Thought this module deserved its own thread. I’ve just got one this week and while Jason’s tutorial video is immensely helpful, I do wish there was a manual of some sort.
Perhaps we could compile some knowledge here and share our experiences with the module.
My first “issue” was that I thought that my lower oscillator symmetry trimmer was broken, but it turns out I had the symmetry routing on without knowing it. A friend provided me with this image that Jason sent him:
He also mentioned that his Cs-L had some bleed from the top oscillator to the final/wavefold output of the lower oscillator. I can confirm that on my unit, but it shouldn’t be present in newer ones (mine is from 6/18 or so). It’s somewhat slight, I’m not sure I want to send it in yet unless it bothers me.
Which ones specifically? There’s the two for wavefold cv and two for symmetry. All of mine seem pretty normal. Jason wrote me yesterday saying that they’re calibrated differently for each oscillator because they each use a different core. That said, mine seem to be behaving normally. I did write him again to ask about the bleed, I’ll report back here if he has a solution.
The wavefold CV. When you actually put CV in, I needed to be very gentle on the attenuverter not to square off the waveform completely (according to both my ears and the Mordax data.
This kind of makes sense though, I think. If you want to use this as a kind of VCA, you’d start from zero. But I was starting from a sine (say 50% up on the slider) and trying to get little sweeps of folding. But it’s quite hard to keep it subtle here.
I’m going to drop Jason a note to check but haven’t had the chance as yet (which is odd, as I’ve managed to post on this forum…). This could well be by design.
Yeah i‘ve got a seashell-what a crazy module! One cool trick from Jason is to patch your pwm‘s into the 4 quadrant multiplyer, you’ll get very vocal/watery sounds. I‘m a bit stuck with hardsyncing and the 2octave down sub, this sounds so powerful! I started to make duophonic patches with different melodies and have 1osci change timbre of the other. But the best is to freewheel/tweak timbres with the matrix and not have to tune it to other Modules. Like this the Cs-l is a great module to learn complex oscillatons-i love that! I dont think i have the bleed and my Cs-l comes from the same period.
naturarerum on muffwigger posted a manual they started putting together in lieu of an official one.
Anyone come across any other detailed guides to the Cs-L besides Jason’s video? Mostly trying to wrap my head around the modulation bus and the video not having timestamps makes it difficult to use as a resource for quick questions while playing around.
For those who have had the Cs-L for a while, what do you think about its usability?
Specifically, is the “hidden” nature of modulation assignment (and sometimes, controls physically dislocated from their associated other controls) an issue after getting used to it? Looking in from the outside, it seems like a weakness of the UI, compared to say a DPO.
(I had an HD mk2 for a while and it had similar “hold this and press that” to assign the mod bus, but it was a simpler one-way mod bus and had dedicated LEDs to show the routing. The only real annoyance with it was losing state on shutdown.)
You’re right in that there’s the weak spot of the CS-L’s UI. how much of an issue it is, is up to the user. I never learned what each button routes, but looking at the community manual posted above, there’s three things to remember and I’ll try and do so (under the Internal Modulation headline).
The oscillator has A LOT going on, but that routing thing is the only opaque part in my opinion. I can see this rewarding exploration for a very long time, unless of course you don’t like the basic sound. I can recommend this oscillator, I like the breadth of sounds on offer - it’s not ’fuzzy’ like a furthrrrr or much like a DPO in sound but its own creature.
I’ve been using the Cs-L as my main oscillator for ~6 months. It took a while to learn which buttons toggled which routing state, but now I don’t have an issue. It is worth mentioning that it’s the only module I own with hidden state like that, so it wasn’t competing with other modules for attention.
It helps that I absolutely love the it! The Cs-L is a quirky oscillator (the wave folders in particular took some time to get a feel for since they’re exponential) but it sounds great and the cross modulation makes some really fun noises.
I’ve had the Cs-L since it was released, and have no issues with the control layout or modulation routing. I had to watch Jason’s CS-L video three or four times (and freeze on the routing diagrams) to get the modulation routing controls down, but I find it straightforward in use. Having used the Sputnik CO and DPO, I’d say the CS-L is slightly more complex, but only because it offers some additional options. Even if you had absolutely no idea about the actual routing, you can easily switch through the routings and see how things sound.
I let go of a couple of complex oscillators in my recent consolidation, on the theory that ER-301 covers TZFM and wavefolding very well (which it does). But I’m starting to feel like I miss the general “shape” and architecture of a complex oscillator.
One possibility is just set up something a little closer in the ER-301 itself, instead of the “simple complex oscillator” unit I built. Separate channels for the two oscillators, and another for the waveshaper, with some convenient cross-modulation ready to go. That’s my next step.
But unless that’s wildly successful, I expect I’ll be shuffling things to prioritize a DPO or Cs-L later in the year. Some irrational part of me is infatuated with the DPO though I’ve barely touched one in person, but the more flexible Cs-L seems pretty exciting too.
DPO and CSL sounding very different from the cores though, while the DPO has been covered in a lot of videos, the CSL hasnt.
To me the DPO has that magic MN mid growl like for example the 0Coast has as well. Instantly recognisable and rewarding in a mix.
The CSL has a great allover fullspectrum clean sound. What really is spectacular on the CSL are the basic synth things you‘d want, eg. a saw with a 2octave down square. Or hammering an envelope into the waveshapers for that ‚klonk‘ sound. This will always be really big and ‚classic‘. Quirky is a good way to describe it, when you start to crossmodulate it. You can get lost pretty quickly but there are ways to control the module. In searching for a new timbre for example, you can engage the softsync feature and this will help you be in tune quicker. Another real easy thing to remember is to start out with the basic idea of which is the carrier and which is modulator…when this concept is fully grasped, you can of course inverse roles on the CSL.
There‘s a video up of Jason Instruo gigging Schneiders Laden. There you have the Instruo Sound in full Music Quality-i love it, big and intimidating
I owned both DPO and Cs-L for quite a while and really could not make up my mind on which to keep. They really do sound quite different, and have different approaches to workflow.
Ultimately I actually sold both, but if I had to get one again I think it would be the DPO. Not only did I prefer the workflow, but the sound of the oscillators just really appealed to me, despite the Cs-L possibly being the more full-featured of the two.
(Moderators note: By request, this topic was split into Complex Oscillators, posts that were more generally about complex oscillators are now in that topic. If you feel anything was moved in error please flag the post and choose “Something Else” to let us know)
Any patching suggestions for the Cs-L? I seem to have a hard time getting to a good starting point with this thing. Others have done amazing things but, for some reason, this module make me feel like a moron.
). This could well be by design.
The Cs-L is a quirky oscillator (the wave folders in particular took some time to get a feel for since they’re exponential) but it sounds great and the cross modulation makes some really fun noises. 
