Hi everyone. long time no post. in the past few months some amazing things have happened to me, and i can sum most of them up in one word:
Serge.
These modules… wow. I don’t really know what words to use to accurately convey the joy of using these modules. The layouts. The functionality. And the sound… dear lord, the sound. So raw, so fierce and full of character, yet FUNKY. the DUSG is the most funky envelope generator I have ever used. it always has this… groove, personality… this swagger to it that I have never heard anywhere else. the R*S eurorack version’s audio performance rivals that of my dpo and makes my maths quake in fear. That’s not even mentioning the harmonic subdivision capabilities that the Mangrove is so well known for.
The NTO… another wow. The FM depth and response is absolutely ridiculous. Bells, chimes, gongs, anything is possible with clever modulation. And the waveshaping circuit… Modulated at audio rates with multiple oscillators you can get wavetable oscillator like tones out of it. Since the circuit responds to bipolar modulation it’s kind of like a through zero waveshaping circuit.
I could(and will) go on, but I’ll save the rest of my gushing for the serge thread 
I started building Random*Source Serge modules to fund my own personal system and it’s turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. Serge is MY synth. It fits the workflow and patching style I enjoy like a glove. I never would’ve found that out if I hadn’t taken the chance and started building.
So here’s my rack at the moment. the NTOs and DUSGs technically aren’t mine and will be going off to a customer in a few days.
I plan to keep my current case as a studio case, and buy a MN 7u case and skiff for my live performances. Here’s what i’m gonna fill it up with. I can’t decide whether I want to go with 2 renes(rene2 for melodies, rene 1 as a playable modulation sequencer and touch controller) or one rene and a Vector Space.
And here’s the ultimate evoluton of said case. a Black and gold MN shared system 7u, and another 7u of serge and various utilities. Each section represents a voice, and modulation and triggers will be shared between them. the matrix mixer allows for on the fly re-routing and re-patching. with a good drum machine and a poly synth i could perform with something like this for hours.
thoughts & comments? i’d love to hear from you all.