2025: A Year in Gear (What You've Bought or Want to Buy in 2025)

[Shabdahbriah]

4MS meta-module on the way. It's my bday present to myself, not that I need an excuse. It seems to me that it is the modern incarnation of the Nord Modular.

Interesting perspective. I can kinda see that. Wish it had a video out port, if only for iPads, or even phones, to increase the screen real-estate. Happy Birthday.

[Shabdahbriah]

dupe

[Shabdahbriah]

(sigh)

[Shabdahbriah]

(double sigh)

[Shabdahbriah]

Thanks for the heads-up. I hope it continues, as indeed he did say: "first step in this 12 String Iterative Music Project!".

When he got back to me after my submission, to tell me I was "in", he asked a couple of questions, and I informed him I had for a year or so, shared my interest/desire in doing a youtube series of (what amounts to "iterative") collaborations called "OneCableShort" with several fellow KVRaudio-ers and Makenoise fans. So, being encouraged to pursue this "project" has solidified that interest.

Very interested to see how your project shapes up!

Definitely like the name.

ready when ever you are

Oh cool, as I mentioned both of you by (user) name, in my response to him, and that was before I learned you were both "in" also.

[ghettosynth]

4MS meta-module on the way. It's my bday present to myself, not that I need an excuse. It seems to me that it is the modern incarnation of the Nord Modular.

Interesting perspective. I can kinda see that. Wish it had a video out port, if only for iPads, or even phones, to increase the screen real-estate. Happy Birthday.

For me, the absence of a big screen is part of the appeal. I have many of the different Eurorack modules that implement this idea. Each has strengths. The strength here though is not a large screen for in-rack editing. This is very reminiscent of the Nord Modular. With the Nord you could not edit the patches in real time, in terms of changing patch points, at all. However, you could adjust some parameters, although it was a pain.

It's strength was that you could build a complex machine that was reduced to a machine with a simple interface and simple control knobs that manipulated multiple parts of the machine. This allows you to create sub-machines that are a part of your modular rack externally, on a PC, and then learn them easily as a real time machine with controls in fixed places, much like the Nord.

The Nord was the center of my live shows for a number of years. I was on the verge of buying a pair of G2s, which improved on the original in a number of ways, when I pretty much got out of playing live.

If I want knob per function, I think that it's best to just buy the module. So, even though I have rings and clouds in Hector, and shortly in Meta Module, I bought them as standalone modules. I watched the Red Means Recording review of Meta Module and at the end Jeremy stated that it's not the way that he likes to use modular, and I respect that. I think that if you're hoping that it will save money or just give you lots of choices in your modular, well, there's some truth to that, but menu digging sucks on modular. So, for me, it's best use is as a static module that runs a very well defined machine that has had the bugs worked out on the desktop version of VCV. This allows me to create small live rigs that optimize the control/person ratio, which, IMSNHO, is key to creating a compelling live set. The only in-rack editing that I would want to do is to quickly try out a new module (singular) that I want to see if I like, or to tweak a parameter or two for a particular live setting, or, to adjust parameters while working on a machine to avoid a full dev cycle from PC to rack. One has to be careful with that though, as you can't take the patches from the module back to to the desktop, at present, AFAIK.

[vurt]

well, Ive been waiting a week longer than expected for an Oneiroi, because UPS are fecking useless.

Looks like the current iteration of Digital Village aka Music Store are fecking useless too, the delivery I finally got today contained a Roland JD-08.

i now have a oneiroi on the way.

im so easily lead...

i has!!

[justin3am]

Noise Engineering did a demo for LA Synth Club last night and it was a pleasure to have them.
In addition to Mimetic Digitulis, they also showed these little desktop distortion units, which I really liked:

IMG_3958.jpg

They don't have a price point for these but they said they are aiming for a very low price. The sound great IMO and it's a nice form factor for desktop effects.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Will be onto a winner if they can exchange firmware to work as different models like their recent eurorack modules.

[Constructed Identity]

My birthday present to myself was an Artemis.
Sounds:

[justin3am]

Will be onto a winner if they can exchange firmware to work as different models like their recent eurorack modules.

These are all analog distortion, like their small Ruina modules. I think the Super Saturator one is based on the Kith Ruina, the other two are based on common fuzz and overdrive circuits. It sounded like they might be working on a DSP based effect in this format but they didn't say much beyond that they wanted to get these three out later this year or early next year.

[ghettosynth]

I guess that I'm not the target market for those. I can't see the value over having the circuit in a nice little aluminum case that protects the innards. I mean, it's not that hard to put 1/8" jacks on a standard guitar pedal case. If they're based on common fuzz circuits then they're competing with $20 pedals with actual knobs. I get the slight differentiation, the 1/8" jacks and the USB power, but, yeah, ok.

Then again, I'm the guy that will not take a Eurorack case into the wild with a blank space open. Blank panel or unused module, something is going in that space. I think you get there after you've dropped one too many screwdrivers onto exposed circuit boards.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Will be onto a winner if they can exchange firmware to work as different models like their recent eurorack modules.

These are all analog distortion, like their small Ruina modules. I think the Super Saturator one is based on the Kith Ruina, the other two are based on common fuzz and overdrive circuits. It sounded like they might be working on a DSP based effect in this format but they didn't say much beyond that they wanted to get these three out later this year or early next year.

Oh I take it back then, I would have been interested in them as digital swappable pedals.

[vurt]

My birthday present to myself was an Artemis.
Sounds:

happy birthday

[justin3am]

I guess that I'm not the target market for those. I can't see the value over having the circuit in a nice little aluminum case that protects the innards. I mean, it's not that hard to put 1/8" jacks on a standard guitar pedal case. If they're based on common fuzz circuits then they're competing with $20 pedals with actual knobs. I get the slight differentiation, the 1/8" jacks and the USB power, but, yeah, ok.

Then again, I'm the guy that will not take a Eurorack case into the wild with a blank space open. Blank panel or unused module, something is going in that space. I think you get there after you've dropped one too many screwdrivers onto exposed circuit boards.

Yeah, I think they are aimed at people using Pocket Operators, Kastles and the like. Recently there have been a number of folks showing up to our meetups with pedal boards full of those little guys.
I think I understand where they are coming from. I use stomp boxes as table top effects but I can see the desire for a more tabletop friendly format, with buttons intended to be pressed by hands. Nice that you can connect a couple of these to a powered USB hub. They use a TRS jack for the output, with the same signal on both sides and I guess the output is designed so it can drive headphones or a line input. I suppose one of those outputs could be split out to return the output to an input somewhere else in the chain for no-input feedback type stuff.