Morphagene Patch & System Ideas

[Ithacus]

As Morphagene now tracks v/8 perhaps a manual octave controller (or precision adder) might do the trick?

Something like a Beasts Chalkboard (which is a very affordable and handy module in general)?

[ThanosF]

Guys a tip for those who having trouble with setting up the input gain on the Morphagene. Set it up once with a modular source that you use often. Then never auto- level again but use an external gain module that can amplify weaker signals like the Mutable Ears module. For hot signals that clip see if there’s a way to reduce their volume in your system. Lots of modules have volume controls for inputs or outputs. I don’t have any issues for the last 2 years with my Morphogene and it works great with anything I put in.

[909one]

Beasts Chalkboard

Ah yes, I could see this working well. Just got me thinking that I could send one of the voltage sources of Maths through a quantizer (I have a Penrose) and this perhaps could work as well.

[kveye]

To me Arbhar looks like Clouds V2, but done by instruo:)

[kveye]

You press the pitch knob while turning to switch octaves

[casualdecay]

I thought I remembered hearing that somewhere but looked in the manual and didn’t see it. Thanks for the reminder!

[robbbiecloset]

Has anyone checked out this new Instruo Arbhar?

Mine arrived yesterday. I am in the middle of packing to move houses (and cities) so I haven’t much time with it yet, but early impressions are very positive.

I’ve had and sold both the neb and morph. I find Arbhar to be immediately easier to play than either (when it comes to both interface and finicky things like leveling on morph).

So far highly recommended!

[Ithacus]

Treated myself to a 4MS pod and the new Instruo/Divkid Ochd LFO.

Pared with the Mimeophon this is my compact, portable, take on the new Make Noise ‘Tape Centre’ system.

Should be fun

[SimonKirby]

Has anyone checked out this new Instruo Arbhar? Its not out yet but its tempting to consider. It seems like a more revised version of the Morphagene, it has separate pots for input gain and also a circuit that compresses in a pleasing way when the gain is too hot, like a tape machine preamp, so you don’t get an ugly distortion when it hits too hard.

I have the Arbhar and love it so far. Very very pleasing to play with - they seem to have spent a lot of time play testing it, and it really shows! I also have morphagene and clouds, and for my uses (live processing of vocals and other parts of the case) Arbhar replaces morphagene most closely sonically. I think where morphagene shines is with pre-organised reels, which you can’t really replicate with Arbhar. Arguably, arbhar could also make my clouds redundant, but I just love clouds’ hack ability and open source nature, so finding it very hard to say goodbye to!

Couple of points about Arbhar to bear in mind: it has a mono input only, and the way it handles stereo output is not ideal in my opinion (the dry signal comes through out of phase on the two outputs, which is a very weird design choice). So, if you want something to be part of a stereo signal chain like the recent Make Noise modules, that’s worth thinking about.

[eblomquist]

I love this little box!

How do you like the Ochd? That’s really attractive…

[bjarlstedt]

That looks like a treat! I’ve made something similar but mine is more an addition to the bigger system next to it. My hope is of course to use it as a stand alone system too, but I think I’ll miss both something like Ears and Ochd in mine.
How do you like the Startup?

[petesasqwax]

This is something that makes an alarming amount of sense to somebody who has no modular, does not wish to dive into modular but has a very strong interest in a Morphagene and the Tape & Microsound approach!

[Ithacus]

Cheers guys!

Excited to get this built. The one thing I was hoping I could fit in is battery power (e.g. Polyend Anywere), but I can’t see a way to make it work and get the line input and headphone output that I would like, and that would facilitate a ‘self contained’ system.

@eblomquist Not received the Ochd yet but I will let you know. It certainly looks promising (the CV control is the vital one for me).

@bjarlstedt Yes that was my intent; I can easily integrate it with my larger system (Morph’ and Mimeo tend to get used as ‘send’ type fx treatments by me… for better or worse).

But I also have the option with Ears and Startup to uncouple it from my big system (and more importantly music room) and have a mobile little sampling/mulching/processing station. Startup is a great module, but only really makes sense to me for compact systems like this; it even has a stereo line in (which I’ve hardly used previously).

Morph’ is always more interesting to me processing acoustic instruments, so uncoupling it from a large system/case makes a lot of sense. I can see a lot of people have done similar previously in this thread.

With this system I should also be able to use Startup to sync an external drum machine/synth etc. (I’m thinking Volca’s) for even more fun.

[909one]

This is good to know, but annoying about the stereo and out of phase dry issue. So having gone from the Nebulae to the Morphagene, there’s certain things that are better about each, but I couldn’t afford both. I don’t think I’m going to make another jump from the Arbhar just yet as I’d have to sell the Morphagene first.
The biggest thing that annoys me about Morphagene is the really squirly adjustment back to the root pitch, and having to search all over for the octaves. I wish there was a firmware option that would allow it only dial in the root and the octaves, as I rarely ever use anything else. The Nebulae had this feature and it was extremely helpful.

[_mark]

I wish there was a firmware option that would allow it only dial in the root and the octaves

This would be amazing, and surely easy in firmware.

Ive been using muxslicer to swith between these, but it’s a lot of hp just for this!

[Fedor]

I’ve asked them about locking the pitch changes to octaves on mw and via email, but there was no reply to either. I guess we all should ask them to indicate demand.

[ElectricaNada]

Be very careful. Morphagene was the gateway drug for many of us.

[petesasqwax]

I think depth year may prove to be a lifesaver on this front (but only for just under 12 months… and counting down)

[909one]

Yes. 100% I wonder how we’d get through to them about it? They are definitely on the forums but I’m guessing separating normal forum complaining with a general feature request is something that would be needed. Does MN already have a feature request thread somewhere?

PS… This was one of the other nice things about the Nebulae, the code is readily available so if you had the desire or knowledge you could go in a change it…

[SimonKirby]

If you have teletype or similar you could use that to send the right voltage perhaps? Or if you use the new 1v/oct feature in the firmware, any pitch cv source would do. I use the disting precision adder mode for this kind of thing quite a bit. Snapping more easily to octaves in the dial would be better of course…