#1113

Twelve channels total, shared between your arbitrary selection of internal and external sources. ER-301 has sixteen audio-capable inputs, but only four of them have anti-aliasing filters.

#1114

Ok, in practice, the lack of antialiasing filters means what?

#1115

From ER-301 wiki:

you will experience aliasing if your audio contains substantial energy above 30kHz

Since those inputs are all sampled at 60kHz.

1 Like
#1116

looks great, will definetly refer to it if I ever need better setup!

one thing that you probably know about (and I am not sure is worth including, since it falls into option 1.) is simple padded line out module, like Ladik P-520 - for me DB25 was too many channels and space and while P-520 is basically a passive attenuator with a fixed attenuation level, I like having a fixed point, conveniently located at the edge of the case that is always connected to the same channels on a mixer, so I donā€™t have to constantly check which attenuator I am using as out and similarly thereā€™s no confusion which channels on a mixer/interface have to be padded or turned down because they accept modular levels (which is helpful if you have other line level instruments). itā€™s probably also easy to DIY.

1 Like
#1117

Excellent omissionā€”I will add more info about attenuator options. Thanks!

#1118

The ER301 can record internally up to 12 mono tracks of audio or CV coming from:

A) Any of its 4 Gate inputs
B) Any of its 4 audio inputs
C) Any of its 12 CV inputs
D) Any of its 4 audio outputs
E) Anything generated or processed internally on audio or CV chains

1 Like
#1119

I have three small cases and there are a few quality of life tools Iā€™d like to have available to all of them. Iā€™m thinking of a super small case that includes external audio ins, outs, headphone, and MIDI. (Specifically with 5 pin DIN for Octatrack stuff.) Basically this:

image
What else would you include in a ā€œhelperā€ system?

(Side note: I would pay for a standalone, not-needing-to-be-racked box that had audio in / out to modular levels, headphone jack, and a MIDI interface.)

3 Likes
#1120

Iā€™d probably put in a mixer/vca/panner kinda thing? As a personal matter of whats useful for my systems: Iā€™d swap the Ears to something with stereo ins, and shrink the XOH down to a ALM HPO to compensate

Iā€™ve started something kiiiinda similar, but itā€™s my I2C pod (crow, ansible, teletype, just friends)

1 Like
#1121

Good thinking, and Iā€™ve always liked the blurb on the HPO:

Give loved ones, friends and acquaintances a break from your musical ā€˜geniusā€™, the HPO offers a solitary cell for focused creativity impregnable from undeserving non believers.

5 Likes
#1122

You couldnā€™t record audio to gate or CV inputs though, right? So for strictly audio, you would be limited to the 4 audio inputs and the 4 audio outputs, or can you use the gates/cv as audio ins as well?

#1123

If youā€™re talking about recording signals in the human audible range to an audio file format then you would be limited to the 4 audio inputs and the 12 cv inputs (may alias above 30kHz).

If youā€™re talking about recording the signal from any of the inputs to an audio file whether itā€™s audible by humans or not then you can include the gate inputs also.

1 Like
#1124

According to the manual and Wiki page, the CV inputs " ā€¦ can be used to record hiqh-quality audio but you will experience aliasing if your audio contains substantial energy above 30kHz (e.g. pulse and saw waves from analog VCOs). Instead, use the IN1-IN4 inputs to digitize audio that may alias above 30kHz".

The thing is that as the ER-301 is ā€œa sound computerā€ and itā€™s pretty powerful creating sounds, playing and mangling samples, generating voices, ā€¦ etc, so you can actually route all those signals to the OUT jacks but still record internally in separate tracks every single sound chain. And thatā€™s amazing.

If only the ER-301 could also output CV and gates through jacks will be THE MODULE.

4 Likes
#1125

The 301 has 16 audio inputs, I and a lot of other users use it like this all the time it sounds great.

On very important thing to realize about the 301 is that Brian is deliberately under-selling itā€¦

1 Like
#1126

Iā€™m intrigued by this comment. As someone who has been searching for a 301 for a month and checking the store daily, Iā€™m curious in what way Brian is underselling the device!

#1127

Iā€™m not the OP but I think theyā€™re getting at a good point, that Brian isnā€™t looking to give a large list of its myriad capacities and use cases. But rather (like monome) selling the productā€™s strength as an interface with open software configuration and a large amount of user definable function.

So underselling in the sense that all of the potential isnā€™t being shouted at you ā€“ instead it is yours to discover/create. Also he can only make so many because of the realities of small scale operation so underselling avoids inflating demand too far past what can be made.

3 Likes
#1128

Ornament and Crime or Pamā€™s New Workout might be a little robust for a helper pod, but are undeniably helpful modules!

1 Like
#1129

Brian is just such a cool guy, always gentle, humble and polite! Heā€™s really caring about users and taking bugs very seriously. Before I bought one, a friend of mine said ā€œThe 301? I think itā€™s very unstable, did you see the list of bugs?ā€ Looking around at the forum, I didnā€™t see users complaining about bugs, so I bought one, just to learn that itā€™s extremely stable, and Iā€™m always running latest firmware (marked unstable).

Obviously I canā€™t find right now, I seem to remember Brian saying something to the effect that ā€œIā€™d rather have users buy an er-301 and discover how good it is rather than being disappointed because it wonā€™t do this or that, and they feel they had been promised thatā€.

Here are a few snips from the website, that I did manage to find:

there are a few things that you should note before purchasing:

  • There is no manual (yet).** Why? See next point. However there is a very active forum where you can get help and ask questions, as well as a wiki which is slowly growing with new content.
  • The software is still under heavy development** which means frequent updates and bugs. The good news is that typically any bugs found are fixed within a few days.

Please do not purchase the ER-301 only because of something(s) on this list because there is a risk that I might not get all of these features implemented in a time-frame that is useful to you. I will work hard (but not to the point where I destroy my health or my love for modular) and hopefully the upcoming SDK will alleviate some of this time risk but it is still a very real possibility that some of the items on this list will never be realized.

2 Likes
#1130

Totally agree ā€¦ For me there are very few brands in the market that do things in a different way. And they sell modules that after years can do a lot more things than when you purchased them. Brands that try to create an echosystem with other makers and users and push the boundaries of a single device to new levelsā€¦ And brands that doesnā€™t take the well known strategy of MKI, MKIi, MKIII and so on every year or so and design their products with a long term visiĆ³n.
Thatā€™s why I think Monome and Orthogonal Devices are differentā€¦

7 Likes
#1131

Thatā€™s a gamechanger. Canā€™t wait to try this out.

#1132

@grey asked if I could share my impressions of the Evaton AModulator over in the Show Us Your Modular System thread and I figured it makes the most sense to put it here in case other folks are looking for thoughts on it.

I have mixed feelings about it so far. It does and sounds like what youā€™d expect it to for the most part, but it has some frustrating behavior.

It really does sound like your audio is coming from a distant radio station, but in order for that to happen, you need to have a way to hold your antenna in a precise space where the Nomad will pick it up correctly, and you have to be very careful where your body and hands are. It seems to want your hands to be floating a few inches from the faceplate for the signal to be discernible but not too high fidelity. If you touch the faceplate, the signal improves in quality to the point where it sounds like the broadcast is much closer, almost no RF noise comes through, and the audio is just a bit distorted. You can also get it to do this by laying the Nomadā€™s antenna across the AModulator faceplate. The more you increase the AModulatorā€™s broadcast gain and the Nomadā€™s RF gain, the more intense the distortion will become and it sounds pretty cool.

This leads to an issue with the frequency shifting behavior though. If you touch the faceplate with your hand or antenna, frequency shifting doesnā€™t work anymore. Instead, the second you nudge the Nomadā€™s tuning, the audio signal is replaced by a very obnoxious sounding carrier wave. I would have liked to be able to get frequency shifts to occur when the audio is clearer, but it is only audible when you have your hands and antenna away from the faceplate, and the signal is harder to hear among the noise.

And my biggest gripe of all is with the Nomadā€™s tuning. It will constantly drift downward for about an hour and a half before it becomes stable enough to hold a frequency. So if you plan to use it to transmit audio thatā€™s more than a few seconds in length, youā€™ll have to turn on your system long before you plan to work. This is a huge problem for me since I have limited hours I can actually work on music during the day and now Iā€™ll have to factor this lead time into any session that I want to put the AModulator to use.

I think Iā€™m going to keep it and use it, but itā€™s not going to completely replace the other methods of simulating radio broadcasts Iā€™ve been usingā€“it just isnā€™t reliable and flexible enough. One thing Iā€™m very curious about is seeing how my proper shortwave receiver picks up the AModulatorā€™s signal, but itā€™s out of commission at the moment. If that sounds good, Iā€™ll just take the Nomad out of the equation and record things through a proper radio since all my issues really come down to the Nomad rather than the AModulator.

Also, itā€™s really fun to put the AModulator/Nomad in a delay feedback loop. You get degradation from the RF noise and the general signal loss and frequency drift, and itā€™s just cool that your feedback loop is traveling through the air by radio waves at one point in your chain!

EDIT: Got my shortwave receiver working and it does an excellent job of picking up the AModulatorā€™s signal once you get the antenna within a couple inches of its faceplate. Sounds great and has no drift so that will definitely be my method for simulating radio broadcasts going forward.

1 Like