The MOD Duo is an interesting and enormously flexible option ... but, yes, it does need setting up on a PC ... but it's very good there ... and if you are working things out "in your studio" it's great, not so good "on stage" though. But, if you've done all your setup already, it's good to go.
Helix Native is to all intents and purposes the same as the box, certainly for auditioning. I use the floor unit for guitar things, including Variax and more, but not for synths directly. The Fractal is very good indeed for that ... but different league price-wise.
Strymons are good at what they do ... but they (to my ears) have "a sound" that's a bit too pervasive ... I know some people would say that about Eventide too, but I'm not sure I understand Bax's concept of "too much"! B)
It's not "multi-fx", but if you are considering the "couple of pedals" options, stir a Meris into the recipe? Great stereo sounds ...

Yeah, I keep thinking this isn’t going to be single unit purchase. Each unit seems to hit and miss on one of my requirements, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the Zoia plus a controller (my Maschine may be good enough) is the way to go for two reasons. It seems to be the most creative and interesting, while at the same time having a sonic character that I like. I’d rather have two devices like this than separate pedals because I like the idea that each Prophet 12 preset can trigger its own preset in the effect processor and I’m good to go.

Electrix effects units (few models of them)
Alesis Quadraverb.
Might find a PCM60 for that.

The stuff just out of budget...look for bargen used.
TCE M3000, M4000, M5000
Eventide H9, Eclipse
DP4, DP2

The PCM80 I think would make you the happiest.

---Why not use stomp box's? There are a few out there to pick from.

Mmm ... Maschine as a controller... that's not something I have thought through at all ... I have a P12 and a Mk3 ... let us know what you are doing?

i hated the Zoia. Everything in miniature, inscrutable LED - based interface, I couldnt handle it. It sounded fine but it had to go.

You can even AFX mode it, somehow the 80's CPU can handle it.

https://support.native-instruments.c...l-MIDI-Devices

I just watched the Cuckoo tutorial video and I hear what you are saying. Why they didn’t design it to work with an editor like their competitors is beyond me, but I spent a decade programming a Lexicon MPX-1 and I don’t think that it would be more painful than that. It also seems like there are enough interesting presets to mess with that I could probably adjust them to taste when I didn’t feel like building something from the ground up. I’d probably keep it to 3-6 effects, maximum, and some modulation that I can control via MIDI. I think the key would be to print out a template so you can make notes on what’s going on in a patch as you build it.

I’ve had the Zoia for about a year now but mostly use it for my guitar rig, as the main effect after the modelling.
I think the reverbs, delays and modulation effects sounds good, I really like the ghost reverb and some other modulated reverbs. The pitch shifters are pretty lowfi and I’m not so impressed with the granular modules yet, but they can do some interesting looper things.
About the GUI, I think it is pretty nice when creating your own patches but it’s very cumbersome to get an overview of how a complex patch by someone else is constructed.

The main thing I think they screwed up is how the presets are not ordered in a way so that you can easily flick between patches while you play, to find something interesting. Some patches are selfplaying synth sequences, some need to be played from a MIDI-keyboard and there is no simple way to know what to expect from a patch. I think they should have had different categories where one would be typical input->effects->output, and another would be MIDI-controlled patches. But I see that there could be problems of categorizing patches that combine both.

The best thing probably would be to start with doing such a categorization your self by deleting most patches and fill up with the kind of patches you want.

Another problem I see is that there is no common control of the wet/dry mix so if you want to use it as a send effect you need to tweak every patch in order to remove the direct signal.

Some things have changed since the Cuckoo video:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.freshde...b8e1c5a4fe84d9

740 patches on patchstorage:
https://patchstorage.com/platform/zoia/

Patch manager:
https://github.com/meanmedianmoge/zoia_lib

Synthdawg book:
https://www.synthdawg.com/product-pa...-zoia-notebook

How to add MIDI control to a Zoia patch

I zigged when I thought I was going to zag. I just ordered the Mod Duo X. In the end, I thought the Empress Zoia and TC Plethora X5 may have sounded a bit better, but I started to rethink my priorities. I’ve got tons of great UAD and native plugins, including Melda’s MXXX, which is almost a Zoia... but I felt for this, having knobs was more important. The X5 does seem really sweet, and I liked the expression button concept, but it was just too simple for my needs. Maybe I’ll pick one up in April after I upgrade my computer.

The Zoia only has 64 presets, doesn't it? If you are needing to sync up patches with your P12, unless you only use 64 presets, you'll run out of combos if you want every patch to be unique across both units.

Well my MatrixBrute sounds like heavy metal guitar played through a giant stack of amps in a stadium now, thru the Helix. It puts the Zola to shame in terms of UI but I do wish there was more of a synth emphasis. I went from having nit enough effects to a weird grab bag of effects :

Fix aid xl
Yamaha spx2000
Korg a1
Line 6 helix
Speculation tempus

And the effects from the k2600rs and the Kronos.

Now it’s too many effects

Ah, I had an A1 a long time ago! I liked that little unit, especially the pressure pedal. Great feel. I gave it to a friend who started off playing guitar with nothing.

Let us know how you like it. I've been eyeing the Mod X Duo for almost the same reasons.

Something you can do with MOD Duo is chain Fx, both in series and parallel. This can significantly increase your options ... if a single reverb sounds too simple, duplicate it or pair it with another ... run different stuff on each stereo channel... treat it like a modular collection of units.

A1 is awesome

So my Mod Duo X came...

I almost sent it right back. So incredibly noisy. Put a ground lift on and solved the issue, but... Come on, ModDevices. I had to dig that solution up on my own, because I sent a message to ModDevices and never heard back, but at least there’s a forum which is helpful.

Here’s my initial take on it.

Seems solidly built. Definitely good for my desktop needs. Buttons and knobs all feel fine, though I think the paint that covers the button/lights may wear over time. It comes with a carrying case that I shall promptly put in my garage and never look at again. No full manual, which is a shame. Not everything is clear and the only manual seems to be an html page, so if you think you can even print a pdf and read it at your leisure, you’re SOOL.

Some things are disappointing. I’d read it was Bluetooth...but it’s not, unless you buy a USB Bluetooth dongle. Only $15, but when you drop $800 on something, maybe it should have the Bluetooth built in.

I went though most of the effects. They’re all good, but mostly vanilla. I think the idea is that you can squeeze character out of them with the way that you can really hook anything to anything, even audio loops. So, you’ll have a very basic sounding digital delay but you can put it after a wah pedal and touch it off with a bit reducer. The standout character effects were actually the distortion effects and guitar amps. No noticeable aliasing and they sound good. They sounded really excellent on the Prophet 12. I had this noisy keys patch I made and a bit o’ distortion, tremolo and some ping-pong delay was all that was necessary to feel like Thom Yorke on a gray fall day. Would they hold up as a stand alone guitar amp modeler and effects box like a Heix? Maybe.

What’s really missing is a good tape delay emulation, and stuff like that. There’s a good Leslie, but what about a Bi-Phase? Nice Tri-Chorus, but no CS-TERC emulation. Decent reverbs, but no spring emulation. So, if you’re looking for analog style delay and modulation effects, there are some for sale (more on that later) in the software marketplace, but it doesn’t seem to come with many. Oh, no multi-tap sequence style delay either. Definitely some gaps. What I hope they do is write a delay that has a way of putting insert effects inside the feedback loop. That alone would really open things up. In a sense, having effects with a lot of character isn’t that much of a need with something like the Prophet 12, which has buckets of it’s own character.

So, a quick trip to the effect store and there is indeed a tape delay emulation. So that’s sort of a double edged sword. Yeah, the ability of your Mod Duo will continue expanding beyond what it came with, but you have to pay for a lot of the additional algorithms, unless you can code your own, which they encourage. How much is that tape delay? I have no idea. It doesn’t seem to have a price listed at all... maybe free? Maybe you have to buy it from inside the editor interface? I’ll have to dig around. Might be nice if there was a printed manual. A lot around the edges does seem like a work in progress.

The real magic of it is that you can really just go sick with effects and routing. I’ve not yet tried anything too complex yet, but if you go though the on-line patches you can easily see the power of what can be done. It’s also very easy to patch things up. There’s lots of ways to use crossovers to segregate frequency ranges and mixers to blend things back in. The power is huge. The interface graphics are a mixed bag, and frankly I wish they just looked more like how NI does their new effects. Clean. 99% of the time I’m opening up the full deep dive interface because often the UI designers hide a lot of good parameters. That interface is clean and easy to use. The look of a lot of the effects look like bad Synthedit effects from 2005 and on my monitor they’re often hard to see even when zoomed in, so I’m always just opening up the full interface.

The other great thing is that you can freely assign any parameter to one of it’s knobs or buttons, which is sort of the major point of it for me.

So, overall, positive. I think if you’re a synth player who wants something small to set on top of a synth to mess with in some sort of ambient setup, this would be a great box, no doubt. Especially if you’re willing to put in the time to create custom patches, which is easy and pretty fun. I think you can get better effects from Eventide, Strymon or Empress, but not nearly as flexible or as creative. Could you put together something as interesting in a modular software system like MXXX or Guitar Rig? Maybe. I must admit, as I was putting together little “pedalboards” as they call them, I could not help but think, “well, if I was doing this in Guitar Rig hosted in Maschine...” Tomorrow I’ll to a hard side-by-side to see if it really makes sense.

Regarding pricing, most plugins are reasonably priced $10-$50. The price should show up when you're in the store.
One important thing to remember is that Mod Devices don't write plugins themselves. They just port what's available as Open Source code. Presets for the original are not compatible. They have to be re-created.

An awful lot ... most ... plugins are free ... paid-for are the exceptions.
My take on the MOD is the power lies in the multiplicity of plugins and routing ... perhaps a particular shimmer reverb isn't quite what you get from Eventide or Strymon at their best ... but the ease of running more than one instance in parallel and/or series along with others generates complex cascading possibilities like you get from a Fractal.
Like building virtual modular synths in Bitwig Grid, Reaktor or whatever... one of the components might be apparently fairly "standard" ... but so are many Lego bricks ...

Thank you for taking the time to write out your thoughts on this.

Yeah, this is my exact take on it. Looking at an individual plugin is like looking at a lego brick. If I showed you one for the first time you’d shrug. If I showed you 10, you’d think “oh, sure,” but if I showed you an 100 piece set, you’d start to see the magic. That said, I think that it could stand to have some more high end plugins in there and some “block” types, like a spring reverb and tape delay, are absent.

What I’m really hoping for is to be able to start exploring things like feedback loops to make crazy stuff. It seems perfect for that type of thing.

It was confusing because if you go to the store link on their site, it does not show prices. You have to open it from the pedal board construction page, which is what was confusing. I also noticed a lot was not installed that was free, so I grabbed a bunch of that as well.

I wonder how hard it would be to port a Max MSP object into the Mod Duo... I’m not really a programmer but a good friend of mine writes really interesting granulators in Max MSP.

https://www.moddevices.com/max-msp-integration-tutorial

What about just getting an X-Air and using a midi controller of computerless control if necessary, 4 high quality stereo effects plus a full digital mixer to boot, the XR12 is really too cheap for the quality of what you get.

I have one dedicated to the output of a 002r. It’s great but I wanted something different.