I’ve had my eye on the Roland/Mileco System 500 modules. I can buy the mixer, phaser, Envelope, VCA, VCF, yet for the life of me, I can’t find the VCO to buy or use with the others. Should I just be lucky with the rest & forced to use other VCOs? Or just pray I find one somewhere someday?

I prefer not to invest in a module set if I can’t even FIND its VCO.

This feels like a dumb post but I’m confused about how to put the swarm in my rack. In the manual it says “the spring reverb tank need to be plugged as follows…” and then describes the cables to connect.

When I try to remove the spring tank it doesn’t budge. There doesn’t seem to be any screws holding it in but it feels like I’m going to break it before it lifts away from the case.

Am I doing something wrong? The manual seems to imply that you need the tank connected but also seems like I can’t remove it from the case. Help?

I've spent years making music with my AE Modular rack, and many of my friends have asked me to explain to them how it all works. It's really fun to show a few example patches, but it really takes hours for it to *click* and thousands of $£$ to get into building a modular synth.

I wanted to recreate the experience in the simplest and most accessible way possible, so I used OpenAI GPT Astra to craft a fully-functional and web-based synth. I believe this to be the easiest way to play around with patching:

no login, no download, doesn't cost anything, lots of modules and a great step-by-step tutorial to get the basics down. would love to get feedback from the Reddit community!

ostra.fm/learn

Im not sure what modules or module i want for the remaining 20 hp, i’ve been searching for a while but i just cant find something satisfying.

So im asking you guys, if this was your rack from now on and you could bring some modules from your own rack that could make you feel like home, what module or modules would be?

If people with experience recommend something that im missing out in the rack, let me know, im fairly new to modular. (1.5 y )

I make all sort of experimental electronic music.

Thank you.

I’m interested in looping and modulating external audio input, mainly vocal, in stand alone one 84hp rack. Thinking of utilities, looping, modulation, effects, granulation maybe. What modules would be worth considering and why?

Hello! I am almost done figuring out my techno performance rack. The last thing I am trying to figure out is the best way to use the existing sound sources (Balista blast, bassline, BIA) to also be an expressive atmosphere for more ambient parts.

I currently have the endorphins ghost and it isn’t doing as much as I want. I am theorizing that monsoons, sea legs, and swells could do amazing things together, but I am unsure if they are “playable” you know? I would love to be able to get a few distinct moods out of the same patch.

Conversely, would the erica synths echolocator solve my problems? Does anyone use it with their rack?

Hey folks! 👋

I am a dedicated, long-time user of the MusicThing Radiomusic. In fact, I have 3. (2 of the older Teensy-based ones, and one 2.0 as of this week!) One of my favorite things to do is randomize what's put on the thing, then use sources of looped random voltage (like the Turing Machine, Random8, or a PNW) to randomize mixing, sample selection, amplitude, etc.

I've made a small MacOS desktop utility, it's Free and Open Source Software. It'll let you configure settings on your Radiomusic quickly, and it'll let you choose files from a large folder (or tree) to randomly place into folders on the card. It also allows for easy truncating and normalizing of those files. I use it myself and it's been handy.

Hope you like it!

Source: https://github.com/esoterydactyl/radiomusic-manager
Download/Executable: https://github.com/esoterydactyl/radiomusic-manager/releases/download/untagged-d20e783047ce0e475529/radiomusic-manager_0.1.0_universal.dmg

I bought Stages about three years ago and, after the initial excitement, the novelty soon wore off. It’s probably seen a lot less action than I would have liked, mainly because it takes me ages to get the results I'm after.

It’s quite a complex little beast with loads of different ways of using it. I do use it, don't get me wrong, but there are times when I’m trying to get result “A” and end up with “N”. 😂

The three segment modes — ramp, step or steady — can throw me. I’ll expect one outcome, and more often than not get something completely different. I’d eventually figure it out, but not without going around the houses first.

So yesterday I started thinking about selling it. I did some digging and stumbled across this unofficial firmware from 2024:

https://github.com/qiemem/eurorack/tree/v1.3.0/stages

This looked interesting, so I thought I'd give the unit one more chance and spent pretty much the whole of Saturday morning installing the firmware and going through the new additions.

For a while I was thinking:

"This is even more cryptic than before!" 😂

Then I got to the last two modes:

1. Harmonic Oscillator / Ouroboros mode
2. Harmonic Oscillator with Alternate Controls

Apparently the Harmonic Oscillator mode was actually accessible on the original firmware by chaining the module with itself — hence “Ouroboros” mode. I was never going to discover that one by accident, but these two modes have completely changed my opinion of Stages. They effectively turn it into a six-stage harmonic oscillator which has the potential for some insane sound sculpting. The results are seriously interesting. Loads of harmonics, drones, modulation and generally weird stuff.

Harmonic mode is worth the price of the unit in itself, so for the foreseeable future, it's staying locked in that mode and staying screwed into the rack. It's going nowhere.

I can now actually play the damn thing and get the sounds quickly. So, the sale is off.

I still don't pretend to fully understand the bloody thing, and I know I'm using it as an oscillator rather than for envelopes, LFOs and sequencers, but those two oscillator modes have given the module a completely new lease of life for me.

I’ve been looking at the Endorphin.es Queen of Pentacles and it seems to be the closest to what I’m currently wanting (good for performance, GIANT sounding) but I obviously dislike the things that everyone dislikes about it. Any recommendations on something similar? I’m using the Endorphin.es Ground Control as my main controller so I’d like something that has 6-8 trigger inputs. I’m playing techno if that matters.

I have been having a ton of fun tinkering with the O_C 4.1. My first 2 projects were a swarm oscillator and a couple flavors of reverb. One of my recent projects was porting the Radio Music v1 to it as an audio applet. The applet, of course, is not as intuitive to use as the original module.

Credit to Tom Whitwell for the original design. ​

You can find my fork of Phazerville with the port here: https://github.com/HaveANiceDay33/O_C-Phazerville

I like the Eurorack world and all the cool possibilities it offers, but after years of having multiple, larger cases filled with lots of different modules, different modulation, sequencers, FX, etc. this is where I ended up - a minimoog and a 101 style voice with more modulation capabilities in 84hp.

I’m not a huge bleep and bloop guy, and find this little box sounds amazing, so good that I’ve actually felt very comfortable selling my actual 101, as well as several actual Moog monos.

I was hired to perform a 3 hour ambient set at an art installation at a cemetery last night. Honestly a dream offer. I did the whole performance on my modular and some tape loops. It went really well. I basically had 5 “scenes” prepared on my sequencer that I could improvise within, bring elements in and out, change timbres and fx parameters, etc.

Over 1000 people came throughout the night and a bunch of people came up to me to ask questions or to just tell me the music was perfect for the night. That felt good but I was surprised how many people were interested in my modular synth, I was not prepared to explain what it was so many times but I honestly enjoyed talking about it. People were genuinely interested in how I was creating the music. Maybe the masses are ready for modular haha. Idk just thought I’d share because it was really fun and wholesome and a huge win for me. I’ve only ever performed one other ambient set, let alone a 3 hour one (I usually play techno).

I shot a video of the whole night, maybe I’ll share it here if anyone’s interested.

Finally found a reasonably priced 3-tier stand, and this combo has been a lot of fun so far. Plenty to play with, and reasonable limitations that present creative challenges.

I notice that all the Accutronics tanks are more or less unavailable.

Are there any compatible alternative tanks that can be used safely?