Syncussion SY-1 - Walkthrough and extended demo

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The Behringer Syncussion clone is a simple beast. It creates mighty bass drum hits with no effort and has beautiful noise. That in itself is something I find puzzling: If this cheap clone can so easily create big hits why are cheap drum machines always so dinky and gutless?

Here I do some lengthy noodlings with the SY-1 Syncussion with one channel through the Zen delay and the other through the Echolocator. This duo is really growing on me. The Zen has some good grit and saturation, while the Echolocator has various tricks with its freeze, shimmer and filter.

About halfway through I digress into a basic overview of the controls, then it's back to noodling. The DB-01 does a good job with sequencing although the original plan was to drive everything with the LXR-02. But horrors! I discovered that the MIDI out functionality on the LXR-02 is totally broken - confirmed by Erica Synths. Hoping for a fix on that soon. In the meantime the DB-01 will have to battle on as my sequencer.

If there's one thing I could change on the SY-1 it would be to add clock sync to the LFO. For me unsynced LFOs are a huge miss. Otherwise it's an excellent little synth. Two of them mounted in a Eurorack case could easily make for a powerful drum voice solution.

As usual, no DAW processing of any kind, it's all what you see.

0:00 Setup explained
2:01 Noodle soup
2:58 Elephant song
4:44 Tin shed
6:29 Weather system
8:08 Interface walkthrough
18:05 Robot bird
19:40 Corky
21:46 Trainride
22:36 Punching bag
26:19 Subby McSub

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Behringer Murf Box on synth (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Behringer's BM-15M Murf Box - now renamed as the BM-15M Resonant Filter - is a clone of the Moog Moogerfooger MF-105 MuRF. I bought this pedal thinking it might be a more interesting replacement for my Boss SL-2 Slicer. Why did I want to replace the Slicer? Because the Slicer has a few things that slightly irritate me. In hindsight, a pitiful motivation since the Murf Box has an equal number of small irritating things.

First, if you bypass the effect you only get sound out of one channel. That's irritating. It's huge, the knobs are hard to read, I don't love the EQ, the way the envelope works is odd, there's no compression on the drive, and you can't adjust the LFO without an expression pedal. Not that I entirely blame Behringer, I also blame Moog since these are all present on the OG Murf. But of course all the actual blame rests with me for not being satisfied with the Boss Slicer.

Not that the Murf sounds bad. It's a rather interesting, gritty, unusual and reasonably versatile machine. I think rather my expectations were pumped up to the same artificial heights as the OG Moogerfooger reputation and prices.

Here the Murf is receiving a MIDI clock and the expression pedal is connected to the LFO rate. The volume varies a lot depending on the EQ, mix and drive settings - and seems to fade away a bit toward the end of the video - but I thought it best to keep these as-is to show real usage.

Originally I was going to do a comparison between the Murf Box and the Boss Slicer with lots of talk. But knowing that hearing me talk too much annoys some people, and that merely showing a Behringer product will guarantee a percentage of automatic dislikes, I thought it wiser to start with a plain audio demo. I'll do a comparison with the Slicer very soon (unless everyone hates this video) since I think there's a lot of overlap and interesting design contrasts between the pedals.

0:00 Intro ditty
1:00 Twiddlings
3:30 Drone
4:06 EQ fun
4:56 Envelope
5:50 Many tweakings

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Dark DB-01 drones with 100% resonance (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"This began as a lengthy blather and demo of the Boss RT-2 ensemble pedal. That's the pedal designed as a Leslie effect emulation promising gorgeous swooshes and modulation. But as Bilbo Baggins warned (if I recall the quote correctly): "It's a dangerous business Frodo, switching on your synth. You play a single note, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

So here all that remains of my sumptuous and detailed RT-2 demo is a rather dark, dirty, and meandering resonant dronefest. I blame the RT-2 of course. I was testing the effect on a poly synth and I was horrified that it seemed to be sucking all the bottom end away. Surely that couldn't be right I thought. So, purely as a test, I plugged in the trusty DB-01. That's all it took. The RT-2's tube saturation was engaged, the DB-01 resonance cranked, and beautiful harmonics cascaded out.

As usual there is absolutely no DAW processing on the DB-01 sound. The vocal samples were obviously added afterwards with some Valhalla delay. DB-01 delay is from the Boss SDE-3.

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Industrial drums with the Plasma Voice and DB-01

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The Plasma Voice has many unexpected talents. One of them is a Channel 10 MIDI mode where you can play four octaves of sounds centred around the percussion bank. So even though this is a CV-heavy module I'm back in MIDI land using the DB-01 as a sequencer and arpeggiator.

The DB-01 is ideally suited as the master here letting you 'spin the wheel' for new patterns with the randomizer. Things get much weirder if you then start feeding it CV as well but I thought it best to keep things simple - just a couple of LFO feeds and the whole thing can get chaotic. The Plasma again proves to be a surprisingly deep little synth.

The routing here is the Plasma Voice out goes to the Zen and off to the DAW. No other effects or processing. The DB-01 is just providing MIDI note info and has no audio connected.

0:00 Background info
1:32 Randomized pattern
1:50 Arp on top
2:30 Lucky dip
4:50 Sliders

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Complexification of LXR-02 drums with Echolocator & the Zen

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Complexification is a perfectly cromulent word to describe 'A drum machine with two delays; since this is no mere everyday serial setup. Here we have two stereo delays in alternating parallel mode embiggening a single drum pattern. In fact 'chronocomplexification' would have been more accurate but I thought the Youtubes would punish me for being stupid.

The aim is to take a simple single pattern and create variations and interest while having fun. I think everyone knows the feeling of having a single pattern and trying to expand it into something greater. Depending on what machines you use it can start to feel like you're fighting to advance. Here it's all just knob twiddling fun.

In the video I describe the routing of the stereo outputs: One to the AB pedal which is then manually switched to either the Zen or Echolocator; and one channel direct to the DAW 'dry'. In this demo I didn't use any of this dry signal. If this were a "real" finished track I'd probably mix in some of the dry bass drum just to keep things coherant. For the video I thought it more useful to just have the two delays' sound. For a more nuanced routing setup you could change the left-right balance of various voices and use the 'dry' channel to instead go to a third pedal effect which could also be manually switched on and off. Putting a looper somewhere in the chain could also be interesting.

With all this I'm increasingly feeling that moving up to a higher tier in the drums or synth department is perhaps not as significant as investing time and attention to effects.

The video is all one take with no DAW processing - even though I was extremely tempted to EQ the Zen parts to bring out the crunch and distortion. The couple of cuts in the track are from me trying to find slice points to bring it down from 30 minutes. The samples are from a couple of 1950s sci-fi movies just for a little variation.

0:00 Routing and setup info
1:08 Dry pattern
1:25 All tweaking, no talk

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Plasma Voice: A single sound played like a "normal" synth

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The Plasma Voice module loves being modulated, But how about just playing it as a standard synth voice? Here I twiddle at length with just one of the 49 core sounds. This is bass sound number 2, but it happily scales up and down the octaves. One thing I like about the Plasma is that you don't need to tune it. As much as I liked all my old analog Eurorack oscillators, I absolutely hated tuning them. Often I wouldn't bother, then I'd come up with something good and realize it wasn't going to fit with anything else until I stopped everything, broke the spell, and went back and tuned them :/

Playing a Plasma voice with no modulation isn't what you'd probably often do. It's setup for easy and crazy amounts of realtime change. OTOH it's interesting as a synth voice to play with a range of unfamiliar parameters. Since there's no ADSRs or other standard controls you tend to go in different directions.

Ten minutes of this might be overkill, but as my daughter always says (with a laugh): "Your channel is so niche", so I'm unfazed. It actually felt quite brief to me although the Nightverb was essential to smooth things out.

And watch your ears at the 4 minute mark. There's no compression, limiting or other volume modifications on the audio and the sound gets rather piercing.

0:00 Dry sound
0:54 With reverb
3:32 Jackhammer
4:02 O Lord My Ears
4:45 So low
5:30 Smoothie
6:05 Prod
6:57 Sustainers
8:15 Octaves
9:56 Wet
10:49 Square

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Echolocator vs the Zen delay (lots of talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Primarily this is a discussion about the various merits and abilities of each delay and how they compare."

"Although this video runs almost half an hour it feels like I was still skating on the surface. I avoided what I thought were completely obvious things or multiple sound comparisons of particular details. Even so a few areas I never got to include winding the delays all the way down and looking at various flanging and chorus effects, and maybe this deserves its own video? Likewise the Echolocator never got to its dirty mode or the alternate filter placement (although I do have no-talk videos which cover these). Nor did I play with the time parameters, long fripperish things, or drums. Ah well, so many wondrous sounds are waiting in the ether eager to be released. I'm trying.

And of course I never get to any conclusion about which delay is 'best' but surely you didn't think that was ever going to happen? Instead we only get to that forum advice favorite of 'use both'.

0:00 Basic specs
0:38 Alternative delays
1:57 Strymon Timeline
2:58 Ergonomics
4:30 More specs
4:58 Delay time
5:49 MIDI
7:05 - Audio begins! --
9:04 Both playing
9:44 Zen as a crunchy filter
12:00 Echolocator basic twiddle
13:10 Echolocator modulation
15:24 Echolocator pitch shift
17:04 Echolocator freeze
18:45 Noise tones test
22:00 Pure tone test
27:25 Cats or dogs?


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Good news for LXR-02 owners (now let's list bugfix & feature requests)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Although the recent 1.07 firmware update was just a maintenance release it's far more significant than an assortment of bugfixes. Instead of having to wait for the Great Eye of the original LXR developer to fall upon the LXR-02, Erica Synths can now do updates in-house.

So rather than feeling this wondrous little machine has been forgotten, this is a reason for great optimism for more development. Erica Synths surely wouldn't go to the effort of taking over development just to then shelf it all again.

Here I look at the main new feature which is parameter lock value display, which is an excellent excuse to look at how parameter locks work in general.

For the future I'd like to see song mode fixed; the delay effects get proper tempo sync options; and the lighting changed on the buttons so you can see which patterns are empty and which have data.

Perhaps this may be a good place to put your bugfix and feature requests...

0:00 Background
0:46 The good news
2:12 Parameter locks
5:12 Per step FX
6:10 Easy saving

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Plasma Voice: An Electro and an Industrial noodle (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"As my grandmother used to advise: 'They can't shoot you for asking'. So I asked GamechangerAudio if they might send me a Plasma Voice module - and here it is.

It's easy to get started - just send it a trigger or a MIDI sequence (MIDI adaptor cable is included). From there you can get as complex as you like. In the first noodle the DB-01 is sending it a basic pattern and the Plasma Voice and DB-01 are doubled up playing it. Some synced LFO CV is switching voices in the bass and lead category. My daughter pulled a face when she heard me editing this and said it sounded 'loose', so I added some drums in the DAW. And then a few extra vocal samples for seasoning.

CV comes from the SPC Neptune 8-LFO module (currently in development). This is an early prototype but is just the thing for sending lots of synced modulation. The Plasma Voice loves being fed.

The second piece is pure Plasma Voice fed into the Nightverb. Quotes are from the original 1938 Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Again lots of CV tweaking the core sounds.

As usual the sound is not subsequently modified, EQed or processed in any way in the DAW (except the added drums in Noodle 1).

0:00 Electro noodle
2:01 Industrial noodle

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Echolocator delay: Tape vs BBD plus weirdness (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"This video was the result of a comment by @lextron-audio noting that there was no clear comparison of Tape vs BBD mode for the Echolocator. Yes, fair enough I thought, I can fix that. I imagined a snappy three minute video switching between modes as a dry technical comparison. Not exciting, but useful in a nuanced nerdy sort of way, and that's how things started. Yet here we are, 20 minutes of twiddlings co-starring the LXR-02, DB-01 and Acidbox III that gets weirder as it goes along. And everything is unsynced. I wouldn't call it music, I just enjoy the textures and frequencies. That's what comes of spending too many hours playing with shortwave noise as a kid.

'Dirty On' is BBD mode; and 'Dirty Off' is the default Tape mode. I randomly flip between them trying to show the differences in various situations. Sometimes there's not much between them, othertimes especially with pitch shifting on, the differences are huge. In the end though the result is more an experiment in real-time Echolocator playing than a straight mode comparison. Even so I never touched the compressor setting which was at a constant 50. That variable also make a big difference so that's for another day.

Come for the technical comparison stay for the industrio-ambient grit :D

0:00 Basic drums
3:38 Noise drums
5:08 Acidbox weirdness
13:17 Pitchy synth keys
17:33 Sweep effects

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Echolocator delay on synth, drums, voice and shortwave (no talking)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"First up Erica Synths sent me the Echolocator. That's particularly good of them because I know and I'm sure they know that I would have bought it anyway. After all, I'm the man who bought the Zen delay three times. For delay pedals in general I'm up to about 25 delays bought in the past few years and about 22 sold :D

Here I use the Echolocator with the DB-01, Acidbox III, LXR-02, Tecsun PL-660 radio and the US War Department training film number 471 on triodes and tubes.

No presets are used on any of the examples, it's all live twiddling. The idea throughout is to show the range of real time 'playing' with the delay. Just like the Nightverb I haven't used the presets or programmed any myself, it's so fast to dial in the sound you want it seems better to match things exactly to whatever you happen to be playing. The only thing I think is missing (at least I can't see it) is a WYSIWYG mode where the machine instantly reverts to the current knob positions. The only 'second layer' functions you need to remember are BACK+FREEZE to mute the delay, and BACK+TAP TEMPO to sync to an incoming clock.

Despite the length of this video I've only touched on some of the interesting effects. For example adjusting the compressor makes a huge difference to the feedback; whether the filter is in series or in the feedback loop; playing with the freeze function, and modulation with pitch shifting. So more on all that in later videos. If there's anything in particular you think I should cover please let me know.

Finally, if you notice a slight difference in the video color and position between takes it's because I had to change cameras halfway through.

0:00 Basic synth
3:09 Sparse drums
5:28 Beam me up
6:07 Filter options
8:39 Blippy drums
12:38 Freezy drums
13:34 Long feedback synth
15:11 Drum jam
16:34 Shortwave
18:36 Human voice

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Modor DR-2: A solo jam @180bpm

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Some drum machines are built for real-time tweaking, others you program and hit 'play' while you tweak something else. The Perkons drum machine is a real-time tweaker; the LXR-02 is more a playback machine. Where does the DR-2 sit? It certainly has enough knobs and if you can remember some of the (many) shortcuts then there's lots of available functions on the front panel. Then there's the six little knobs above the faders that can be assigned to any parameter per voice. Yet I've never come up with a parameter that I can't immediately access by the front panel anyway so I've never used them.

Here I'm doing pretty basic stuff. There's a single four-bar pattern and two drumkits. I swap between kits, mute various voices and change the overall bar length. It's also very easy to change the step length per voice (just hold down the voice letter and press the step number) but I didn't want to get too tricky since you can't just reload the pattern to reset the length. The pitch drifting synth sounds come from the portamento amount.

In terms of functionality it all works very smoothly. The only thing I find troublesome is that any drumkit or pattern above the first 16 can only be accessed by holding down the 17-32 button and then pressing the step number. That makes fast changes outside the first 16 patterns and kits much more prone to error. It would be much more logical imo if just selecting the number grouping (eg 17-32) meant that's what you automatically get.

If it all sounds a little gritty to you then good! I used plenty of distortion on most of the voices and even applied some compressor which can be quite vicious and I'm not even sure how to turn it off once it's on!

As usual there's absolutely no other processing than what you see. No compression, EQ or any other DAW effect.

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My website: https://richarddehove.com/"

Creating sounds on the Modor DR-2: A detailed expedition

video upload by Richard DeHove

"In the latest instalment of my "If You Want A Short, Splashy, Gotcha Video This Isn't For You" series I noodle about in lengthy detail with sounds on the Modor DR-2. The idea here isn't a quick showcase of wondrous sounds, it's to give you a genuine feel for what it's like to use the DR-2. That means transiting through hundreds of gradations and flavors of a sound. No doubt sometimes you'll hear your preferred sound pass by as I adjust a parameter too far or wind back something too hard. Watching this back I can see points at which I should have stopped but instead kept tweaking. The filtered clap for example sounded pretty good after about 10 seconds but I kept flogging it death :D But that's the essence of this video - as the old saying goes it's the journey not the destination.

A quick note on the audio track: The Modor's buttons are very loud and clicky. It gives them a satisfying sureness in the studio but means they're quite intrusive on video. I did my best to EQ them out, gate them out, and manually mute them when possible. The result in headphones may sound slightly choppy (and somewhat mangled my voice) but I wanted to make sure you could hear the Modor's sounds properly rather than being mixed with room noise and button clicks.

I hope here I've got across the fact that the DR-2 is beautifully crafted to deliver a massive range of customizable sound. It's easy to dial in the basics of an excellent sound, and then have the controls you need to zoom in on what you want. The main problem is when to stop noodling.

Despite the length of this video I only touched on a tiny fraction of the Modor's sounds. If you're interested in hearing more, or any particular types of sound, please let me know.

Finally, Mr Modor if you're reading this: Please make an all-black version with second-layer subtext on the knobs.

0:00 Basic info
2:01 Drum models
2:34 Noise bass drum
7:10 Basic snare
11:42 Filtered clap
18:49 Square bass drum
24:37 Snare adventure
29:55 A tom?
30:38 Crash cymbal
34:48 Electro snare / tom

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Using the DB-01 arp to write sequences

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Jamming with the DB-01s arp is loads of fun; commiting that to a sequence is not quite as amusing. Here I go through a simple method to capture the moment. Better yet, have your arp permanently recording in loop mode and grab those otherwise unrepeatable riffs that can suddenly materialize from nothing. Guest stars: the Boss GEB-7 EQ and Darkglass B3K.

And at the end, some more fun with the arp as it pushes around a Korg Multi/Poly.

0:00 Fake metronome
1:08 Use tracking
1:55 Pattern setup
2:20 It's a trap!
3:25 No start point
4:28 Choose the start
5:05 Cut to taste
5:40 Mod and gate tweak
6:56 Second example
9:40 Add some sprinkles
11:20 Bully the Multi/Poly

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Five DB-01 sequences from scratch (detailed editing, no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Ah, my beloved DB-01. Of the many dozen videos I've made about this little beast I've never just done a simple patch-from-scratch walkthrough. So here's here's five very lightly edited examples. Certainly half an hour of button pressing and knob twiddling trying to find a decent sequence on a DB-01 is rather niche entertainment, but there's room for every taste on this fine planet.

Generally the progress toward an acceptable sequence is shown in all its false starts, deleted notes and 'slightly off' glory. The only parts I chopped out were a couple of times when I got obsessively stuck on a single note or two and went round-and-round for far too long.

Of course there are many ways to make sequences: programming single steps at a time; playing and recording a riff in real time; recording the arp or using the randomizer. (I covered all these methods in another video). My current favorite is little chunks of randomizer. I'll select a short range of steps then randomize some or all parameters then edit and copy that. Or, another favorite, randomize the entire pattern but only for gate length or filter modulation.

I do wonder whether it would have been more useful for me to be talking through everything as I went along but so many people seem to prefer 'no talk' videos. In fact the start of the video is a bit slow because I was originally explaining things but decided just to mute it all out. Who knows?

So for those who not only watch this but also take the time to read the description - my thanks.

0:00 One - creating gated hits
1:50 One - adding some bleeps
5:06 One - tweaking steps
5:50 One - adding the LFO
6:30 One - tweak pitchmod
7:00 One - knobs twiddling
8:20 One - LFO again
9:20 One - back to knobs
10:44 Two - 4x4
11:15 Two - randomizer
13:40 Two - save me LFO!
14:30 Two - knob twiddling
15:13 Two - simple solution
16:38 Three - randomizer
17:52 Three - scale issues
19:40 Three - which note syndrome
20:39 Three - knob twiddling
21:04 Four - set scale
21:36 Four - randomizer
23:00 Four - step adjust
23:50 Four - riff hunting
24:12 Four - note cycles
25:12 Four - filling the gaps
26:15 Four - knob twiddling
27:50 Four - FM time
28:50 Five - gates and steps
30:40 Five - note cycles
31:22 Five - LFO power!
33:00 Five - knob twiddling
35:20 Five - arp jam

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Boss SDE-3 delay fully cranked on synth and drum machine

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Yet another delay pedal bought in hope of finding the perfect balance between size, sound and features. I'm still feeling good about this one: It's black, it's small, it has enough features to make it interesting, it takes line level easily, and it can bite hard.

So here's more audio noddlings than anyone might reasonably want. There's a short bit of blather at the start and then it's all audio with the DB-01 and LXR-02. The levels get maxed out a few times but I've kepy everything as is rather than using a limiter. Panning mode begins at 13:10 and continues for the rest of the video. In the drum machine examples the SDE-3 takes the right output and gives it a stereo output. The left side is centred in the mixer as a "dry" out. At times various drum sounds are panned left and right to varying degrees which means there's usually not an entire output going through the delay.

0:00 Blah blah about features
2:35 No more talk, basic sounds
3:30 Deep modulation, stereo
5:00 Heavy feedback, stereo
10:20 Offset knob, stereo
12:15 Wet-dry output
13:10 Panning mode
15:16 Terminator
17:26 Drone fun
20:48 Drums 1
21:59 Drums 2
22:58 Drums 3
23:28 Drums 4
24:35 Drums 5

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Dirty, rotten, filthy Multipoly - (5 sounds no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Beauty comes easily to the Multipoly, but what about filth? Happy to say that is excels here too. With some cross-modulation, high resonance and a touch of internal drive things dirty up quickly. As always, less is more. Most patches use a single layer with two oscillators, guitar amp drive and master EQ.

For now I'm still in 'standard synth' land with the Multipoly and have yet to touch the mod process page or motion sequencer. I even find adding parameters to the four white knobs a pain. The manual also shows two small mixer sections but I've yet to find them. Meh. It's not an intuitive synth and the manual may be comprehensive at 130+ pages but it's not particularly instructive.

On the plus side it does do weird very easily. In that it does remind me of my beloved Mono/Poly. In fact it delivers weird so well - and of course with perfect recall - that it makes me wonder whether I need the SyntrxII anymore?

0:00 Radio Grit
1:42 Root Canal
3:34 Poker Bass
4:06 X-Mod
4:55 Sickly

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Multipoly: Unbox, blather and some custom arp sounds

video upload by Richard DeHove

"I remember my Korg Mono/Poly with great love and nostalgia. My first synth, the machine that taught me about synthesizers, the machine I used in all my early live gigs. Many machines have been bought (and sold) since then trying to recapture some of the weird-arp magic. So the Multipoly was a natural.

Here I can't help but blather about such things and play my first few custom sounds using the Mono/Poly starter template.

Overall I'm extremely happy with it. It's complex, somewhat unfriendly, very menu-divey but has so much going on that the amusement longevity factor and overall usefulness score seem high. Strangely, the only area that has attracted no love from Korg is the arpegiator! Everywhere else there are options galore, but for the arp, almost nothing more than the original Mono/Poly offered. Hopefully in an update we'll get separate arps for each layer - at least.

For those who just want to hear the damn synth without my babbling over the top, there's a no-talk version on Patreon.

0:00 Unboxing
0:40 4-osc alternatives
2:00 One oscillator bass
2:32 Arp with FX
3:26 Manual cycling
4:00 Retro arp

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DB-01 sonic noodlings with Midicake Arp spice (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The Midicake 'spice' here is using its new MIDI CC parameter controls to modulate parameters on the Strymon Timeline in real time. The delay parameters getting the four-channel CC treatment are mix, repeats, highpass and smear.

It's a just shame that all the Timeline delay parameters aren't available under each 'engine'. So, for example, the bit rate and sample rate parameters are only available on the lofi engine. Delays that could do this much better would be the Source Audio Nemesis or the Free the Tone Future factory - both of which I sold. Somewhat ironic since the reason I sold both of them were that their best parameters were too hard to access. Either would be brilliant with the MIDI CC power of Arp.

So if you have any gear which hides its best stuff in tortured menus or multi-button secondary layers then the Midicake Arp may be the answer. Suddenly anything with MIDI CC control is instantly available for clocked modulation. It's beautiful.

Not to forget the DB-01. Two years in and the machine still fascinates. Here I start with the unloved parameter combo of the triangle wave and bandpass filter. Together they can be rather anaemic lacking both harmonics and bottom end. Yet with a little drive or sub and careful filtering they can still put in a respectable showing. usually I like a clocked LFO, or at least some note-reset phase LFO, but here it's all unclocked audio-rate goodness. I don't vary the LFO rate because it's roughly "tuned" to fit the full application of FM.

And if you can withstand a full 3+ minutes of solo DB-01 then you have definitely levelled up in the DB-01 club :D

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My website: https://richarddehove.com/"

Nightverb automated by the Midicake Arp (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Here's a somewhat chaotic collection of MIDI CC automation experiments using the Midicake Arp to generate the data. The Arp feeds the Nightverb synced data which affects the sounds coming in from the LXR-02. The Arp and LXR-02 are running from an external clock.

Originally I was blathering over the top about how it was all done but perhaps just seeing some of the twiddlings, especially toward the end of the video, may get the idea across just as well. I tried to give a wet and dry example of what's happening but this is all pulled from about a dozen or so meandering noodles so forgive me if they're not all perfectly structured. Headphones reveal some of the finer modulation timings. There's also a lot of unpleasant oddities but I thought them worth keeping to show the range of modulation.

The real star here is the Midicake Arp. The new v7 firmware is what opens up synced MIDI CC automation. Unless you've got a good dedicated sequencer, or take feeds from your DAW, chances are this hasn't been easily available. I remember looking into devices which would allow simple synchronized MIDI CC automation a few months ago and there weren't many choices. It's why I ended up selling my El Capistan. I bought that specifically for its "degrading loops" functionality but that only available by MIDI CC. In itself that's not too hard, but if you want it clock synced then that's another story.

Sending four channels of automation to the Nightverb, sometimes with extremely fast LFO-like modulations, did sometimes overload the Nightverb and require a power cycle. This usually happened if I flipped between intense presets while running.

If you have any high-end effect units chances are there are all sorts of interesting things available via MIDI CC. With Arp is very easy to access them in real-time sync. So congrats to Midicake for adding this excellent functionality!

0:00 Tippytap
0:40 Heavy gate
1:21 Distortomax
2:27 Bathroom War
3:30 Synth Mutant
5:08 Squarewaves

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