Ooh, I like This Modular Rack...

[ghettosynth]

it just feels "feck!" spending nearly a tenner on 3 inches of cable

I m starting to get used to it that everything modular is expensive.
I m getting used to it that somewhat decent a model cost 300 euro and upwards.
That isn t cheap.

You can get a simple synth for that money, and in the case of Behringer actually a fully featured desktop synth.

Indeed. Also though, I think that you should think carefully about what matters to you. It's very easy to fall into the trap of "oh well, it's all expensive, but it's great so it's worth it," or, "I can get that feature for less with <some cheaper knockoff>." Both statements have some truth to them. Sometimes it's worth it to save money, sometimes it's not.

So, sometimes, that sexy $300 is just a waste of money, to you, and you should go for the cheap version because it will get the job done. Other times the engineering and detail that go into the more expensive version may very well be worth it to you. If you work at striking a balance, it seems a little less crazy than if every module in your rack is the uber-module. Or, the alternative, every module in your rack is cheap and it's STILL thousands of dollars. The Behringer 55 is a lot of synth but, when not on sale, it's still $3800 and it's nothing but cheap as chips modules, not a boutique module in the lot.

[Stefken]

it just feels "feck!" spending nearly a tenner on 3 inches of cable

I m starting to get used to it that everything modular is expensive.
I m getting used to it that somewhat decent a model cost 300 euro and upwards.
That isn t cheap.

You can get a simple synth for that money, and in the case of Behringer actually a fully featured desktop synth.

Indeed. Also though, I think that you should think carefully about what matters to you. It's very easy to fall into the trap of "oh well, it's all expensive, but it's great so it's worth it," or, "I can get that feature for less with <some cheaper knockoff>." Both statements have some truth to them. Sometimes it's worth it to save money, sometimes it's not.

So, sometimes, that sexy $300 is just a waste of money, to you, and you should go for the cheap version because it will get the job done. Other times the engineering and detail that go into the more expensive version may very well be worth it to you. If you work at striking a balance, it seems a little less crazy than if every module in your rack is the uber-module. Or, the alternative, every module in your rack is cheap and it's STILL thousands of dollars. The Behringer 55 is a lot of synth but, when not on sale, it's still $3800 and it's nothing but cheap as chips modules, not a boutique module in the lot.

Hear hear.

[SHall1000]

It all comes down to choices. My cheap option so far looks like this for €1081

So I thought I forget about the money and have fun.


And €1829 isn’t that much more

[ghettosynth]

If I were getting the maths I'd leave off the triplet. The quadra looks cool, but then you only have one ADSR in your system. Assuming that you're not pressing the Disting into service for that. I would also consider a narrower dual VCA to keep things in balance with what you have there. Even though you can use a lot of VCAs, it takes some experience to see all of the ways that you can use them. Of course, you're giving up the Wasp filter, which has unique character.

If I were giving myself advice, which I'm sure that I wouldn't follow, I would advise myself to get the rack, the Disting ex, because you really can't go wrong with that, the Maths, and then I would play with that with the 2600 for some weeks, months even.

[SHall1000]

If I were giving myself advice, which I'm sure that I wouldn't follow, I would advise myself to get the rack, the Disting ex, because you really can't go wrong with that, the Maths, and then I would play with that with the 2600 for some weeks, months even.

Definitely an approach worth considering although I haven’t got my head around the Maths yet. Not sure how I would use it. Needs some thought experiment time.
Does anyone else lie awake at night planning patches in their head?

[ghettosynth]

If I were giving myself advice, which I'm sure that I wouldn't follow, I would advise myself to get the rack, the Disting ex, because you really can't go wrong with that, the Maths, and then I would play with that with the 2600 for some weeks, months even.

Definitely an approach worth considering although I haven’t got my head around the Maths yet. Not sure how I would use it. Needs some thought experiment time.
Does anyone else lie awake at night planning patches in their head?

Maths is a quad attenuverter mixer with two slope generators and some additional feature outputs. It's not half as clever as its name would have you believe, but, it's really flexible.

Watch this video from loopop, he breaks it down clearly. It's a genuinely useful module which, at the risk of sounding like a Make Noise fanboy, will be super useful in any semi-enhancement rack. In some sense, you can think of it like an analog disting. It does many things well and covers a lot of basic ground. You can use it as LFOs, simple envelope generators, an interesting slew rate limiter, a mixer, four attenuverters, and some other things as well.

[Stefken]

If I were giving myself advice, which I'm sure that I wouldn't follow, I would advise myself to get the rack, the Disting ex, because you really can't go wrong with that, the Maths, and then I would play with that with the 2600 for some weeks, months even.

I ll be starting off pretty much that way.
I will get the Arturia Rackbrute 6U, the wasp and the disting ex for starters which are all quality and a good bang for you buck imo. (The 6U will have plenty of room for ventilation that way ).

Then i ll experiment with these and also see how e.g. the hydrasynth will work in this scenario. If the hydrasynth doesn t work out, i ll sell it off and get some quality modules instead...

Pretty sure that filter 8 is going to end up in my rack, but for the Roland filter I guess I will take my chances on the Behringer 121 dual VCF. (As Ghetto said, you have to decide where you really want to go for high quality and where you ll go for basic quality). ....

As for Maths, i m not sure how that would work in my workflow (yet). When the need arises, i will decide but i m not going to integrate it because everybody says you need a Maths ( + I find their modules overpriced ).

[Stefken]

On a sidenote, any fans/experienced people of Joranalogue here?

Their modules are deep and i always like things that are deep (no sausy pun intended)

[dashel]

Thoughts on Studio Electronics Tonestar 2600 vs Tonestar 8106? The 2600 is a good bit cheaper used and they're the same price new, is the filter on the 8106 worth the price premium in any way?

[Stefken]

This is my insipration module btw.

This is all stuff that i DON T have, but that caught my eye.

My inspiration module.jpg

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2195685

.

[ghettosynth]

That pseudo-serge stuff gets really expensive. I was cleaning up and found some old schematics that I had used to make up boards for a 1973 serge oscillator. I have no idea why, I don't even remember doing it, but I went the whole nine yards, except, of course, ordering the boards. At some point I was very much into the idea of a Serge synth. I'm over that now. A few bits here and there perhaps.

I see your dreams are about $6k. It doesn't take long to before it adds up!

[elxsound]

I’m also assuming that you would likely choose between Squid Samples and QD Quad Drum. There are places where they don’t overlap, but for the sake of staying productive (especially in the beginning) I would narrow it down to one of them… OR, consider an external sample module (like a Digitakt as an example).

[Stefken]

I see your dreams are about $6k. It doesn't take long to before it adds up!

No, this is not my dreamsynth. See it more as a moodboard of sorts...

There are e.g. 5 wavefolders in there of which i would only choose one. The Overfolder is my favorite but pretty hard to get.

I like the sound of the BIA but this in a digital device. It is code. You can have it in plugin form (so unlimited instances ) for 50 dollars. One hardware unit is 400 bucks.
So, it s in there as not to forget about it, but this is very difficult to justify.

Morphagene, 600 bucks.

The Bloom does interest me and the price is reasonable but probably a Keystep (pro) would be a better option...

[foosnark]

On a sidenote, any fans/experienced people of Joranalogue here?

I've owned Filter 8 and Compare 2. In general: very solidly built, mostly great design and layout and knob feel... and annoyingly bright LEDs. (On my Compare 2 I stuffed wads of bubble wrap between the LEDs and the plastic windows on the panel to tone it down a little bit.)

Filter 8 is decent in terms of features. The filter character is really vanilla IMHO, though the phaser output can be nice, and there's good potential for self-patching.

When considering Filter 8 it's worth it to look into Schlappi Engineering Angle Grinder though. Its marketing as an oscillator confuses people, but internally it's a very similar state variable filter design to the Filter 8. It just sounds much sweeter to my ears. There are 4 outputs instead of 8, but the addition of waveshapers and a slightly different feedback path that allows it to go from pure filter to pure oscillator with some weird chaotic behavior in intermediate settings. The waveshapers gave the oscillator a nice, modulatable variety of character and also can spice up the filter. (Though I sold it too, after I got Blades and Katowice.)

Compare 2 is pretty good overall. I found it a little confusing to work with at first -- like sensory overload from the bright, rapidly blinking LEDs but not as clear as watching inputs and outputs on a scope. But I eventually got the hang of it.

Personally, I found I just wasn't using it much. I gave it an extra chance, specifically spending some time digging into it and explored what it could do for me -- stereo PWM, using it to control a switch at audio rate, using it to create patterns of gates based on an LFO, etc. All cool things, and yet in practice it's not stuff I found myself reaching for. When I want a simple comparator for a patch, I can use Teletype if not at audio rate, or do it in Bitwig (though with round trip latency if I need to take it back out to hardware).

[ghettosynth]

When I want a simple comparator for a patch, I can use Teletype if not at audio rate, or do it in Bitwig (though with round trip latency if I need to take it back out to hardware).

Are you talking about Monome's (discontinued but open hardware) Teletype? Ok, after reading some of your patch notes I'm pretty sure that it is. Can you elaborate on how flexible/dynamic/easy to use it is? It's not that hard of a build, but, it's enough work and it seems like it might be a bit to close to other livecoding things that I find annoying. Do you/can you use it like something of a more dynamic PAMS/Disting?