Haha, gritty’s part of the reason why I like it so much!
LOTS of gain to have here. There’s so much opportunity for amplitude modulation, or really any and all modulation. Can also be beneficial to use as an effects send if you use split L + R as dry and wet.
Shameless self promotion - I have a few Ladik modules for sale in a trade thread, including I/Os and VCA.
Ladik modules are built well and VJ is great. I would suggest everyone who’s interested in his designs email him about the jack placement - he seems to be very receptive to feedback.
If you buy it second hand make sure it’s not from the first production run, it had an annoying hardware bug where moving the volume would change the pan as well (or the other way around can’t remember). Apparently they fixed it on later runs.
I have it and like it a lot. As long as you’re careful with the trim pots up top, it is clean (otherwise a bit gritty as noted below). I use it as as a 4-in, 2 out mix and am happy with having the faders
Disclaimer: my experience doesn’t come from owning it but rather trying it out at a store. For it’s size, what it offers is great. But one of the (non-essential) features that really drew my to it was the scanning in combination with panning. I intended to use that for very subtle effects. However, doing so is impossible because there is a “step” at the beginning of the scanning curve, when a channel starts being affected by it: it jumps from 0 gain to some gain, which is really frustrating.
If I remember correctly also the faders are something like a gain offset — fader at bottom doesn’t mean the channel is closed (unless the top pot is at minimum), which is something I’m not a fan of.
I would have really liked to like it because the specs and sound are great, but I don’t. I’m dawn more and more towards RxMx for it’s butter smooth scanning and flexible routing, although I’ll have to cover panning from another angle.
It’s big and it’s pricy, but the new ADDAC stereo mixer has every feature you could possibly want:
http://www.addacsystem.com/product/addac800-series/addac807
I suppose that makes it the opposite of a minimal mixer…
I have an idea for a minimal mixer but I’m not sure if it exists or could exist.
Basically:
I just finished building the eurorack version of the Uraltone mixer. They are located a few blocks away from my home so I got it to show support. I also have their spring reverb.
All my other modules are away (except for one VCO for testing) so no demo available. It has a lot of functionality for the price.
Started assembling the uraltone. Not too bad a build with one caveat. All the instructions are in Finnish, so been Google translating. Also the build guide is for the standalone version not eurorack, so I am stuck guessing which resistors go in the section not on the build guide. Have msgd them for clarity.
Aside from that, the PCB is really well labelled and matches up with the build guide (save for the section mentioned above)
Send me a message if you need better translations from Finnish than Google offers. =) Also, my friend has built the stand-alone version, I can ask him also if needed.
I have a day this weekend when the house is wife and child free so going to get it done. It looks relatively straight forward. If you want I can send through the documentation if you’d like to have a look first?
I also like the idea of a module with plenty of inputs and inputs, controlled by a grid. I have something similar. I thought I could post it here, in case it might interest someone. So… for info: I’ve built a matrix mixer with a Monome and an ES-8 and a Raspberry Pi (it has some additional functions, it’s not only a mixer), I’m using it everyday it’s working great now.
Here’s the layout at the moment:
Page 1 -> Matrix mixer for 12 inputs and 16 outputs
Page 2 -> Input attenuators
Page 3 ( A B C D) -> Sends gain
Page 4 -> Midi faders (used to control the volume of my synths)
Page 5 -> CV or Midi polyphonic Quantizers (“beta” state, it’s just a quantizer inspired by Uscale and Qubit Chords, I’m using the CV capabilities of the ES-8, not just the audio)
To be continued… There’s no Panning page but that would be easy to add.
And things accessible on every pages:
It’s a work in progress, many pages are still free. Of course, it’s made for an ES-8, the software lives in a Pi3 (pureData), etc… I had to create something with the things I have (especially the Monome 256 which was not used anymore)
Here’s a proof of concept posted last month (many things have changed now), at that time the channel numbers were reversed but that gives an idea of the project. (and the reason why I built this setup is explained in the description ^^)
And now it looks like that https://www.instagram.com/p/BeyYy5DFZ0X/?taken-by=nordseele_
Edit : The thing boots up faster than my Mac and recalls the latest console state, that was my goal: a kind of dawless standalone setup
Full setup:
(Audio)
8 audio inputs from UAD (or any other interface with ADAT output) to ES_8 via ADAT
++ 4 inputs directly on the ES_8 module
8 outputs to ES_8
++ 8 more outputs to ADAT (I only use two of them at the moment to send a mix to an Apollo Twin, I wish I could find a standalone recorder with ADAT inputs)
(Midi)
The pi is also connected to an Iconnectmidi4+
And a Softstep 2
Bluetooth over midi for communication with Roli blocks
this is amazing! I don’t know why the idea of RPi/ES-8 hadn’t come to mind before, but this is pretty inspiring!
Did you have any trouble getting the various hardware/software elements working together?
Thanks ! No, it was quite easy. I had to learn a bit of Linux, but a post on this forum really helped me to set the Raspberry Pi up. The ES-8 is USB class compliant and is recognized directly by Alsa on Raspbian stretch. Serialosc and Puredata are also easy to install on a Pi. The latency is quite low.
Edit: It took one day to install the Raspberry pi and two weeks to create the puredata app (This part is still a work in progress)
Not to derail… but I wish I could find something like the ES-8, but not Eurorack: I’d love to bundle it in an enclosure with my Rpi, powered from same source (so only +5v), and have the inputs/outputs be nominal line level, not Eurorack level. Sure, I could just get some giant Focusrite interface… but so big… separate box…
I don’t know if something like this exists… I know how to power a raspberry pi in a Eurorack case. In a small case with a small power brick and a Terminal Tedium to host the Pi (around 50 $), that would be the same power source. Perhaps it is another way of doing that. I don’t need to attenuate the levels of line inputs sent to the ES-8, it’s acting like a regular audio interface. What would be missing in this setup are 8 audio inputs, since an ES-3 (via ADAT) would only add 8 physical outputs. Well, that was just an idea 
Edit: Or would an ES-6 add 8 inputs via ADAT ? it works for audio
What about a minidsp module?
https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidspkits/8-x-in-8-x-out
EDIT: Caveats being:
Pluses being:
