actually prefer the look of the first one so I'm in the minority who is happy to have finally jumped on the OT bandwagon before the update. Anyhow, I logged in to post this, hadn't thought of it myself or stumbled on a description of it before but apparently people have been using the comb filter to do a different flavor of pseudo K-S synthesis for years.

Nice! I started my move early and got a few things in yesterday, but the landlord hasn't changed the locks yet so I only moved stuff that nobody would be likely to take in the unlikely event that they walked in off the street (so far just wood, sweaters and a heavy drill press that takes two people to lift) Should be moved completely in 3-4 weeks and set up in another 1-2. No concrete footings, but if all goes well in a few months I'm going to approach the landlord about letting me have access to the crawlspace above the apartment to set up a reverb chamber.

It's not a DIY thing, you can get one off the shelf for something like $60 USD EDIT: actually, it looks like the reissues were discontinued again but they're such a simple circuit that even a boutique clone is only $70 USD. They're a great thing to have around