#213

Shades now comes with white knobs too. Hopefully this means they are warming up and there could be some fully new module from MI in the horizon.

4 Likes
#214

Ah shit I just bought the old one… This new one has drive and hpf as well, which are literally the two things I’ve been agonizing over how to fit in my tiny rack :frowning: guess I’ll set up a reverb account or something haha

1 Like
#215

I’m not a huge fan of the mini attenuator knobs, so there might be others that prefer the original version of Ripples.

5 Likes
#216

Ripples 2020… i dont know how much market space are in filters world. So much interesting beasts. Even for Roland sound there are Jove, G-storm electro clones. And new swiss knife filters like Stereo Dipole

// anyway Im extremely happy to see the news fro MI

1 Like
#217

dang that sucks! i’m not seeing the new version listed anywhere yet even for pre-order, so you might be able to sell it without marking it down much for a little bit.

1 Like
#218

Ripples into Ripples is the new Rings into Clouds? :wink:

3 Likes
#219

Weird to replace the shades bicolor led for two leds. Seems like an odd thing to change a pcb and panel for.

#220

There were also some parts changes as well as the PCB redesign – you can compare schematics on the website.

Though the original Shades was excellent, and I haven’t really noticed a quality difference (I’ve been beta testing this and Ripples). The dual LEDs are a nice touch though.

1 Like
#221

This could very well be to accommodate (this could be the wrong term) people with different kinds of colour blindness. Something I know that Mutable Instruments have been focusing on before.

As far as I know, the different types of colour blindness means that there just isn’t ONE bi-polar colour combo that works for everyone. So this is a reasonable way to do it.

11 Likes
#222

There’s an explanation of this over on the MI forum:

Since Shades is often used for offset application (say: making a bipolar LFO unipolar), the two LEDs make it better to detect slight offsets – it’s easier to detect if the bottom LED is faintly lit, than noticing a different shade of green. And from now on, all analog modules will have this turquoise/pink LED theme.

13 Likes
#223

This is brilliant - and it seems so obvious now it’s been pointed out!

The amount of times I’ve found myself squinting at my offset attenuverters to figure out if it’s truly at 0V or not (be it the Befaco one or the Fonitronik one, in my case - different brands, same principle) makes me happily give up some panel real estate for dual LEDs.

#224

I guess that all makes sense. Refreshing to see improvements made on such a small/cheap module that likely will have little financial impact in the long term.

2 Likes
#225

I’ve been beta testing new ripples for a little bit. The things I like most about it are the slope switch (the 24 db/oct is a little more “tame” to my ears than the 12 db/oct so it’s nice to have a quick control to change that), as well as the level attenuator (great for gain staging and another volume control in your patch for performing). I tend to use the overdriving input, and have it at or near full CW pretty much all the time when I’m using it…it’s not super aggressive (at least on the version I have), I think it just sounds a little more weighty and impactful in a really nice way. If I could describe the character of the filter in general, I’d say it latches on to harmonics really prominently (so you can like sweep an lfo with the resonance up a little and hear all the related notes of your sound you’ve patched in), so if I want that sort of sound, I reach for it.

Just was comparing the three filters I have access to (this, three sisters, er-301 ladder emulation) low passing. First of all, they all sound great to me…there are little differences in how each is “voiced”, but they’re all cool in their own way. Noticed something interesting that is different between ripples and 3 sisters–when ripples self-resonates at the cutoff, you can push the gain of the signal into the filter all you want and it will continue to self resonate. (EDIT: you can take over “parts” of the sound when the gain is veryyyy high and the resonance is all the way up, but at the harmonics that resonance seems to always come through) With 3 sisters, the self-resonant note can be “overcome” by pushing the gain on the signal up high. I’m curious what in the circuit makes them behave differently.

2 Likes
#226

I love this property of Sisters because it lets the input signal persist through my very sloppy feedback patching. Have you tried turning off Ripples’ resonance and then patching external feedback to see if the character is different?

1 Like
#227

no I haven’t, but sounds like a ton of fun! will do.

EDIT: just tried it, opens up a ton of different sounds and effects, thanks for the idea…always a lot of fun to be had with feedback.

With ripples you can get a very hairy sounding filter running feedback back into the overdriving input (when you also have the onboard filter resonance cranked up). With no resonance, it seems to create a square wave frequency…which seems to cause some interesting sync sounds going in to the non-overdriving input…and, in the overdriving input with the same settings and feedback, It’s like I can control the sync-frequency with the input knob at low amounts and at higher amounts it makes really slow square waves…I can get this square wave to like slow clock ranges of time with the filter cutoff all the way down, attenuverter pushing it farther, and in gain all the way up, I have no idea how that’s happening, but it’s awesome, hah! (disclaimer, this is proto hardware, so who knows if this is something that would happen on the production one)

3 sisters in the same patch can do the more grouchy/hairy filter too. It seems to also resonate with no resonance from the panel (quality 12 o’clock)…I’m not able to get that “sync” stuff out of it like ripples. another interesting difference in the circuits!

#228

I’ve usually been using the overdrive input too; that gives the option of cranking up drive or not :slight_smile: I feel like the sound is more “round” somehow with more drive. The resonance on Ripples has a certain character to it that’s kind of edgy as the cutoff is modulated (IMHO) but drive smooths it out.

I’ve done a little bit with feeding back the HP or BP outputs while using the LP output. (The second input makes feedback patching pretty easy…) Depending on which output you use and the slope selector switch, it either reinforces or cancels feedback. Resonance patched that way also isn’t interrupted by a strong input signal.

Sometimes you can get formant sounds very similar to hard sync, if you sweep the filter cutoff with high resonance above the frequency of the input signal.

I kind of like cranking up the resonance knob but then canceling it with out-of-phase feedback. It gives a somewhat different character than just turning down resonance.

3 Likes
#229

I just read the new Ripples manual which notes that the two inputs are mixed together, so a) that’s cool and potentially useful in a small system even without the overdrive, and b) I wonder if the summing has a similar character to Sisters where things can get clipped/overdriven if you’re not careful with gain.

#230

Preordered one of these. I can’t wait to start messing with visual synthesis. I know you can use software, but I think a hardware option will really help with the immediacy, as well as offload the work from the computer

#231

That made me curious, so just now I multed a sine from HD mk3 (about 8Vpp) into both Ripples inputs and put it on the scope. It seems to be a very smooth saturation rather than clipping.

The drive input alone does this to a sine when cranked up (lowpass output with min reso and max freq):

image

(The green trace is Ripples, the red is Tallin cranked up with the switch centered for comparison.).

I didn’t snap a scope shot with the sine multed into both inputs, but it looked mostly like a tall sine, only flattening out a little bit near +/- 10V.

3 Likes
#232

Awesome! The Tallin vs Ripples drive in is one of the comparisons I’m most interested in (I was fretting over how to get all of lpf, hpf, and overdrive into my small case, and I’m excited that ripples may now do it all). Looking at that scope, it looks like the Ripples actually is doing a bit more waveshaping than the Tallin? Would be nice to hear a comparison of you don’t mind.