I have used my Blacet Miniwaves mostly for quantizing, since I like to
use scale tones in my aleatoric musings. I've looked around for a
dedicated quantizer, but never found anything well suited to a standard
MOTM setup until this. Not sure when it was added to the Modcan B
lineup, but the Dual Quantizer 55B fills the bill. I've updated my
website with some photos and a two minute MP3 demo.
http://www.pugix.com/top-cabinet.htm#quantizerThe Miniwave does well as a quantizer. Modcan offers a version of the
Miniwave, too, with a built-in VCO. There's a quantizer bank in the
standard Blacet ROM. The Davidson SCALE Quantizer ROM is excellent,
too. I'll speak to the differences between the quantizing with the
Miniwave and the Modcan 55B in a bit. First, about the physical Modcan
55B module.
As you can see from the photos on my site, the 55B fits perfectly into
my MOTM rack. Although it's a thinner panel, the 1/16-inch difference
of height (shallower than the 1/8-inch MOTM panels) is barely
noticeable. What ∗is∗ noticeable of course is the color. The panel
design is nice and clean. The jack spacing and locations are different
from MOTM. The switches are mini-toggles, not bat-handles. Alpha pots
are used. I replaced the knobs, not just because of the look, but
because Modcan knobs have a gap in the flute that the set screw goes
through, and your finger catches on it. It's annoying. Otherwise,
build quality is very good; it's clearly assembled with care. You'll
notice that the hardware consists mainly of a large PIC
microcontroller. The six trimpots are labelled, but there's no mention
of them in the instruction manual, which is very short. It would be
nice to have a calibration procedure.
Lead time on this was two months from placing the order and payment and
receipt of the module. I never ordered from Modcan before, but this
seems about normal. When I placed the order, Bruce Duncan responded
quickly and asked what power cable I required. He supplied a MOTM power
cable adapter at no extra cost.
The 55B features.
There are two identical and separate quantizers. Each has an input for
the CV to be quantized, an output, a clock input and a pulse output, and
three control inputs. There are four parameters, three of which are
under voltage control. You manually select one of three fixed scale
banks. This isn't under VC like the Miniwave bank is. Each bank has 16
scales, selected by the sum of a pot and a SCALE CV input. There is
also a TRANSPOSE pot and CV input; the Miniwave has nothing like this.
It is a key transposition, not just an offset. (I don't really
understand the difference. Maybe one of you will explain it.) Finally,
there is an INVERT input that responds to a gate. This simply inverts
the output around ground. If your input is all positive, when inverted
it is all negative. I didn't quite see the utility of this until I
realized that negative inputs get quantized just fine, unlike the
Miniwave, which needs a zero to +10V input in quantizing mode. So you
can merrily quantize a MOTM-320 LFO, using any of its waveforms. You'll
normally want to use an external attenuator on the input for overall
scaling. None of the inputs has a pot for attenuation, due to lack of
panel space.
With nothing patched to the CLOCK input, quantizing happens when the
input crosses a quantized boundary, just like with the Miniwave. On
each transition you get a short pulse out of the PULSE output. It's
something I have wished the Miniwave had. (I saw a schematic somewhere
describing a pulse output Miniwave modification.) My demo MP3 shows
this off by using it to trigger an envelope generator to make a new note
on each transition. Now, I found that when quantizing the output of a
sample and hold, the 55B works better if you clock it with the same
clock used for the sample and hold. It's cleaner, because with large
jumps without clocking there can be a zipper effect as multiple
transitions are crossed. The 55B makes a nice sample and hold by itself,
with a no-droop digitized output.
I admit to general ignorance when it comes to scales. But I can say
that the choice of scales in the three banks has a good variety. My
favorite is the B bank, which includes Algerian, Altered, Aux
Diminished, Balinese, Byzantine, Diatonic, Spanish, Double Harmonic,
Hindu, Sixtone Symmetric, Nine Tone, Overtone Dominant, Pelog,
Prometheus, Enigmatic, and Octatonic. (These are listed on the Modcan
website as being in the C bank, but the downloaded manual puts them in
bank B and to my ear this seems right.)
Overall impression is of a very nice module that I will use a lot. Now
maybe it needs a few Modcan siblings in my cabinet. The Clock 53B looks
very interesting....
-Richard Brewster
http://www.pugix.com