Happy New (Music) Year!

New year, new music:

Quiescent - Part 1 (of 1?)

This is "Quiescent", a song made using sounds only from the Arturia Matrixbrute... well, except for the drums and 3 short sound effects samples. All sounds from the brute was made by me, and everything was recorded into Reason 10.

No loudness processing was made for the sake of sound quality.
Make music, not loudness war!

Enjoy!

Arturia Matrixbrute - The Cons

While there are lots of positive reviews of the Arturia Matrixbrute I hardly found anyone bringing up it's shortcomings, so here's what I find annoying after owning one for 6 months.

The Arturia Matrixbrute (Cat was not included in the box)

The story:
I had a Moog Subphatty for about a year, a synth I truly loved, but as it was pretty limited in modulation features I sold it and got the Moog Subsequent 37 CV instead. It didn't take very long to realize that the 37 CV didn't have the same 'fatness' like the Subphatty did! I also noticed that the 37 CV had annoyingly high overtones, especially the first one (octave) when listening to simple waveforms. The latter could maybe be tamed with proper gain staging, but the lack of low end fatness was a big downer. I thought it would be a Subphatty on stereoids, but they sounded very different. Also, most of the knobs on the 37 CV were a bit loose and when touching them it sounded like they were fastened with some cheap glue that hadn't dried yet! Needless to say, because of this the Subsequent 37 CV was a huge disappointment and I sent it back to the retailer and got the Matrixbrute instead.


While the Matrixbrute is a BRUTE audio wise, it's far from perfect.
Here's what I think is wrong with it:

• The "VCO1 < Noise > VCF 1" Modulation Knob Bug
• The knob doesn't work as intended! When turned from 12 o'clock to the left, Noise should modulate VCO1, and when turned to the right Noise should modulate VCF 1. Due to a firmware bug, it's only VCF 1 that gets modulated, unless you first turn the knob from the 12 o'clock position a bit to the right into VCF 1 area and then back into VCO 1 area! The really annoying thing about this is that Arturia has known about this bug for more than a year, but neglect to fix it!
• Lack of Envelope Control
• No loopable envelopes. Nope.
• It's not possible to get the envelopes to always restart from '0' when the release is up and the envelope hasn't finished it's complete cycle. Therefore It's not possible to always get a long Attack while also having a long Release when playing notes. Legato button does not change this. I did come up with a workaround using the Matrix and Env3, but I would like to use Env3 for other things. Arturia claims this as "analog behaviour", yeah sure... but on the Moogs there's an optional switch!
• Pitch Wheel Dead Zone
• The Pitch Wheel has to be turned pretty much before making any pitch changes, in both directions. There's a (too) big dead zone in the center!
• The Sequencer
• The correct pitch of any made sequence will always be set to middle C. This 'feature' should at least be optional.
• There is no preset editor
• No other way to see presets, but to dial them in using Preset + Knobs.
• No way to name presets on the synth itself
• Only way to change the name of saved presets is by using a computer.
   
• MIDI Control Center (Preset management software)
• Feels like an early beta version, and isn't very user friendly.
• If you save a preset on the Matrixbrute, there is no way to do a 'refresh' in the MCC. You have to either close the app, or select another device in the list and then get back to the Matrixbrute. After that the connection refreshes, and the newly saved preset is available for naming. Why isn't there a refresh button?  Or why isn't a refresh triggered when saving a preset on the synth?
• Rate knobs for LFO 1 and 2 does not support triplets
• Not possible to make triplet-rhythms, when tempo synced.
• No preview of target preset before overwriting
• Before you tweak a preset that you might wanna save, you'd better know where to save it first, as there is no way to listen to target presets before saving. Hopefully you won't overwrite your favorite preset. Hopefully you also have a backup in MCC.

I don't think a $2000 synth should have these problems. Unfortunately Arturia seems to be all-in with their new machines Drumbrute, Rackbrute and Minibrutes at the moment, and their flagship synth is no longer prioritized. The lack of response to user feedback on their own user forum speaks for itself and as I said above the known bugs are still not fixed.

There's much to read on the forums: https://forum.arturia.com/index.php?board=157.0

Despite the above shortcomings, the synth IS massive and has a very wide range in audio design.

Compared to the Moogs it does have very narrow sweet-spots, so it's a bit tricky to quickly get 'that pleasant analog sound' , but at the same time it's a pure joy to discover new sounds and ways to modulate parameters!

But with that said... 

As long they do not fix the pure bugs in the Matrixbrute I won't buy another Arturia product!

If I had known about these shortcomings I would have probably kept my Moog Subsequent 37 CV.

The Matrixbrute is good, but with a little more love from its creators it could be awesome!

If you're in the process of getting a Matrixbrute, I hope you found this post helpful in making the right decision! 

Korg Volca Beats Snare Mod

Got hold of a used Korg Volca Beats recently, but soon discovered that the snare wasn't very nice... at all. Did some online searches and I soon found out about the missing capacitor C78!

A quick stop at ELFA to pick up some 100nF Ceramic Capacitors and a bit of soldering did the job, and the snare got much better sounding!

Unfortunately I accidentally destroyed one of the soldering points on the board, so I had to attach one leg of the cap to a component just beside it. Also got too close to one of the pots (Hat grain) with the soldering iron, melting it a bit...  and I had read some warnings from someone online who did the same thing. Oh well. It wasn't that bad after all.

My main goal was to have a switch for the capacitor to be able to select the original sound, and also to add a MIDI Out port, but as ELFA didn't have these components at the shop I just bought the caps.
Will do the MIDI Out mod some other time.

Cheers!

Reason Tips & Tricks - Stereo / Mono input switch

In an earlier post I made an External / Internal source input switch to go in the default Reason template. This is an alteration to that patch, which adds a Stereo / Mono input switch, useful when sampling a mono instrument and removes the need to fiddle with the cables in the back of the rack.

You can download the "mrfprod_Default.reason" file here or follow the instructions below.
My default patch uses the A/B Audio & CV Switch and the ReMark Rack Divider, both which can be downloaded for free from Propellerhead Shop.

The instructions below assumes that you've first made the External/Internal switch.

The Sampling Input Source & Stereo/Mono Switcher Patch:

1. Switch to the back and create a new A/B Switch named "Input" and a new Spider Audio unit, named "Stereo / Mono".

2. Move L & R cables from the Source switch outputs to the Input switch outputs.

3. Connect Source switch outputs to the stereo/mono spider split inputs.

4. Connect the first L&R split outputs to Input Switch input A L&R.

5.  Connect the next two splitter L&R outputs to the merge sections first two Left inputs.

6. And finally, connect the Stereo/Mono spider's Left merge output to Left Input B on the Input switch.

The final result!

There you have it! Switch easily between a stereo or mono signal, from an internal or external sound source!

If you found this useful, please leave a comment! :)

Play!

The Moog Sub Phatty is a lovely little synth, and it amazes me every time I use it! I got one last september but I didn't do any (complete) music with it until now! Better late than... more late. :)

The song is called "Play!", and was made with the Phatty only, except for drums.

Enjoy!

DYI Project: Sound absorption panels

After wanting sound absorption panels for a long time (years!), I finally got the opportunity to build a couple to place on the wall behind my studio monitors. So, here's my recipe for 8 absorption panels, with a total size of 615 * 1195 * 70 mm each. I do apologize for the blurry and dark pictures... still getting to know my new camera! ;)

I choose to build the panels using flax(linseed) insulation panels instead of fiberglass or rockwool, as the latter are not that environmental friendly, safe to handle or healthy to have in a living room.

For the flax insulation panels, I found these absorption coefficient values, stated by the manufacturer (not verified):

	125Hz	250Hz	500Hz	1000Hz	2000Hz	4000Hz
50mm	0,2	0,45	0,70	0,80	0,90	0,95
100mm	0,65	0,75	0,75	0,85	0,90	0,95
150mm	0,80	0,90	0,90	0,90	0,90	1,0

What you need for the job:

• 8 insulation panels
• Flax panels, 70 * 565 * 1170 mm.
• 7-8 pieces of wooden boards 28 * 70 * 4200
• Depending on available board length at the warehouse, do the math about length and best cutting measurements. (I bought 8 of these boards)
• a Mitre saw
• Screws 4,0 * 50 mm
• Staple gun and 6 mm staples
• Bigger staples for hanger wire mounting
• Hanger wire
• Some nice pieces of cloth
• Electric drill 
• Electric screw driver

The must-have tools, besides electric drill and screwdriver.

I measured the insulation panels and they were actually 1140 mm tall and not 1170 mm as specified! The width was correct though.

To get a good fit inside the frame, I subtracted 10 mm in both X and Y dimensions.
I cut the boards in 45 degree angles, so the tall sides were 1186 mm on the 'outside' (1130 mm 'inside') and  the short sides were cut in 616 mm on the 'outside' (560 mm 'inside').

Not cutting audio this time.

I pre-drilled holes for the screws, to minimize risk of wood cracking, put some wood glue in between and put 1 screw in the middle from one side, and 2 from the other side. This way the frame gets really sturdy.

Use a previously built frame to support building of others.

Three screws per corner. Start with the single screw, but do not tighten it until the other two screws are in place. This to prevent misalignment.

Some pieces of wood looked like this, or worse. Face those pieces to the inside of the frame.

The panel fitting nicely into the frame!

Did some weight reduction on one of the frames.

Depending on the cloth pattern I used different methods to cover the back side. The one in the picture above was clearly the best option ('the double wrap'). The other method was to cut out a single sheet as big as the back side, and staple it in place before putting in the insulation piece in and mounting the main cloth.

Cutting the cloth this way made it simpler to get a nice fold in the corners. Begin win the backside corner, making a 45º fold pretty much aligned with the wood cuts. Then stretch the cloth from the middle of the short side outwards, and then finally stretching the cloth from the front side corner to get a tight fit with no slop.

A neat and tight corner.

I placed the hanger staples at 23 cm from the top.

Stretch the wire between the staples, pinch it in place with the hammer, and tie a small knot at each end.

The wire will flex a certain amount, giving 16 cm to the top when supporting it's own weight, making it an easy task to place the wall hook and get all panels at the same height.

The final result! Looks pretty good, and a lot of room reflections are gone. Next mission is to find a fitting carpet to place on the floor to get rid of a bit vertical reflections. Much more could be done to the room, but remember... this is still our living room! :D

A big thanks to my friend Tobias for driving to and from the hardware store,  and building the first panel!

Kisses to my pregnant girlfriend for putting up with my audiophilia!

I hope you found this post useful!