Muff's Modules & More

[moonagedaydream]

why does turning the knobs on my lfo or my zorlon cannon affect what my anti-oscillator is doing, if they are not patched together?

i just threw my 1st modular together a week or two ago and i'm still trying to figure a few things out...

but oh god i love it.

[qu.one]

Sounds like grounding/power issue. Not properly grounded or not enough juice most likely. Could also be the power you are connected to in your house. I had a friends house that would constantly make my afg act weird.

[Muff Wiggler]

only have time for a brief answer but...

.. you're not doing anything wrong, and there's nothing wrong with the design of the modules you are using (awesome choices btw)

the power and grounding scheme of the eurorack format is a major weakness in the overall 'standard', all power and ground is daisy-chained as opposed to a 'star' arrangement like is present in most other modular formats. This means that that the garbage and noise that many modules create, which is normally carried safely away by the ground bus, and normally isolated by the power bus, passes by every module in your system on its way 'out'.


digital modules create (it's the nature of the beast, not something arising from 'bad' design) a lot more garbage and noise, as well as power fluctuations) compared to analog modules... the latter certainly has potential for power fluctuations, but noise is much less than digital

if you are handy and can rewire your busboards to have a star arrangement instead of a daisy-chain one the situation will get a LOT better

[Muff Wiggler]

btw - congrats!!

and enjoy!!

and welcome!!!

[qu.one]

Of course muffs answer was better than mine!

[Suburban Bather]

I had this same problem when I had moogerfoogers. The ringmod lfo would modulate the pitch/cutoff frequency of the low pass filter. Plugging a dummy plug(a 1/4" plug with a wire soldered to the tip and sleave terminals) fixed the problem. It was cool getting a wireless modulation once I found a solution, but it was still irratating at the same time. Definitely interferance due to a grounding issue.

[moonagedaydream]

well, i don't think i'm handy enough to rewire anything...
you said that they pass through all the other modules on the way out, well couldn't i just rearange them so that the AO is at the beginning of the chain, and the other two problematic ones are at the end? is there a certain order your modules are supposed to be in?


and thank you for your help. this is a hell of a site you have here muff.

[Suburban Bather]

How are you housing/powering your modules? You really should not be experiencing these issues.

[Muff Wiggler]

thanks!! it's a great site because of all the cool people who come here and share their excitement and knowledge - i'm grateful to them all, the community is what makes this place, thanks for being a part of it!

your idea is worth a try - indeed I should have said "mostly" passes by all your modules on the way out, as signals will always take the shortest path to ground, so the module nearest your power inlets on the busboard will 'see' the most noise, and the one farthest away will most likely not see the noise of modules earlier in the stream

of course the opposite is true for power fluctuations, but I think that's far less of an issue - a module that suddenly starts pulling a lot more current will (as far as I know, i'm no expert) have an effect on every other module sharing the same power source

doesn't hurt at all to mess around with module placement, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it makes a difference!

[attacksustain]

[Muff Wiggler]

i'm not aware of any but to be honest I've never looked into it....

[Suburban Bather]

I was going to question if the OP is near any power grids. Also, he/she should try switching up the power connections.

[fadeddata]

Just a little confused here. How is the Doepfer/Euro system not a star ground? Daisy chaining is connecting power from one module to the next. A star ground system brings all the grounds (possibly power) back to one central location and then sends them off to the grounding point (possibly power as well). From what I've seen the Euro system is identical to all the more expensive modular systems. Is there something I'm missing?

[jonkull]

If you look at the traces on a euro busboard you will see that they are one long strip from end to end of the busboard. Each module connector shares ground with the rest. They don't have their own path.

[moonagedaydream]

[moonagedaydream]

ok well, i've been messing around with this thing all morning, and there has been no change. honestly, i think it's supposed to do this. if not, then mine is just more unique than yours. and thats how i like it.

[Muff Wiggler]

do you have more than one busboard?

and if so, is the power supply wired to one, and then the next busboard wired off the first?

if so, see you can do this, should be simple -

take the leads that go from the first busboard to the second, and disconnet them from the first busboard

next, connect them to the power supply's outputs, so that there is two sets of cables coming from the power supply, one set to the first busboard, one set to the second busboard

now both busboards terminate at the power supply instead of one board hanging off the other

this should give you better results 'isolating' modules

[moonagedaydream]

well i bought it used, and the guy said i probably wouldn't need 2 busboards so he kept one :(

[Exuviae]

[moonagedaydream]

[Entrainer]