Xaoc Belgrad

[Kroggel]

Thanx for the quote.

believe me, german engineering is overrated. I want eastern stuff, build to last

[lordymosh]

Loving the Belgrad. Very versatile. Does anyone find it's not so stable?

For instance I have a digital vco running through it. Filter near self oscillation. LFO into fm jack. Span and balance tweaked to my liking.

When I come back the next day I find that it doesn't sound the same and I have to tweak the resonance, balance, span etc. But I never get it sounding the way I want as the night before.

I usually power on my rack for 15 mins before using it.

[ferran]

I get most useful and tweakble sounds from it feeding simple, fat waves from an analog VCO, for ex. modulated pulses or sines from a AS RS9%e, ... too harsh an unpredictable with digital oscillators wavetables--based. Question of taste. Anyway, Is an interesting and unpredictable filter.

[zengomi]

I've never noticed instability of the sort you mention, lordymosh. Always sounds the same on powering up.

Incidentally, I finally got around to using Belgrad as an oscillator in a track ('Miasma'). ER-101/102 sent the notes. A-147-2 VCDLFO modulated Span and Balance. I couldn't get Belgrad's pitch to go as low as I wanted. Remedied after recording in UAD's Luna by taking it down 6 semitones. If you listen to the track, Belgrad is the low-bowed cello-like sound.

[lordymosh]

I've never noticed instability of the sort you mention, lordymosh. Always sounds the same on powering up.

Hmmm that's a bit worrying. There might be an issue with my Belgrad so. Might try some more trouble shooting.

[Kroggel]

Yeah the pots. Sorry it was late ;-) in german we say potis. Good to hear, but also a little bit sad that one of the big knob seems to wooble even if its just a bit. Those tiny modules are so expansive. They should be rock solid. A good pot or button is only a few cent. Have a make noise math, and both cycle knobs are not good either. Totally wobbly and you need to push them on a certain point.

But nevertheless the Belgrad seems great, i´ll take one

For what it's worth here's the quote from XAOC about the rotary switch (from post #89 on Page 4 of this thread):

"Well, we had a seriuosly hard time finding a rotary switch that has as much as 10 positions, is readily available in decent quantities, has the right body height and finally - that doesn't cost bonkers. I agree the feeling is not the greatest but these switches are very reliable parts made in Germany (and you can find them in some other euro modules from Eurpe as well)."

But they did come from Germany so that should make you a little bit happy.

Got the Belgrad now and have to say, it´s very solid. The rotary is not super duper qualität, but it´s ok. The remaining 5 pots are absolutly rock solid. I think with the Zadar its just different because all the pots are encoders and they are fairly wobbly.

[Richard deHove]

When I come back the next day I find that it doesn't sound the same and I have to tweak the resonance, balance, span etc. But I never get it sounding the way I want as the night before.

I've found on certain settings the positions are very finely determined, a tiny turn can have big effect, especially with resonance. And I've found the same as you - returning after a day I sometimes need to make small adjustments to recapture a particular sound. OTOH this might also mean that the source was the variant element, not the filter. Overall though, not an issue.

[Plurmk]

This is not normal behavior, right? I've never noticed these strange oscillations.

[Fedor]

its not clear from the video whether your sm/xm switch is off or not.

[Plurmk]

It's off, but it will oscillate like this in any mode.

[Fedor]

I've tried to replicate your settings in the video and my belgrad doesn't sound like that. Maybe some calibration went off?

[Plurmk]

I've tried to replicate your settings in the video and my belgrad doesn't sound like that. Maybe some calibration went off?

Thanks Fedor, so I tried fiddling with calibration a bit - that doesn't seem to be the problem...

[Buttons ARE toys]

This is not normal behavior, right? I've never noticed these strange oscillations.

It's been a while since I had mine, but IIRC, when you turn the span knob up that far, the lower filter will go far below audio rate oscillation across the lower half of the frequency knob, so you're essentially mixing a LFO with the other audible oscillating filter. Do you still get odd oscillations with the span control turned down?

[MossGarden]

Been loving using Belgrad as a voice, it’s so pretty!

[MarilynMonroe]

Sounds nice, love the timbre

[djd_oz]

Sweet!

[MrBiggs]

Yeah I think it was this thread that got me using my Belgrad to make sounds, rather than merely filter them. It's superb. I bought it mainly as a filter for external sounds like guitars, field recordings and vox. And sure it's fine for that. But it now lives among the oscillators...

Nice work @mossgarden