#1966

Does everyone’s ES-0 get pretty hot almost immediately after it’s turned on. I’ve got mine in a 7U performance case, and I can immediately feel it’s hot just by touching the front of it. I’m already a bit worried about ventilation on the performance case, so I just want to make sure everything’s as expected.

#1968

This isn’t a specific Eurorack question, but I am hoping folks can help me make sure I’m thinking about voltage manipulation in the right way.

Problem I am trying to solve: I have some Buchla & I have some Serge, and I want them to play together better.

Sequencing (so 1v/oct <-> 1.2v/oct) is a non issue for me since I’m using analogue sequencers.

What I’m left with primarily is wanting to send gates & modulation in both directions. Gates are most import, since I am sequencing in both, and I would love for events in one format to trigger events in the other.

My understanding is that the incompatibility is that gates in Serge are 5V; and in Buchla they are 10V. Am I right to think of this primarily as an offset & attenuation problem?

There are of course modules that solve this problem in the Buchla space, but they are expensive for what they provide in my opinion. I no longer have a Euro setup, but given the relative affordability of small Eurorack cases these days, I’m think it might make more sense to get one of those and some attenuators and offset modules and use a format jumbler in-between. I might even have a happy ending kit lying around somewhere.

If anyone else has any specific experience solving this problem I’d love to hear about it, or general feedback about the conclusion I’m coming to is welcome as well :bowing_man:

#1969

Not Eurorack specific but I have a (probably very basic) question about noise floor, attenutation and amplification.

If you attenuate an audio signal which is at level X down to level Y, and then later re-amplify that signal back to level X…

  1. is the noise floor of single Y reduced in comparison to X?
  2. is the noise floor of the signal the same as it was originally after re-amplification?
#1970

It really depends on where the noise is introduced relative to the attenuation and amplification. Usually noise is at a constant level regardless of the level of your signal, so a lower signal level would result in a worse signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Ideally your should run your signal as hot as possible (without introducing unacceptable distortion) during the noisiest parts of your signal chain.

No matter where your worst SNR is in the signal chain, it’s impossible to improve it via attenuation and re-amplification later on.

1 Like
#1971

Thanks for this - to clarfiy, my intention isn’t to attempt to improve SNR via this process, I’m just keen to understand what effect attenuation/amplification actually has on SNR ie- does it make it worse?

#1972

The only added noise would be from the amplifiers themselves. The noise which was already “printed” onto your signal will remain constant relative to the signal.

2 Likes
#1973

Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, but are there any Pulplogic-sized 1U modules for line in? I’m drawing a blank on Modulargrid. I’m currently using 1/4"-to-3.5mm adapters, which is fine but fiddly, so I’d prefer having a nice module to plug straight into.

#1974

Pulplogic themselves seem to have opted to offer a jumbler/adapter, but no actual line-in tile. Which is odd, because they have that Outputs module. Intellijel has it, but I guess that won’t work for you. :thinking:

1 Like
#1975

Ah, that adapter is probably just what I need! (It’s labeled as “utility” on MG, but not “external”, so I was overlooking it.) Pairing that with a gain tile seems like it completes the package.

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#1976

Attenuation or amplification attenuates or amplifies the entire signal, noise and all, and introduces any self noise added by the module/connections involved in carrying out that process. In particular the signal to noise ratio remains virtually the same; only virtually as the self noise I mentioned makes it (probably not discernibly) worse, meaning more noisey.

2 Likes
#1977

hi all, i was wondering if anyone can reccomend a module that converts aux audio to CV. as far as i understand make noise dynamix does this, and the 4MS SMR kind of does. looking for some other solutions!

also, if anyone has any decent/comprehensive guides to a dreadbox utopia i would really appreciate a link. this thing is a lot less intuitive than i hoped >.>

#1978

What you‘re looking for is an envelope follower. MN maths or function are prime candidates and they are both just generally useful modules to have. If you look for envelope follower on modulargrid, you‘ll find a bunch more.
I‘m not sure about the dynamix doing that and the SMR has followers for every band iirc, but I don‘t think they‘d be my first choice if all I wanted was to extract cv from audio.

3 Likes
#1979

I second @dubiousphil on Maths—a good place to start. If you’re planning to work extensively with audio streams you want to extract amplitude envelopes from, you might be able to justify a dedicated module that is either easier to dial in, or offers interesting conveniences. For example, the ADDAC 401 offers not only a VU meter, but handy controls for offsetting and adjusting the extracted CV, plus eight individual gate outputs for each stage of the VU meter. Pretty nifty. The new Percussion Interface from 4ms and Detect-Rx from Steady State Fate are other notable, recent products. If you’re working with the microphones or line level instruments, various “instrument interface” modules, such as the Befaco Instrument Interface v2, have built-in envelope followers, too.

2 Likes
#1980

Hi!
A few questions for those who make one-take songs on modular. How many voices/instruments do you have in your system? Do you use external effects?
Do you have an eurorack mixer module? And an eurorack send/return module? Which ones? Or do you use an external mixer?
Cheers,

#1981

I usually have between 3-5 voices, which are some variation of two mangroves, a brenso and a morphagene plus sometimes pinged filters. Anything else I need usually comes from my ER-301 but most often it covers any drums I throw in. I don’t use any external effects, everything runs through either the erbe-verb, a spring tank, the mimeophon or something inside the 301.

My mixing section is very minimal, a small doepfer A-138s running into the aux ins on a befaco stmix. That goes straight into my interface, although if I want to post-process a single voice I will run that into a separate input. I did recently buy an external 8x8 matrix mixer but I’m still in the process of integrating that.

Here’s the setup (I’m currently waiting on the flux in the lower right hand corner):

modulargrid_1284100
modulargrid_12841001121×1190 377 KB

5 Likes
#1982

Nice setup, mate! Very powerful!

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#1983

I don’t necessarily think of my modular as having a specific number of voices. Typically my recordings average 3-4 voices or so, sometimes just one, sometimes as many as 6. (That includes modular, hardware synths and software synths, though modular is the majority.)

I was using pedals occasionally for a while, but most of my FX are in software, with a few modular effects (delays, Clouds etc.)

I do have some in-rack mixing for feedback loops, single voices comprised of multiple oscillators, wet/dry mix of some processing, etc. but my main mixing is done in the DAW. I use a Tesseract Sweet Sixteen for control, and my interface is a Behringer UMC1820 interface with Expert Sleepers ES-3/ES-6 combo, so that’s 14 inputs available. I use the DAW as mixer, effects host and recorder, but very rarely for sequencing (just simple free-running loops for software synths). I record to a single stereo file rather than individual stems, so mix levels are part of the live improvisation.

3 Likes
#1984

Expert Sleepers ES-3/ES-6 seems a nice combo!

#1985

I think this is an important point. Depending on what you’re specifically trying to do, you might need to piece together n voices, but generally framing a modular system in terms of the number of voices it has (like a slab synth) denies the fluidity and flexibility of a modular.

3 Likes
#1986

It is. It “just works”.

There’s a lot of complaining going on over on MW today about the jacks, which apparently are kind of loose/soft with some cables. There are reports, for example, that Tendrils don’t make a solid connection with Expert Sleepers jacks. (I haven’t had much trouble with Control or TipTop cables.)