Meet the Maker - Modular Synths panel with 6 Eurorack Manufacturers

At this year's Winter NAMM show, Vintage King Audio presented the TEC Tracks panel: "Meet the Maker -- Modular Synths".
This short (35 minutes) panel discussion, distributed by Sound On Sound, brought together 5 well-known modular synth makers to talk about the booming Eurorack format.

Panelists included: Dieter Doepfer (Doepfer), Dan Green (4MS), William Matthewson (WMD), Ryan McGuire (Vintage King moderator), Tony Rolando (Make Noise), Brandon Ryan (Roland) and Gene Stopp (Moog Music)

They talked a bit about the history of the Eurorack standard (with it's US-based Inch-metrics... lol), and the influence of live-Eurorack performers on new modules.
William Matthewson from WMD offered an interesting insight of what to expect in the future with new controls, like tactile things, body movement, gloves, the integration of virtual reality and other new futuristic techniques that can convert all kinds of signals into control voltages.

Interesting to hear was also the process behind the whole module-design and where Dieter shared his point of view about the pros and cons of the community-input, mentioning the importance of the Yahoo A-100 Usergroup (and his annoyance about it sometimes) and the creative input from live musicians like the icelandic band GusGus when it comes to developing new modules.
It reminded me of his work with the guys from Kraftwerk in the past, with the development of the Schaltwerk, the vocoder and other projects...

AJH Synth MiniMod Eurorack Modules

MiniMod vintage
transistor core VCO

Another new modular synth company, AJHSynth is headed up by Allan "J" Hall, who has been involved with synths, electronics and music for more years than he cares to remember.
He started by building a guitar fuzz box at the tender age of 12 and an interest in synthesisers and electronic music soon followed, fuelled by an unhealthy overexposure to early Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Vangelis and Kitaro.

For the last 15 years he has been building and modding synth systems both for himself and other electronic musicians, as well as spending some time as a semi-pro musician playing keyboards in several rock and tribute bands.
Allan spent five years as a service technician repairing and modifying Moog, Arp, Korg, Roland and other analogue synthesisers along with some Pro Audio design work, previous to this he spent two years designing and building "boutique" valve (tube) guitar amplifiers.

MiniMod countour
generators (2 x ADS)

AJHSynth are based near Bournemouth on the South coast of England, where this small but enthusiastic bunch of synth. heads now indulge their passion for all things modular.

The MiniMOD Eurorack system aims to replicate the sound of the vintage Moog Model D as closely as possible, so they used exactly the same internal circuitry and every module runs at the same internal signal and control voltage levels as the original.

Their quest was to bring the unbeatable fatness and legendary sounds of this classic synthesizer to the 3U Modular world and have separated the synth into five modules, comprising:

MiniMod transistor ladder filter

VCO, VCF, VCA, Dual Contour, and Glide + Noise, which can be easily integrated into an existing Eurorack system or, with the addition of a case and power supply, it becomes a self contained stand alone synthesizer.

Click here for an overview of the MiniMod.

MiniMod
glide + noise

The MiniMod is based on the circuitry of most desirable Model D of all, the very early R A Moog Mk1 model with its unique and sweet sounding VCO design, the core of which uses discrete transistors only, with no integrated circuits.
We have also based the transistor ladder VCF on the early design, which uses fully matched transistors throughout.
Less than 300 Mk1 Model D’s were built with this very early VCO design out of a total of around 17,000 which were produced between 1970 and 1981.

The Minimod has been more than 18 months in development, thousands of hours have been spent analysing the original Model D using both real world measurement and computer based Spice circuit simulation programs, they carefully selected components and built many prototypes before they were happy that we had done justice to the original sound and circuit behavior.

MiniMod discrete
cascaded VCA

MiniMod Eurorack modules comprise separate VCO, VCF, VCA, Dual Contour and Glide/Noise for maximum flexibility so that they can be easily integrated into a larger Eurorack format Modular synthesizer to tap into the endless control and expansion possibilities – they removed all of the control limitations of the “closed system” of the original Model D synthesizer so that the sounds that you can now create are limited only by your imagination and the other modules that you add to your system. All of the modules can be used independently in your existing Eurorack system.

 A full MiniMod system would comprise 3 x VCO, 1 x VCF, 1x VCA, 1 x Dual Contour, 1 x Glide-Noise and this will take up exactly 84hp of Eurorack space, so that it will fit into 3U of rack space with a suitable Eurorack frame and power supply (not supplied)
Just add a Midi/CV converter and keyboard for a fully functional BIG and FAT monophonic synthesizer.

Sound examples:

More videos and sound-examples at http://www.ajhsynth.com/sounds.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ajhsynth

On MuffWiggler:  http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=122864&start=all&postdays=0&postorder=asc&sid=9f9b66bca630155dfd6c5cb361e6d5c2

Random Video: Doepfer A100 vs Moog Modular by Kevin Farrow

Kevin Farrow posted a nice video, comparing his Doepfer A-120 Moog filter with an original Moog modular system...

Video: Doepfer A100 v Moog Modular by Kevin Farrow

" Spot the difference. This is a comparison of my new Doepfer Modular A100 System fitted with the A120 (Moog) 24db Filter compared to Tom's Mighty Moog Modular.
Not bad considering the Doepfer is about £30,000 cheaper !"

Uploaded by Kevin Farrow

BookTip XIII: Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer

I have had 2 whole weeks off from work this holiday season, so i had enough time to read a few interesting synth-related books.

The first one i read was 'Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer' by Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco.
It's a very interesting book (368 pages) that was published in 2004, and that tells the story about Robert (Bob) Moog, synthesizers from the mid-60s to the mid-70s in general and about the Moog company and its products.

The book has a foreword by Bob Moog himself (he passed away a year after the publication of this book) and the writers have spend a large amount of time and effort into making it.
The book is filled with stories by musicians, technicians and other pioneers from that era where everyone seemed to share a same passion for analog synthesis.

The list of interviewed people for this book is too large to mention, but it includes people like Don Buchla, Suzanne Ciani, Keith Emerson, Rachel Elkind, Tom Oberheim, Alan Pearlman (from ARP) and many more.
That's a very impressive list, and the whole book is written in a chronological style, filled with many anecdotes and interesting facts, what makes it fun and easy to read.
A must-read in my humble opinion, if you are interested in this kind of stuff, of course...

Info: http://books.google.nl/books/about/Analog_Days.html?id=3hjvWzkMK-sC …
Harvard University Press, 15 nov. 2004 - 368 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0674016170

Find my earlier BookTips HERE
My next BookTip will be published somewhere next month.

Filters V : A-120 24 dB/Oct Low Pass Moog Style Filter VCF1

Perhaps the best known low-pass filter in analogue synthesis was developed by Dr Robert (Bob) Moog in the late sixties.

It was used in the modular Moog synthesisers of that decade, but it got really popular in 1970 with the introduction of the Minimoog.

Moog's 4-pole filter is built with a co-called "transistor ladder" design with a cut-off slope of -24 dB/octave. That’s what gives it its classic, legendary Moog sound.
 Resonance is adjustable all the way up to self-oscillation - in which case the filter behaves like a sine wave oscillator.

The Doepfer A-120 is a very nice Moog emulator, but still most reviews say it doesn't sound 'Moogy' enough.
( i sadly don't have a real Moog to compare and verify that )
Moog's original circuit was flawed because it exhibited a small amount of distortion. Many engineers would have tried to correct this but Moog didn't.
He probably found that the sound was musically pleasing and he was probably right...
Maybe this module just sounds a bit 'too clean'.
It does still have a warm character, and it sounds very impressive in my opinion.
( and definitely unlike any of my other filters ).

Whenever i hear the name Moog i mainly think of great (Minimoog) synth-lead solo's or hand-played fat basslines, but you can also use this filter for wobbly dub-step basslines, sequenced loops and other (housey) basslines.

An interesting and more in-depth study on the Analysis of the Moog Transistor Ladder and Derivative Filters can be found in this PDF by dr. Timothy E. Stinchcombe.

Video : Doepfer A-120 (Moog) Low Pass Filter Demo by NetPierre

" Doepfer A-120 (Moog) Low Pass Filter Demo by NetPierre
created for my blog at http://PatchPierre.blogspot.com
A simple sawtooth wave from my A-110 into Audio in.
An envelope generator signal is sent into CV2, and some noise from the A-118 is fed into CV3.
Drums are provided by an Elektron Machinedrum "