Yahoo Groups archive

MOTM

Index last updated: 2026-04-28 23:35 UTC

Message

[motm] Re: The layout of a modular synthesiser

2007-08-02 by Jason Proctor

my layout is kinda simple and boring, but then my modular is kinda 
smallish and audio-heavy.

signal flow is top-to-bottom and somewhat left-to-right.

the top 2 rows of the synth are mainly concerned with control stuff. 
there's a MIDI to CV converter, MIDI sync/divider, noise source, VC 
switches, CGS infinite melody / diatonic converter / gated 
comparators / analogue shift / lag / etc. just south of this there is 
a Hendry 2U PSU/mult which is generally used for CV, gate, and clock 
bussing. i do a fair amount of clock mangling.

once the synth has decided on some CVs and gates etc, control passes 
to the next row which is VCOs and envelopes. then once we have audio 
signals, the flow goes to a bunch of filters, mixers, VCAs, and all 
that. the final output VCA pair is bottom right.

the spag is limited to the 2nd row where all the crazy CGS stuff is. 
then once something somehow makes it out of there, it thins out a bit 
in the lower layers. it's all in a 38U 19" telco rack which is a 
little restricting horizontally, but it's a lot of fun to work with 
and in the dark i can pretend i'm chris franke circa 1980.

up and coming stuff include CGS 4-way filter bank, some kind of CGS 
sequential switch action, probably another LFO or two, MFOS WSG, 
Yamaha 156 filter module, etc.... and maybe another rack!

Attachments

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.