Softube has launched two new devices for its Modular virtual Eurorack synthesizer instrument.
Mutable Instruments Braids is a new macro-oscillator which emulates dozens of classic synthesis techniques with ‘under-the-hood’ digital algorithms, allowing the user to quickly flip through an encyclopedia of synth, touring the sweet spots with a simple two-knob control set-up.
It’s a hugely sophisticated digital synthesis engine, able to produce and manipulate complex sounds – classic waves from vintage synths, bells, resonant filters, plucked and bowed strings, vocals and vowel/formant sounds, wind instruments, percussion, noise, granular clouds and more – by means of 45 or so fully-realized algorithms, featuring multiple oscillators, wavetables, filters, VCAs, ring modulators, and so on under the hood.
Each mode is a different algorithm and produces a different variety of sounds as you turn the two tone controls, Timbre and Colour. These controls are pre-programmed to do different things per algorithm, often adjusting multiple parameters in the set-up at once to tour the sweet spots. And of course, they can be CV controlled.
Braids features
- Macro oscillator featuring 40+ fully-realized digital synthesis algorithms.
- Produce millions of different sounds easily – classic waves and telecoms babble, bells and whistles, percussion and ambience.
- Just two controls morph through the sweet spots of each algorithm.
- Great for triggered percussion.
- Awesome for crazy complex waveform synthesis.
- Phenomenal for glitchy out-of-control modulated sounds.
- Incredibly deep, but easy to use.
- It’s like a library of the greatest synth sounds of all time.
Mutable Instruments Braids is on sale for the intro price of $35 USD until October 28th.
Also available now is Doepfer A-188-1 Bucket Brigade Device, a Modular add-on that offers gritty, distorted delays, flanging effects, choruses and more.
Bucket brigade delays are an evocative sound of late-’70s electronic music. By passing the signal along a line of capacitors, the sound is delayed in time, but also degraded with high-frequency loss and additional noise (as well as noticeable sample-rate reduction and aliasing at high delay times). This creates a warm and dirty sound, much sought after at the time, and still loved as a creative effect despite the practical disadvantages a BBD unit has compared to more versatile, cleaner digital delays.
Not only can this kind of delay produce tight slapbacks, grungey echoes, and smokey ambience, but by exploiting high feedback and very short delay times Karplus-Strong style plucked string synthesis is also possible.
The length of the delay line – the number of buckets in the brigade – has a significant effect on the sound and capabilities of the effect. The hardware module is available in six versions, each featuring a different number of stages (128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, and 4096). But our software version contains all six, and can switch between them with one click.
Doepfer A-188-1 BBD features
- Ultra-precise model of a rare and exciting style of analog delay effect.
- Can be used within synth patches in Modular, or for processing external audio in Modular FX.
- Six different models in one module.
- Great for dirty delays, sharp slapbacks, whooshing swirly ambience, or utter craziness.
- Build your own flanger/chorus for guitars, drums, or any other audio source.
- Take advantage of the disadvantages of this special design – use the BBD as a bitcrusher or distortion unit.
- Keep the original noise bleed, or simply switch it off.
The Doepfer A-188-1 Bucket Brigade Device is on sale for the intro price of $29 USD.
More information: Softube
