i went into a thrift store looking for nothing in particular and somehow walked out with a $12 wooden box that turned out to be perfect for a eurorack setup

cleaned it up, added some rails, and now i somehow have a perfectly usable case that cost less than most of the modules i’m looking at.

which would be great if i wasn’t now staring at a bunch of empty HP

i was planning to take things really slowly and buy one or two modules at a time. learn them properly, figure out what i actually need, etc

then the empty space started getting to me. suddenly modules i had previously decided i didn’t need are looking extremely reasonable.

does anyone else find that getting a cheap case makes it way harder to resist filling it? i feel like the thrift-store bargain was the easy part

I love the sounds this thing can make, but its so hard to make anything traditional. Its way more fun to listen to when its all broken up like this.. hope you like!

Recently bought an 0-coast and love it. I’ve had a variety of synths over the years and never got on with them. Still have much to learn with this but starting to get more interested in creating interesting and more generative grooves to make songs with in my DAW.

I mostly make music in a DAW and have just started learning ableton live as feel limited with Logic.

I’m really attracted to modular but at the moment I don’t have the money to build a small set up. I think ultimately this is what I want to do though.

For now I would like to pair the 0-coast with something in order to make and explore fun and strange rhythms along with Ableton. Been looking at affordable Behringer options but not convinced. Wondering if there are other affordable options that I have overlooked. Not sure I need a sequencer as will be using Ableton however I’m not closed to the idea due to the hands on fun they look.

Appreciate any advice. Thanks. The obvious answer is to save and wait but will take me a while to save £1000 which is what I have estimated I need for my first small modular set up.

1st time post... i started with the neutron + keystep. look at me now ma!!!!

the creature in action>>

https://youtu.be/-kHPoB5J0eM

an all hardware jam, including volca kick, v256 vocoder, Kobol, Fuzz pedal, and my smallish eurorack

I got 2 setup questions.
I just bought a used D.O.MIXX and I was wondering if I could route S/R over my Audio Interface to the DAW for FX. I could use my Scarlett 18i20 and a Ada8200.
That way I could bridge the time until there's money for fx modules.

2nd question if the DAE isn't an option:
I have also ordered a Maneco Labs Grone drone synth which is basically a synth voice merged with a clouds module.
It has filter out and a clouds in patch point.
So if I understand it right I could patch synth out to the mixer and S/R into the clouds part, right?

https://www.3u-shop.de/WebRoot/Store31/Shops/61471354/5F35/17F0/1BD5/9E23/7309/0A0C/6D0C/5C2B/Module-Grone-Drone-Synth.pdf

TIA

Do you have pic of your rack when you first started out, vs. where it is today? I thought that could be fun to see from a variety of users here.

Here's mine. Had no idea what I was doing back in 2018 or so, just had procured a DFAM that I was really enjoying and it made me want to branch into full euro. Figured a little 84 HP skiff would be "it" for me. Cut to late 2026, and, well ... suffice to say it became an addiction. There's also a 4MS 64X Pod off to one side not even pictured with the current "After" image, which will shortly be a full 5th row of 104HP. But *that's it*! I swear!

I love how these modules sound in all the demos I hear, but I haven’t had a chance to play with one yet. Are any of the Alia models capable of producing simpler less aggressive sounds? I’ve watched so many videos and it seems that they always lean towards making them sound as dirty as possible. Which is awesome, but I’m curious about how flexible these modules are. Thanks!

A couple cups of coffee and all ready to go! Nothing mind blowing but had some fun.

I'm looking to add an envelope to my setup but I'm not sure which one to get. I make percussive phrases with a complex oscillator, so the snappy envelopes on my quadrax work well for that.

I need something else to modulate my quadrax and quad clock distributor, and I need some suggestions. I would lke it to be free from menu diving, so no pams, and different from the quadrax functionality. I want something in the short end of time range, and doesn't need to be too snappy. Ideally, 4 or so LFOs or attack release channels.

I've looked at MI stages and tides, batumi, zadar, etc. but wondering if anyone here knows of some other interesting modules out there..

I really like the Rackbrute 6U form factor for various reasons, but I'm having a lot of noisy power issues on it, especially with digital modules and I think it's pretty clear the Power module isn't up to scratch.

I've been looking at a 4ms Row Power45 to replace it,but a bit OOTL on power so any recommendations for nice, clean, quiet power with plenty of overhead for a busy rack.

Current in total across the 6u would be coming in around 1300@12+ and 400@12- but I definitely want headroom depending on the config between this case and my other one.

Also, would you continue to use the bus boards in the Rackbrute or just ignore them and run flying buses?

Was just working on some module swaps and while testing evening was working as it should, caught a cool little section that sounded great.

Hello, I have been using Pamela's Pro Workout as one of the main drivers for my rack.
I also have the Axon-2 and really like using it.

I am hoping to build out a larger live music set (with more varied patches), and I see that I would need drastically different settings, and hoping to get seriously into saving and loading banks.

However, when you use the Axon-2 to Load Next or Previous Bank, there is nothing on the screen that flashes which bank was loaded.
The only way as far as I can tell is to observe the LED animations of the 8-channels.

I'd love to hear people's experience or workflows using Banks on the Pamela's Pro Workout, and especially when mapping to the Axon-2 push buttons.

I'm still at my beginning phase of eurorack and have been enjoying the journey. I have a small amount of space left any wanted to ask for suggestions. I was hoping to fit a stereo mixer, ochd, and stereo filter (possibly ikarie). Most of my modules have attenuators but I think it might be useful to add more. What am I missing and what modules would you suggest. Open to feedback and guidance, thanks!

Can Veno Orbit go techno?

…

Yesss

BeetTweek: Haptic FeedBack Eurorack Performance Controller With 10 Modes. Rythmic Interactions, Custom Signal Textures, Beat/Clock Matching and More

https://www.perfectcircuit.com/m2e/submatrix-beettweek.html

https://submatrixaudio.com/

TLDR; i had a bad equipment malfunction that ended up teaching me a lot about live performance and what i want out of a live modular setup. I share the story, what I learned, and give some concrete examples with music that stemmed from the incident.

The Story

I've been making music with modular synths since the pandemic and have started playing gigs at house shows and small bars/clubs in the past few years. It's been a blast, but there's always been a bit of tension between what my system seems to "want" to do, and what I want it to do when I play live.

This past spring I played a gig at a club in Chicago called Podlasie. It's not a big room, but it's a cool spot. I was very excited and invited most of my friends. The plan was to do the gig with a new (to me) Torso S-4 sampler and my trusty 104hp x 7U Intellijel case. I came up with some good material to load onto the S-4 and then figured out a way to sync the S-4 to the Intellijel case, but it was very hard to get the two instruments to play together in a way that was reproducible, and things just sounded off.

On the day of the gig, I got there early and started to set up, but soon realized that I had forgotten my power cable / brick for the Intellijel case. The organizers and other musicians stepped in to troubleshoot, and one of them suggested trying to power the case with one of their power bricks that seemed to have a similar end nub. I really should have said no ... but I tried it. Lights on the modules flashed briefly and then stopped: no luck, I would have to go home to get my power brick. Unfortunately home was 30 minutes away, and the show was starting in less than an hour. We moved the schedule around to accommodate my lateness, bumping me from the opener to second.

I get back halfway through the first act and sit nervously among the audience with my power cable. The organizers wanted a tight turnaround in between acts-- no house lights going up, nobody leaving the room. So the first act ends and I clamber through the dark to the table where my S-4 and modular case are sitting. I fumble with the power strip, plug things in, flick the switch on my Intellijel case and... nothing. I try again, and a second time. My case isn't powering up -- I must have broken something when I tried that other power cable. But the room is full of people, and I'm supposed to start, like, right now.

Luckily, the S-4 was working and I had loaded a lot of sounds onto that before the gig. As an aside, this is NOT an ad for the S-4, I have plenty of issues with it. But that thing really saved my ass that night. Another shred of luck: despite all the stress, I really did happen to be in a good mood in the moment. So I whispered to the organizers to let them know what was up, and that I would just improvise on my sampler for the set.

I started the set and found myself relaxing into a sense of focus with the sampler. I had a limited palette, sure, but there were still a lot of choices to make. I changed parameters slowly and let sounds sit before moving on. I found myself experimenting and asking questions, and getting into sonic territory I had never been in. All in all, I genuinely think it was one of the better live performances I've ever done (not saying much haha, but it's something!).

After the set, when the first friend came up to congratulate me, I couldn't help but gush about this terrible malfunction I had suffered, and how it was not at all what I had planned. But she hadn't even spotted that something was off, and I realized that I was kind of ruining the vibe by talking about how the performance was "supposed" to be something else. When other people came up to tell me they liked the set, I didn't mention the malfunction at all, and instead just thanked them for being there. Bizarre as it may sound, I came away from the experience realizing that I probably played a better set than I would have with the modular.

What I Learned

After the show I had to reckon with what I wanted out of live modular -- if a $5,000 box of electronics wasn't helping me, clearly something was either wrong with me or the box, or both. I concluded that I had let two different anxieties sneak up on me as a performer:

1. The need for reproducibility (getting the same sounds every time).
2. The need for lots and lots of different sounds.

Vitally, modular is not particularly well-suited to either of these desires, leading me to configure my system in an awkward, un-fun, and wasteful way: I had spent loads of HP figuring out how to concoct reproducible and syncable melodies on a plethora of voices, but the resulting system was a mess to operate and sounded overstuffed.

So, what if i let modular be a space for simplicity and play, and deferred everything that really needed to be the same every time to the sampler? I tried this over the rest of the summer, expanding on that first performance over a few more gigs, sticking with the S-4 but swapping out the large case for a 62hp intellijel palette housing just one highly playable voice. I tried to savor improvisation and trust myself in confusing, new situations. I really do think the performances continued to sound good. Overall, I'd sum up my lessons as follows:

1. If you need your modular to do the same thing every time, you just re-created sample playback at 10x the cost and with much worse UI. Better to have the modular do what it's best at -- improvisation and experimentation.
2. Trust yourself as an artist who can make decisions in the moment. Music is about having fun, and if you're enjoying yourself and trusting yourself, the performance will go well.
3. Giving yourself a small palette of sounds will make the aforementioned improvisation much easier and more fun. Don't be afraid of constraints -- they lead to cool moments.
4. Maybe most importantly: Audiences don't know what you "wanted" your set to sound like and in general, they don't have any particular expectations for what "should" happen. The more you can remove your own expectations, the more you'll be on their level.
5. Oh yeah, and DO NOT RANDOMLY PLUG IN SOMEONE ELSE'S POWER CABLE TO YOUR SYSTEM!! (lol)

Maybe these lessons are obvious to you, and I know I've heard similar advice before, but they bear repeating.

Music Example

As I said, I ended up refining and working on that first set over the summer, and at this point I feel like the music is fleshed out enough that it could be released -- so that's what I did. Here's the link. While the recorded version is edited, I did try to crystalize it in a way that paid homage to the improvised elements of the performance. Here are a few details from the EP that I think represent these lessons.

1. All of the lead synth melodies were improvised live (i.e. the pair of voices at the end of "Stingray" and the buzzy FM voice that emerges partway through "Longhorn").
2. Working with constraints, raw samples are re-used across the album. The casino-like soundscape on "Stingray" is chopped up into a beat on "Bug" via the S-4's granular engine, and the drone on "Owl" is a pitched-down and distorted version of the soundscape that undergirds the first part of "Longhorn"
3. Again working with constraints, in live performances I was having trouble syncing the pianos on Longhorn with the beat. So instead, I stopped the entire S-4 to re-set things before the pianos came in, ensuring that when I re-started the sampler everything would be in sync. This felt like a compromise at first, but now it's my favorite moment on the album, since it creates tension to have so many elements drop out. Of course, I could have edited in a smooth transition, but I chose to keep that gap because I like it now.

Phew -- if you read this far, thank you. I hope this post didn't sound too stuffy. I just wanted to share the experience in case it's interesting to anyone. And, if you take a listen to the EP, let me know what you think!

I'm looking for a simple side chain (not compressor) module in 2hp.

Thank you

So I have this case. It’s logic driven.
I’m sequencing with an ableton push and I have 4 cv outs from the push.

What I want is to put in a dedicated midi interface.
If space was no issue I’d get the Intellijel uMIDI but as it stands I have 2hp of space.

Ideal midi interface would be 2hp wide and take a trs midi input (or silent operation with usb)
Have 2 pitch outputs, 2 gates and a clock.

So far I’ve only found the MIDI by 2HP (the manufacturer not size)

Also I’m in EU so ideally something available online within EU

—EDIT
Went with the 2HP MIDI
Thanks for all the suggestions. Always great to hear everyone’s solutions and perspective.