A quick and dirty recording of the Squascillator VCO - the first 30 seconds are a simple sequence with the pulsewidth being modulated by hand (could also use an LFO or other modulation source), whereas the remainder is a constant frequency with PW modulation alone.

No effects or postprocessing other than removing periods of silence and adding the fade in/fade out sections.

Squascillator VCO

Quick and dirty recording of the DWS diode waveshaper - no post processing other than adding the fade in/out.  This is the output from the DWS on its own - mixing the 'clean' and 'folded' signals can yield some very interesting results.

Constant frequency sine from an AVR VCO followed by random knob-twiddling on the DWS. There's a bit of a learning curve involved, but there are a lot of timbral sweet spots if you're prepared to put the effort in.

The 'default' version of the DWS has 8 diode stages for fiddling with - there may be an 'instant gratification' version available with only 4 stages at some point in the future.

DWS waveshaper demo

The diode ladder VCF in action - nothing fancy; Behringer Neutron providing the sounds, with the pitch controlled by the S&H to keep things interesting. Sawtooth wave to begin with, changing to pulse train towards the end.

Random knob-twiddling - self-oscillation is easy to find.

Diode ladder VCF

Multi-feedback resonant bandpass filter - no musicality implied etc.etc.

Resonant bandpass filter sample

Let's make some noise ....

A CD40106-based drone generator - no real changes from the original design: four channels of the 40106 set up as tunable(ish) oscillators, mashed together using a CMOS logic chip and then output through a Sallen-Key filter. Throw in the current-starve option and sonic wackiness can often ensue.

Use it as a standalone drone generator, as it's capable of producing some fairly dense textures in the right hands, or use it with an envelope generator and a VCA and you've got a source of nice, clashy percussion sounds.

XO106 (4/4.5) - sample 1

XO106 (4/4.5) - sample 2, in a percussion stylee

BE AWARE! This is a deliberately lo-fi module - if you want crystal clear sound reproduction, fidelity or whatever then you won't find it here. The module relies on the properties of a photo-transistor to generally dirty up any signal coming passing through it; think of it as kind-of like a low-pass gate with built in distortion and a few other properties too.

Optothing - Ghetto VCA

The Chaos Filter is/was a clockable, switched capacitor comb filter built around CMOS chips - there were only a short run made originally, but the module may make a comeback if there's sufficient demand (there's a voltage-controlled version on the drawing board ...)

The biggest issue with this particular design that the output tended to be a bit 'clicky' at lower clock speeds. Even so, it was quite possible to coax some ... interesting ... sounds out of it.

Glitch-mongers will probably dig this one.

Chaos Filter sample

Demo output of the AVR VCO - approximately 10 seconds of each of the 'default' waveforms: sine, triangle. square, sawtooth, multi-pulse and digital noise.

Simple sequence provided via the SOGv2 stacked octave generator module. No postprocessing.

AVR VCO demo

The vactrol VCA in action - a simple sequence with a sine wave generated by my AVR VCO.

Response isn't super snappy because it's a vactrol - however, it preserves the sound pretty well and you can get some lovely bell-like distortion as the signal levels and gain are increased.

VACVCA

Overqualified software developer and builder of Eurorack synthesiser modules.

DWS waveshaper demo

York Modular