Software Modulars

Please remember the terms of your membership agreement.

Moderators: valis, garyb

Post Reply
User avatar
valis
Posts: 7306
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: West Coast USA
Contact:

Software Modulars

Post by valis »

I own quite a few of these at this point. VCV Rack 2 just debuted, and I grabbed the version that allows it to play well within ableton as a plugin. It currently crashes Scope (trying to initialize WASAPI, which oddly works with Bidule+Scope), but Rack V1 works fine.

Curious what workflows you guys have with the various software modulars on the market? I'm interested in using Kron with them to start to explore that world in a new way.
User avatar
yayajohn
Posts: 1694
Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:01 pm
Location: Everywhere....Nowhere

Re: Software Modulars

Post by yayajohn »

I’ve fiddled with the miRack on the iPad which is a good way to practice on the road but quite frankly there are loads of other really interesting apps. On the home computer the VCV and CA Voltage Modular seem well designed but when I’ve got Scope Modular and Hardware Eurorack sitting right there I will naturally gravitate to those first and leave my VST juice for other stuff.
User avatar
Bud Weiser
Posts: 2684
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2010 5:29 am
Location: nowhere land

Re: Software Modulars

Post by Bud Weiser »

yayajohn wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:55 am On the home computer the VCV and CA Voltage Modular seem well designed ...
I grabbed CA Voltage Modular Nucleus (free !) and bought the VM900 (MOOG Modular) modules for "Black Friday" price.
It was so cheap I couldn´t resist.
To my ears, these sound good,- and work well w/ SCOPE/XITE ASIO (128 samples buffer) !
In deed, it´s impressing how fast configurations load,- once stored as presets.
IMO, this can never been achived w/ SHARC-DSP based algos needing load-/off-load time.
yayajohn wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:55 am ... but when I’ve got Scope Modular and Hardware Eurorack sitting right there I will naturally gravitate to those first and leave my VST juice for other stuff.
All the systems have advantages and disadvantages.

Near zero latency and sonic quality make SCOPE based stuff in "standalone mode" as also other hardware a winner vs VST.
And the multiplicity of modules available for SCOPE,- Modular v1 - v4, FleXor 3, CWM and BC Modular is simply overwhelming !
I´m just only at the beginning w/ all it´s possibilities.

IMO, there´s a single disadvantage of SCOPE Modular,-

for almost every synth patch, you have to load a new Modular device.
It would be greeat when the shell keeps active once loaded and recalling presets re-organize module configurations AND their settings inside THAT shell,- resulting in a new patch.
But,- I can imagine it won´t work because we´re also dealing w/ different shells.

:)

Bud
User avatar
valis
Posts: 7306
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: West Coast USA
Contact:

Re: Software Modulars

Post by valis »

Well, I will still use Flexor alongside this. I don't find myself really wanting to use Flexor with Kron, or even in most cases flexor connected to software modular stuff. Each does have a few tricks of its own, but in most cases the rest of the tools do the job well enough there's little cause for making that many things work together. I could probably cobble together a ramp generator in Cherry's Voltage Mod or etc, or conversely something to turn that back into transport/tempo 'ala' sending a ramp from flexor, but neither really replicate what it's like to use a recorded ramp in your DAW to get sample-accurate sync to Flexor (which can then be timeshifted to keep the recorded resultant audio in sync.)

Also using Kron to ONLY control internal software doesn't make as much sense as using other modulation intended software (expert sleepers, noise engineering, etc) because there's no need to run that traffic across the system bus to achieve basically the same thing. I mean it makes sense, but not as much sense to me personally what I intend.

Which is using it to bridge internal and external gear in a faster workflow, so that I can add some modular components to the rest of my external gear. Meaning I can integrate it with--and process with--all of my outboard stuff. And using VCV rack into that arena makes a ton of sense, because for many things there's a fair correlation between the software and hardware units they model. Here is specifically why I am interested in learning both together, and were I to say come into a Moog modular or similar I'm sure I would happily adapt accordingly.
User avatar
Peter Drake
Posts: 214
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2018 12:27 pm
Location: Outer Milky Way

Re: Software Modulars

Post by Peter Drake »

I really like the quality of the Softube modular, haven't been using VCV very long but finding that version 2 Pro won't boot up with Scope, long-time user of Reaktor. Scope is the primary modular for me, I find myself using other modulars for things that are under-represented in Scope modular like Buchla-style modules and waveshapers. There's a growing collection of physical eurorack modules that are integrated with scope through the Expert Sleepers lightpipe/CV interfaces.
My workflow is a total mess in trying to use various features of Logic, Ableton, Bitwig, and Audition to integrate modular elements into sound production and processing. If I ever come up with a cogent description of my workflow I'll try to share it.
User avatar
valis
Posts: 7306
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: West Coast USA
Contact:

Re: Software Modulars

Post by valis »

I put a report on the VCV rack forums that includes Scope, and also submitted a support ticket (I purchased the larger Pro set of rack modules). Right now it barfs on the WASAPI check:

https://community.vcvrack.com/t/vcv-rac ... sues/15039
Joey
Posts: 110
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 12:21 am

Re: Software Modulars

Post by Joey »

I've got quite a few software modulars (Cherry Audio, Softube, Solorack) but it was VCV that got me really excited.
That excited me to finally invest enough time into the Pulsar modular so that I could figure it out. Also helped by an upgrade to my system, so I finally had enough dsp to run Scope synths.
My system consists of two computers, one running VCV and controlling the others, one running the scope environment.
VCV controls scope, and some hardware, through midi.
VCV is mainly a very sophisticated sequencer, to me, because of all the probabilistic sequencers that are available (or will be, due to some of them not yet having made the transition to V2).
And Scope is doing what it does very well: providing me with lots of great synths, including a modular (flexor).
User avatar
at0m
Posts: 4743
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Bubble Metropolis
Contact:

Re: Software Modulars

Post by at0m »

Don't ask me for details, but this gal made a CPU using VCV rack. (twitter) 8) :evil: :-?

Falktx, also known for his kxstudio linux distro and .deb repositories, also made a bunch of open source VCV rack plugins (github) :) He's also made this plugin wrapper for VCV (github).

(edit: added link)
Last edited by at0m on Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
more has been done with less
https://soundcloud.com/at0m-studio
User avatar
Peter Drake
Posts: 214
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2018 12:27 pm
Location: Outer Milky Way

Re: Software Modulars

Post by Peter Drake »

That CPU is beautiful. Also a weird circularity in code modelling analog devices that model a digital processor.

Along the lines of strange ways to make a computer, here is a long read that is very fascinating and objectively terrifying:
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/ ... k.html?m=1
User avatar
valis
Posts: 7306
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: West Coast USA
Contact:

Re: Software Modulars

Post by valis »

There's an update to VCV Rack I'll be trying out now: https://community.vcvrack.com/t/rack-de ... og/5864/81

Same result with Scope, but improved low latency performance on all of my RME machines.
Post Reply