the watmm GAS thread

[TubularCorporation]

18 hours ago, user said:

The profires seem to go for quite a bit of money used over here rn (although I only saw 2 so small sample size :)). Used to have a profire1 610 to dj with and that was great, survived at least 4 years of pretty heavy duty use and never failed me, and it had 8 outputs in only half a 19" size unit.

I'll probably end up with a second secondhand  saffire pro40, that's the interface I currently have and am quite happy with (not a super critical user wrt transparency and micpre's and such) which seem to go for around 200 local monetary units. Either that or the dreaded ubiquitous ada8200 if I'm too lazy/impatient to get a secondhand unit.       

That's a shame, here they seem to top out around $200.  Mine was $200 but it is basically new condition, only thing missing was the driver CD and the breakout cable for MIDI and S/PDIF.  And a tiny nick in the insulation on the power supply that I'd want to fix if I was going to be moving it around a lot, but since it's just living in a rack with synths permanently hooked to it I didn't bother.

 

Looks like it would work well as a firewire interface, too, but aggregating interfaces in Windows is kind of clunky so I'm sticking with just using it as an expander and switching to 48kHz instead of 96 for tracking.  I usually end up rolling off a lot of highs anyhow so do I really need to take up the extra space and CPU to record them?  Probably not.

[thawkins]

My interface can do ADAT too but I do not want to go down the rabbit hole of suddenly having "room" for 8 more tracks of I/O. Probably good if I ever get a studio with a drum kit though...

[user]

That's basically/maybe not at all the reason I want to expand my inputs. Just wanna have 6 ins to permanently hook my machinedrum up to, the other 10 will be on the patchbay. I don't even necessarily record that way but I really like being able to jam while monitoring everything on my computer so I can have all the fx etc already set up. But then I'll just record a couple of tracks at the same time max. 

 

On 5/27/2019 at 6:44 PM, TubularCorporation said:

That's a shame, here they seem to top out around $200.  Mine was $200 but it is basically new condition, only thing missing was the driver CD and the breakout cable for MIDI and S/PDIF.  And a tiny nick in the insulation on the power supply that I'd want to fix if I was going to be moving it around a lot, but since it's just living in a rack with synths permanently hooked to it I didn't bother.

 

Looks like it would work well as a firewire interface, too, but aggregating interfaces in Windows is kind of clunky so I'm sticking with just using it as an expander and switching to 48kHz instead of 96 for tracking.  I usually end up rolling off a lot of highs anyhow so do I really need to take up the extra space and CPU to record them?  Probably not.

Yeah, the ones I saw here were in the 400 region. Just spotted a saffire pro26 with firewire and adat for 50,-, might just be the ticket. 

I'm on a mac and have been quite lucky with aggregate devices so far (basically pro40+tr8) there's been a couple of crashes/random weirdness but nothing too bad. That'd be the main attraction in a 2nd pro40 though, they can be daisy chained via firewire and computer should just see it as one device, as far as I know.  

 

[sweepstakes]

Damn, the Axoloti is dope. It feels like I can finally build the kind of stuff I want in it. I should've bought one when they first came out.

[xox]

Gasing over Analog Heat and it’s crashing me! ...convince me it’s shit pls

im imagining love affairs between AH and my other elektron... 

machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machine machiiiiiiiiineees maaaaaaachiiines

[bitchroast]

i sometimes use my Tascam 414 to bounce tracks to just for some extra flavour. sometimes it comes out shit but sometimes it comes out REALLY nice. i have not used the analog heat but i imagine it'd be a more reliable means of getting nice warm analog saturation in a more reliable predictable fashion. plus the options for envelope following and modulation will go a long way. it's probably fantastic imo. 

please buy one and report back

Edited May 31, 2019 by bitchroast

[xox]

3 hours ago, bitchroast said:

i sometimes use my Tascam 414 to bounce tracks to just for some extra flavour. sometimes it comes out shit but sometimes it comes out REALLY nice. i have not used the analog heat but i imagine it'd be a more reliable means of getting nice warm analog saturation in a more reliable predictable fashion. plus the options for envelope following and modulation will go a long way. it's probably fantastic imo. 

please buy one and report back

Would like to try one of the tascam recs one day! 

Regarding AH... yes, i just know ill have to buy it eventually

[sweepstakes]

3 hours ago, Stickfigger said:

Where did u get it from ?

I just ordered it straight off the official website. The day I was whining in this thread about how long it took to arrive, it showed up. It really did not take very long at all; they are just a very lean business so I think they forego extra expenses like shipment tracking.

It feels a lot like Nord Modular but you can edit the patch objects (or roll your own from scratch) and you have some other goodies like SDRAM for samples, SD card (with some streaming objects), real MIDI I/O, USB host, etc. It's open source, so you have access to all the code, and you can write whatever code you can fit in that little processor. But the latency is very low, so it really feels like capital-H Hardware. Pretty brilliant, especially for the price - it came in around $100 USD including a simple wooden case I ordered elsewhere. With custom objects, it crashes fairly often, but that's because basically there aren't barriers preventing you from doing anything, which of course includes the stupid shit I'm doing all over the place. If you stick to the happy path it should be mostly stable, but I'm having more fun rolling my own.

There's some frustration on the forum by folks who 1) don't code and 2) are unsatisfied with the selection of built-in objects (although there are a lot of decent ones). I'm a total C++ noob but I'm fumbling my way through and making progress. So far I made a simple 32-bit control signal protocol for passing events such as MIDI messages between objects, which should be handy for building a standalone sequencer with my Launchpad Mini as the hardware UI. 

[Bubba69]

I haven't been lusting that much lately but there's some stuff that I have been seeing that looks pretty cool that has caught my attention.

Kijimi:

 

SOMA Pulsar 23 drum machine:

 

The ORCA livecoding environment: (played around with this quite a bit already)

 

 

[modey]

wow, ORCA looks super fun!

[auxien]

yeah Orca is really great, quick and easy to get some basic but weird shit going... program is still growing very much, and i'm still trying to wrap my head around it tbh, but it's kinda crazy just how 'simple' it is. not sure how unique it is in relation to other 'live coding' stuff but it's the only one that's caught my interest. companion synth Pilot is in its early stages but has some potential for sure. lots of really dirty/heavy digital sounds.

[sweepstakes]

5 hours ago, Stickfigger said:

Hmmm i really like the look of it and would love to have something like this that kinda bridged the H/S gap. Do you have a controller for it? If so, was it easy to map parameters?

I'm using a Launchpad Mini. I've completely lost interest in traditional controllers because 1) I do not enjoy mapping parameters to controllers 2) I think knobs and faders are overrated anyway for a few reasons, and in lieu of those I plan to set up "inertial" controls (like tempo nudge on an Elektron). To be honest, I think it would be pretty annoying to map knobs with the built-in objects, although I can imagine how I would set up a learning object if I had to. For the Launchpad I just had to write a little code since every pad except the top row follows a very simple pattern of note numbers. My only gripe with it so far is no velocity sensitivity, but I don't miss it that much.

[sweepstakes]

Has anyone made or heard anything substantial with Orca? The music I've come across so far has this kind of chunky late-90s/early-00s sound with blocky rhythmic structures and kind of arbitrary-sounding melodies. It might just be a more general livecoding thing as it seems to require a different mindset to create emotionally engaging music out of these components. Compared to freeform noodling on keys & pads, what works is less clearly defined - there isn't great "algocomp music theory for beginners" as far as I know.

Orca specifically seems limited and difficult to scale for the same reason it looks fun and interesting. You have this strictly bound, roguelike-esque map of automata and you can see the whole thing at a glance, but when it comes time to make things more interesting, you likely have to rearrange some furniture.

[auxien]

Orca alone is simply a sequencer. I’ve recorded one or two relatively simple things with it so far. 

Synths here are via Orca. Drums are programmed on the drum machine.

edit: probably need to start an Orca thread tbh. Will do later if no one else has

Edited June 4, 2019 by auxien

[Soloman Tump]

On 10/25/2017 at 9:27 PM, Braintree said:

Feeling some serious GAS for the Make Noise 0-COAST, but I have to concentrate on the projects I already have. No reason to build a modular at the moment (even if this thing is a standalone).

 

I now have this exact GAS.

 

It is june - my GAS ban is lifted! But I need some money yet...

[bitchroast]

i have a strict no new gear purchases atm. but then SOMEONE told me about a eurorack module that can house the original SID chips and use it as a sound source, and i had a broken commodore 64 in cupboard with working SID chip... so it would've been stupid to NOT buy the eurorack module that can use the original SID chip as a sound source. 

so technically, i'm still not purchasing new gear atm. 

[Soloman Tump]

19 hours ago, auxien said:

Orca alone is simply a sequencer. I’ve recorded one or two relatively simple things with it so far. 

Synths here are via Orca. Drums are programmed on the drum machine.

edit: probably need to start an Orca thread tbh. Will do later if no one else has

 

Love that Ripley photo btw, Florina161 landing is a bitch

[flacid]

What are your favourite/best sounding modular oscillators 

[auxien]

1 hour ago, flacid said:

What are your favourite/best sounding modular oscillators 

i tend to prefer the ones that go bleep, but I do also like some that go bloop.

[Braintree]

10 hours ago, Soloman Tump said:

 

I now have this exact GAS.

 

It is june - my GAS ban is lifted! But I need some money yet...

Christ, why did you have to remind me of this little thing.

[user]

On 5/24/2019 at 4:44 AM, modey said:

I haven't tried the quant yet actually! I'm mostly using the disting for wavetable/sample playback at the moment. The 2hp tune is alright, but pretty limited. I haven't noticed any weirdness with it yet.

The disting is great though. I could imagine having two in my rack at some point. Multipurpose modules are great imo. It'd be interesting making a mini 42hp rack with 3x warps (w/parasite firmware) and 3x disting lol.

Just installed a μO_C in my rack. Wasn't really planning on it but turns out there's someone in my area building them and was selling for a good price, great build too. It's even deeper than I anticipated, on the other hand it's easy to get something started after cursory manual reading. It's amazing how many avenues it opens up and how many cables and attenuverters it eats up :D

[modey]

9 hours ago, flacid said:

What are your favourite/best sounding modular oscillators 

I like STO. Pretty basic but it sounds nice. I'm also considering swapping my Elements for a Plaits or Braids (or maybe just Rings for the pseudo-polyphony).

5 hours ago, user said:

Just installed a μO_C in my rack. Wasn't really planning on it but turns out there's someone in my area building them and was selling for a good price, great build too. It's even deeper than I anticipated, on the other hand it's easy to get something started after cursory manual reading. It's amazing how many avenues it opens up and how many cables and attenuverters it eats up

Oh nice! I'm always tempted by O_C when it comes up in sale groups, but I think two menu-divey modules are enough for my small setup.

[bitchroast]

i first got a dixie 2 then got an STO, and between the two i def prefer the STO. that triangle looking out with the pulsewidth modulation is just real nice and buzzy, but still pretty basic and simple. when you feed it into filters you just get nicer sounding things coming out of it i found.. compared to the dixie. maybe my dixie set to 'boring' or something on the dip switch ???

[iococoi]

"Lets spread some GAS" - meetup 1991

(standing from left, John Chowning, Bob Moog, Paul Lansky, David Wessel, Roger Lind, Dave Smith, Don Buchla, ???, Tom Oberheim, Victor Karamov
seated, from left, David Jaffe, Lev Theremin, Max Mathews, Theremin's granddaughter, Andy Schloss)

Edited June 6, 2019 by iococoi

[user]

Holy shit.