2023: A Year in Gear (What You've Bought or Want to Buy in 2023)

[foosnark]

Ataraxic Iteritas arrived today. My first impression is, it's weirder than I expected, further away from its roots in Ataraxic Translatron. Which is good. It doesn't really sound like anything else.

When it's just droning on its own, frankly I think it has a few decent sweet spots but doesn't sound great.... but it's in a modular so it's not on its own. Feed it through some saturation and a filter and it really stands out. Or just snappy envelopes and a VCA for percussive noises. Or a frequency shifter. Or sync -- to me it sounds way more interesting than many oscillators do with sync, especially when the frequency of the master oscillator is near it. Or audio rate modulation of the noise or comb filter parameters.

So I think it was a good choice, something unique I wasn't getting from anything else

[ghettosynth]

Ataraxic Iteritas arrived today. My first impression is, it's weirder than I expected, further away from its roots in Ataraxic Translatron. Which is good. It doesn't really sound like anything else.

When it's just droning on its own, frankly I think it has a few decent sweet spots but doesn't sound great.... but it's in a modular so it's not on its own. Feed it through some saturation and a filter and it really stands out. Or just snappy envelopes and a VCA for percussive noises. Or a frequency shifter. Or sync -- to me it sounds way more interesting than many oscillators do with sync, especially when the frequency of the master oscillator is near it. Or audio rate modulation of the noise or comb filter parameters.

So I think it was a good choice, something unique I wasn't getting from anything else

Does that thing cost the equivalent of $400 where you are? I have some Noise Engineering stuff. According to MG it has a value of about $800, but, I paid $301 total for all of it brand new on some sort of buy one get one for a bag of chips and get these extra doodads for free to go along with it sale. I haven't seen a sale like that since. Lapsus Os is great, but not $260 great. It's definitely worth the, let's say $100, that I paid for it.

That noise oscillator has some interesting sounds, but, that's exactly the kind of module that I can't bring myself to part with real money for. I'm not just singling out Noise Engineering here, but the latest crop of all digital modules built on something like the Daisy or Owl platform. I feel like I could get most of the best parts of that with a week of Max programming and a $200 Patch.init. It could then be something else once my ears started bleeding.

I get it, I sound like people complaining about the cost of the Moog reissue. We all decide what we value. I remember that my friends thought that I was crazy to spend some $2400 on a red two octave keyboard, but the Nord Modular might be the best piece of gear that I've ever owned.

[foosnark]

Yeah, the prices went up on all the Noise Engineering stuff early this year. There was a newsletter about it (and a brief sale before that happened). They got hit with multiple price increases, and had to redesign modules multiple times due to parts availability (where a lot of makers of digital modules simply have run out of stock on things they can't build anymore).

FWIW, the Iteritas line is built on XMOS chips rather than Daisy. It does this thing where the clock speed is a multiple of the oscillator frequency, so that aliasing tracks pitch. On Ataraxic I think that's what's going on with audio rate modulation of some of the parameters, it's actually sampling them at different rates, and it might be why sync seems a bit special too.

[elxsound]

Just ordered from Juno the SEM and Wasp filters.

I don't know where they'll go just yet but it might be a fun one to figure out (or else, I just get another pod).

[ghettosynth]

Yeah, the prices went up on all the Noise Engineering stuff early this year. There was a newsletter about it (and a brief sale before that happened). They got hit with multiple price increases, and had to redesign modules multiple times due to parts availability (where a lot of makers of digital modules simply have run out of stock on things they can't build anymore).

Alright, I guess that's all over. That said, I'm very particular at over $200, especially for digital modules, which is some arbitrary cutoff that I pull out of nowhere. Wipe it off a bit before you inspect it. I thought that PAM's was WAY overpriced but I was willing to pay the price to get the functionality and workflow. Same with the Make Noise stuff that I have that is digital, and TBH, I might end up swapping some of those bits off after I learn what I need from their workflow.

I don't have anything from Noise Engineering that is intended to make sound. I remember looking at their stuff at the time of the sale and passing on it. It's not my cup of tea really.

FWIW, the Iteritas line is built on XMOS chips rather than Daisy. It does this thing where the clock speed is a multiple of the oscillator frequency, so that aliasing tracks pitch. On Ataraxic I think that's what's going on with audio rate modulation of some of the parameters, it's actually sampling them at different rates, and it might be why sync seems a bit special too.

I suppose that makes sense given their focus. I suppose I could have just looked at the manual to see that. I'm still not hearing anything special there. No offense intended, that's just my take. I have a friend that's into harsh noise and I'm like, um, yeah mate, it's loud.

[foosnark]

I'm not into harsh noise either, but you can definitely do more than that with these.

I feel like there are some brands where the marketing, demos and reputation emphasize their aggressiveness but they're much more versatile than that. (Or in other cases, "these are for techno" vs. "these are for West Coast generative noodling" or whatever.) With IME Hertz Donut for instance, I found people kept talking about how nasty it is, when literally all you have to do to make it sound nice/pretty/clean is set the ratio of the modulation oscillator to an integer ratio (by ear works fine) just like every other complex oscillator.

Like I said, I actually don't think Ataraxic Iteritas is that great to listen to by itself, except for maybe a few sweet spots. But it's working out pretty well in my patches, providing some unique textures. I'm really liking syncing it to other VCOs.

The funny thing is, I've tried all of the Noise Engineering oscillators up to now and wound up reselling most of them for various reasons. I probably should have kept Cursus (sold it because I was deep into E370 beta testing at the time and I purged a bunch of other things). This one is probably going to be the keeper simply because it's so different and my approach with it is to not take it at face value.

Anyway, different strokes and whatever.

[ghettosynth]

I'm not into harsh noise either, but you can definitely do more than that with these.

I feel like there are some brands where the marketing, demos and reputation emphasize their aggressiveness but they're much more versatile than that. (Or in other cases, "these are for techno" vs. "these are for West Coast generative noodling" or whatever.) With IME Hertz Donut for instance, I found people kept talking about how nasty it is, when literally all you have to do to make it sound nice/pretty/clean is set the ratio of the modulation oscillator to an integer ratio (by ear works fine) just like every other complex oscillator.

That and there are few demos for their products that embrace, um, subtle. Not going to lie, their naming turns me off as well. Oh, yes please, I would like a Phallusillo Flacidus in my rack! Same with Make Noise. I get it, marketing works. I'm pretty convinced that Maths wouldn't be as popular if it was called a dual slope generator with quad attenuverter/mixer plus CV utilities.

Like I said, I actually don't think Ataraxic Iteritas is that great to listen to by itself, except for maybe a few sweet spots. But it's working out pretty well in my patches, providing some unique textures. I'm really liking syncing it to other VCOs.

What their stuff reminds me of is so many Reaktor ensembles that can get noisy quickly. I get what you're saying. One of my favorite Reaktor ensembles is Skrewell, which is very easy to get into "this sounds like shit but the noise guys might like it" territory. If you prod it gently though, it can a wonderful source of weird blips and clicks.

The funny thing is, I've tried all of the Noise Engineering oscillators up to now and wound up reselling most of them for various reasons. I probably should have kept Cursus (sold it because I was deep into E370 beta testing at the time and I purged a bunch of other things). This one is probably going to be the keeper simply because it's so different and my approach with it is to not take it at face value.

Anyway, different strokes and whatever.

Well, to be clear, if I could get over the price tag and naming, I might use something like that as your're using it. I'm trying to decide whether it makes more sense to build similar things in Max/C and stuff them into a Daisy, or, just put Reaktor in the rack. This is about $70 and fits in 3u. I plan to put it next to my Expert sleepers ADAT interfaces.



Ignore the elven hand pointing at this to make it look big. It's 1024x600 and is capacitive touch with HDMI and USB power. For now I'm just going to attach it to one of my studio PCs, but it has occurred to me that one of these, an expert sleepers interface, and a NUC might give me a much nicer integration with my modular.

I didn't think that I would like using touchscreens in the rack, but it turns out that this is fantastic, as long as you aren't trying to do everything with it.



It's products like this that make it hard for me to justify $400 for a pure digital oscillator. In fact, other than Brains, I have no other full digital oscillators that are only oscillators, and, I'm not sure that I would have purchased brains if it was only one of the models that it comes with.

To be clear, I think that products like Hector are also niche and you should have workflow reasoning to justify a product like that. Using a touch screen is not the same as a knob laden module and so I find it best when it's setup to do some specific complex thing that doesn't need a lot of interaction and that would be much more expensive to do with standalone modules.

Also, like a PC, Hector has latency in the low 10s of milliseconds range. So it's not going to work well for audio rate modulation.

Also, re NE, did I mention that I hate the black panels that they produce. The silver ones aren't too bad. For reference, I think that Mutable Instruments and Tip-Top do panels well. If my ears are going to bleed I'd like my eyes to not also be bleeding.

[foosnark]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the grunge look on panels (or anywhere anymore, the 90s are behind us).

I really like Xaoc's industrial lab equipment aesthetics though.

Honestly Mutable Instruments panels are just about ideal, with good font readability, simplicity, meaningful contrast (such as the grey outlines around outputs), excellent choice of knobs (I've replaced a lot of other knobs with that style). The only thing that doesn't work for me is the tiny icons which are just vague colorful blobs at arm's length.

[ghettosynth]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the grunge look on panels (or anywhere anymore, the 90s are behind us).

I really like Xaoc's industrial lab equipment aesthetics though.

Honestly Mutable Instruments panels are just about ideal, with good font readability, simplicity, meaningful contrast (such as the grey outlines around outputs), excellent choice of knobs (I've replaced a lot of other knobs with that style). The only thing that doesn't work for me is the tiny icons which are just vague colorful blobs at arm's length.

Agree. Also, yes, you have to love that "test equipment" look. But then, test equipment is designed to be readable in the first place. Also, the retro look has big chunky knobs with plenty of space. I like cold-war space program and 70s Tektronix as well. Buchla is very similar to the 70s Tektronix aesthetic. Don't get me wrong though, as cool as Buchla stuff is, I'm not that committed to this music thing. I've already jumped in a big greasy vat of absurdity with my modular upgrade.

[foosnark]

The A*B+C does everything else well enough, but it turns out I need way more gain boost than it can deliver, to get the West Pest main output up to the Minibrute's levels. And I was gonna go ahead and sell the Inertia and get a more conventional EG anyway...

I was all set to get a Feedback Pre BX, when I realized it's too deep to fit in the Pod 60.

So after researching my options and getting increasingly frustrated, I just went with the smallest, cheapest, simplest and stupidest modules I could find: York Modular vBST and ADSR.

[WatchTheGuitar]

I’ve also been looking at EGs, but specifically ones with a loop mode as it works really well with modules like Qu Bit Chords for adding stab patterns. The Rides in the Storm FEG caught my eye as it’s cheap, but I wish it wasn’t ADSR and had Maths style AR with shaping instead.

Beyond that and it’s things like the Zadar and Quadigy that are more than I want to spend rn.

[foosnark]

I came really close to grabbing the FEG. I mostly went for the YoMo one because they happened to have that boost module, and I don't feel the need to be too picky since this is just a little extra supplement to the built-in EGs on the semi-modulars.

If I could find a Make Noise Contour that wasn't overpriced just because they're discontinued, I might have gone for that -- to me it's a nice middle ground sort of envelope. After Later Tilt is good too, but I just didn't like its ergonomics and sold mine.

[WatchTheGuitar]

I have a few York Modular modules, they’re cheap and work fine.
The 4hp DV3 dual AR/slew modules are very handy.

[elxsound]

Just ordered 2 of these.

They’re going to come 1 at a time because they just went down to only 1 in stock at time of my purchase, but this will be the new rack. The modules will be moved out from the desk and they can finally place nice together.

I don’t like that there’s two different plugs to fire the thing up, and that the power module is 5hp, instead of 4 but I’ve seen DIY on placing that switch somewhere else if needed.

The bonus is being able to leave patches in, when putting this away.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Robin at Molten Modular did a vid where he modded two Rackbrutes for a performance rig and had power through the side