Fun little story here. Living in Portland is fairly Utopian overall, but it does have its drawbacks. People feel free to rifle though your garbage and recycling without being terribly neat about it, and in neighborhoods like mine still a little "methy" they tend to steal my mail when possible. I've had securely locked up items like bikes and propane tanks disappear as well. This all results in a little bit of paranoia when I am expecting musical gear in the mail so I usually watch tracking numbers like a hawk and sit around waiting for the mail just to make sure I get it those days.
So this week I have been expecting a module to show up (Turing Machine Bytes by Mystic Circuits) except I have been slammed with end of term stuff in school so I completely forgot. Shot out an email since I didn't get a tracking number yet (not blaming Eli from MC one bit he is pretty awesome) and when I did, I found out that the package had been delivered yesterday to an "alternate address or garage" and immediately go outside to look around the house and find nothing. I instantly assume tweakers have conspired to stop me from completing my case and lose all grip on reality due to other gear/modules taking forever to show up and general problems with the mail and theft at this house. Hulk mad! Hulk smash!
I calm down a bit and go outside and look around some more (creeping around my own yard in sweats in the pitch black with a flashlightwating for a neighbor to call the cops on me. I walk the driveway all the way out to the street and holy sheep sh1t what do I find-

Almost 2 days in the pouring rain, at least they wrapped it up.

It's great to know I have an alternate address in case something happens to my real address, I can always live in the bushes by the driveway.

Is the module working ?

Worst nightmare mate!!! I'm seriously OCD about my tracking #'s and watching for my packages also, at least you found it! Is it working tho....

Funny you mention that. My last girlfriend was from Portland and would extol the wonders of living in Portland so much that I began to loathe that city and everything from it. It was so bad that I have a DVD sitting in my unwatched pile called 'American Meth' that I only bought it because the it's about meth addicts in Portland.

If you're having something delivered FedEx (usually costs extra but worth it for me) you can just ask to have the package rerouted to your local FedEx shop. They then require ID to pick it up. People will jack anything not completely locked down in my hood. No way I would trust an expensive box of synth toys not walk off. Unfortunately AH only does UPS which doesn't have a near by shop and I'm not sure if they offer the same service so for them I just have to make sure I'm home.

Just a couple notes on this: FedEx is awesome with package rerouting and you can do it online. UPS will do it too, but they don't have nearly as many sites as FedEx does and when they do have one, it's often open at some strange hours. The nearest shipping center for me is twenty miles away and only open from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. I'm sure it's handy for somebody, though.

Nice collection of articles on modular synths

CEC — eContact! 17.4 — Analogue and Modular Synthesis: Resurgence and evolution

It looks really interesting, thanks for sharing

What's everybody's favorite reverb modules?

I was playing with my Eleven Rack last night and realized that the reverb effects are some of the most amazing I've ever used, but it's not very modular-friendly. Thinking about getting a Verbtronic. Currently have an RT60 and a Flame FX16.

I made the decision to dive into modular today and bought this monorocket case, mainly because I want a system to go with my Voyager XL:



Should I dump the girlfriend now or wait for our relationship to slowly come to an end?

They really should make a Eurorack panel for fleshlights. I mean, we can already program them to talk dirty to us so might as well.

I won't find out if it's working until it gets installed. My builder is busy all weekend but maybe on Sunday night. the package was dry, so it should be ok.


Portland really is amazing, and not like a Louis CK sandwich. I love it here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else ever basically. That being said, everyone not from here is either planning on moving here or tired of hearing about how great it is so I totally get your reaction. Austin (aren't you near/in Austin?) would be a place I'd consider if Portland got hit by an asteroid (I have yet to go there but have good friends that have lived there), by all reports it is a great place to live. But man...cowboy hats and good-old-boy cops are what I was escaping from when I left Florida, not sure I could revisit that paradigm in this life. I'll take the occasional methhead interaction over that any day personally. And legal (mostly free too since I am medical) pot helps...


It was USPS. Usually they leave a not and then I go to the distribution center to pick it up, not sure why the mailman got so "creative' with this one. I'm just glad I found it before someone else.

I think a lot of my loathing of Portland came from a combination of her not shutting the hell up about it and my inner hipster coming out from spending so much of my life in and around Austin. A lot of Portland culture is 'borrowed' from Austin right down to the old 'Keep Austin Weird' slogan. Every time she's like "Portland just got a vegan store!" or "Portland has stores that sell only electronic instruments" or "Portland has independent cinemas that serve alcohol, food, and nonmainstream" and I'm just like... Austin has had these things for a loooooong time and we had a homeless crossdressing mayor. It just felt like a very cheap imitation of the real thing every time she talked about it, and then when she came down here to live with me for a while, she had the nerve to do things like call Taco Bell Mexican food and Panda Express Chinese so that ruined me on Portlanders forever. No matter what you say or do to redeem yourself, even if you managed to band together and stop the apocalypse, I would still see you all as a bunch of culture-stealing pretentious hipsters with no cultural identity of your own.

...but I'm not above buying your modules.

Back on topic, I bought a Verbtronic and changed my mind on selling the Cell 90. I'm just going to morph the Cell into a mixing skiff. Coming dangerously close to buying an Ataraxic Translaton, too.

Yeah they do, the best way for both of these is to have them rerouted, IMO. USPS eh not so much...

Hey everyone, what are some of the essential modules to begin a good 4 row eurorack system like the one posted above? Keep in mind it will be paired with a Voyager so I'll have the 3 Moog OSCs to go with whatever else I choose. I really only want to invest ~$1500 to start out, and then maybe $300 /month for a couple years until it's complete. How would you guys spread it out? I make house, breaks, and soundscapes. I'm thinking something along the lines of this for the initial investment...

Multi-Envelope module, Multi-LFO Module, CV Multi, And maybe 2 good effect units. I don't think I need any OSCs yet, that can come in one of the future investments. I really just want to start out by expanding on what I have with the Voyager.\

Any module suggestions for those categories, or suggestions I should take on other routes are welcome. This part of the game is new to me. Lots of youtube videos to watch I suppose.

Erbe verb is the only verb I have in my modular and it's pretty good. I like multing then mixing some signals to send to it and modulating it with a PP clocked to odd complex intervals of the main clock to get certain synced but semi random steps to get different reverb tones/decays. It does well with stepped modulation. Smooth modulation makes it swirl a lot in some cool sounding ways, but a little too severe to fit into my music (as is the case with most modular verbs.) Apart from that, no reverbs in euro format really appeal to me. I route to my Arp2600's mixer to go through its stereo spring verb sometimes, otherwise I generally reach for my midiverb or lex200.

I guess the big question is what it is exactly you're planning. Voyager XL already does a lot on its own. When you say you want to expand the Voyager, are you saying that you want to commit this whole case to being just add-ons for the Voyager, or do you want it to be able to do its own thing to supplement the Voyager as well? Four rows seems like a LOT to be dedicated to just an add-on for another machine.

Agreed that spring reverbs are awesome. I tap into the one on my Dot Com constantly. The built-in overdrive makes it sound wonderful. It being spring though, there's only so much it can do and I find myself wanting more.

Good suggestion for the Erbe Verbe. She's on the list!!!

Long run I want to be able to have a mix of different analog and digital oscillators driven by the Voyager, and I'm thinking of ways to make a decent poly synth out of it with some midi to cc conversion if it's possible. Anyone have luck doing this? That would be the ultimate end-goal to me. Maybe the top row is all oscillators, the second row is all modulation, the third row is all filters, and the fourth row all effects. That would be amazing. Of course there would need to be some utility modules in there to make this all happen. If I could get 4 voices with the different modulation and filters that would be the tits.

Anyone have experience making this happen?

Well, I moved here 17 years ago to escape redneck conservatism/oppression in the armpit of the south, and to try and get somewhere with my band at the time. The music scene was better when I moved here. The clubs were cooler, the vibe was cooler. Hell, I was cooler. I stayed here after Portland got "weird" because I have a huge friend base here now after being part of the music scene in one way or another for so long (although I am completely disconnected from it now thanks to college). But almost everyone I know is over 40, married with children. We don't do zoo bomb or protests or naked bike rides and nobody I know is even a vegetarian let alone vegan. I filtered out all the Portlandia types a long time ago, they are so boring and one-dimensional with all their reasons why they don't do things that are a part of everyday normal life. It's pretentious crap, and if that was what Portland was to me, I'd leave. To me Portland is rad food (and no I don't eat Panda or TB ****ing gross), people who smile at you when you're walking down the street, and great public transit. It's green (and not just the weed), I can watch the sun rise over MT. Hood from my bedroom window. It rarely freezes here. We have dope music stores for gear and records. While the clubs were better to me a long time ago (I suspect part of that is my age), I still have fun at shows, and there are tons of shows every night.

Anyway, this isn't some back-and-forth about what is better to me (Austin would be better to me if it wasn't in Texas), just thought I'd share my perspective on Portland, which is significantly different than your ex's.

Appears this is what I need for polyphony, correct?

http://cdn.kraftmusic.com/media/cata...r-qmibck_1.jpg

So would the routing be something like...

Voyager Midi Out --> qMI in --> (4) +1 Out to OScillators --> Osc Out --> Mixer in --> Mixer Out--> Filter of Choice --> Effects --> Output

Would that work?

That would work, but you gotta keep in mind that what you've created there is a situation of pseudo-polyphony. You'd have all the notes, but because you've only got one filter, if you've got any modulation going (especially envelopes), then that one filter is going to retrigger with every note you play. If you want full polyphony, then you'll have to replicate each voice, so in a scenario like what you're talking about with five note polyphony (Voyager plus four), then you'll have to have four of the exact same oscillator (eight if you want to play a two-oscillator patch or twelve for three oscillators) plus four of the exact same filter, plus eight of the same envelope (four for VCA, and four for filter) plus four of the same VCA's, and possibly five mixers if you're trying to get more than one oscillator per voice. This made trickier by the fact that you're probably not going to find somebody else's oscillators or filters that will sound exactly like your Voyager, so you'll always have that one note that stands out.

I hate to sound like a jerk because I can't imagine any other way to say this, but if you're getting into modular so you can make a polyphonic Voyager, you're going to be very disappointed and out quite a bit of cash to make that happen. If you want a polyphonic Moog, then your best bet is to either buy multiple Voyagers, or scrap the Voyager and get multiple Mother 32's. Even then, this is not a recommended plan as you'll be missing out on a lot of what Eurorack has to offer.

If you're insistent on getting a modular to complement your Voyager and extend that voice a bit more, then I think an MU format modular would be more up your alley since they're purpose-built for Moog-style subtractive synthesis.

what [B]derp[B] said.
if it's any consolation, I got into eurorack for polyphony and to extend the possibilities of my voyager (it might be annoying, but I never mention the voyager without saying that the Rudi Linhard slew rate mod is essential). After a few months I quickly realized that it wasn't the way to do it, but in the meantime had discovered tons of amazing sounding modules and whole new ways of doing synthesis. There are a lot of great sounds I can make now that I never would have thought of making with the voyager. it's also an awesome community. most manufacturers participate in threads on muffs, and t's more satisfying to buy modules from them. there's tons of innovation and you're a little on the inside.

If it was me I would fill one row with drum modules and a trigger sequencer (unless you already have something that spits out lots of triggers like a BSP).

For a multi-envelope you can't go wrong with Maths. Xaoc Devices Batumi seems to get a lot of mentions on the LFO front. I tried to grab one of the latest batch but was too slow on pulling the trigger. There's lots of choices when it comes to effects, from the big expensive Make Noise modules to smaller cheaper Audio Damage stuff. There's also the tiptop Z-DSP which can be expanded with dsp cards. I'd consider some of the exotic euro filters like Three Sisters, Wasp, Korgasmitron or some LPG modules like Borg, Optomix, MMG. Also wave folders are cool and something you don't often see outside of modular.

Ladies and gentlemen I present you with a Euro module that came with a real tree killin paper manual. It's like a faint reminder of a bygone era before online pdfs and web pages. Pretty cool module so far. I'm not super experienced with using random CV but I was getting some wild modulations out of the S&Hs. This won out over the nanorand and wogglebug. Put's on quite the light show too.

Thanks everyone for the advice. Picked up an erbe verb last night as I really loved what I heard from the videos, going to get some envelope and lfo units today and maybe one or two great filters.

Just to clarify I didn't make the dive just for my Voyager, I plan on it being a complete system on its own in the end. I was just thinking of some cool applications and thought the paraphonic potential seemed interesting.

I'm looking to get a few cv-multiples and I ran across the fact that there are passive and active versions. Can someone break down the basic pros and cons of using each? Obviously passive wouldn't require any power which is a pro, but does a buffered multi really preserve the signal better? Does the fact that its buffered cause any timing problems?

In the name of space saving, put only buffered mults in the case IMO,you can get passive mult capability from stackable cables or 1/8 in. splitters. But you have a bigger case than me so space might not be as big a concern. I can't scientifically speak to the lag/timing question but I don't notice any myself.

Your living in the world of analog now so timing/latency won't be a problem