Still Not Music Easel

Second attempt to make eurorack sound like Buchla Music Easel. This time I didn't limit myself with limitations of Music Easel. I use two Dixie 2+ oscillators and both channels of Optomix. One goes straight to Optomix and other's sine wave goes to wave folder before mixed with saw wave and then to Optomix. I use three Sample & Holds to modulate sequence's pitch and speed and wave folders fold parameter. 0-CTRL gives five step sequence which is mixed with sample & hold to prevent sequence from repeating. I wanted originally to have something like Music Easel's preset voltage but couldn't have it without getting new modules or second 0-CTRL.

Aftertouchus Polyphonicus

I know I wrote last month my home studio is ready. Well it wasn’t back then but now it might be. Since that post I got Make Noise 0-CTRL which I have used all videos since getting it. Latest addition is Native Instrument’s Kontrol S61 mk3. Both have one thing in common. Both let me get more out of gear I already have. You could say they were studio upgrades. 0-CTRL gives touch control to eurorack and Kontrol polyphonic aftertouch to everything else.

Polyphonic aftertouch is mostly talked with Yamaha CS-80 and Vangelis. If you want to know which synths implement it you usually get CS-80 and not much else. Lately Hydrasynth and Waldorf Iridium have been added to list. Keyboards with polyphonic aftertouch are rare but synths capable of handling polyphonic aftertouch are not. Synth manufacturers don’t tell their synth can handle polyphonic aftertouch. You just have to test if it works. I read one manual of synth which can handle polyphonic aftertouch but manual mentioned only channel aftertouch.

This is weird because I have been looking for synths which can do polyphonic aftertouch. Didn’t find any analog polysynths besides Deckard’s Dream but that counts as CS-80 and was too expensive. When I got keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch I learned all analog polysynths in current setup can handle it. Haven’t tested it with Analog Four but I don’t consider it as polysynth. I use it as four monosynths like it was when it was released. I have other synths with more voices when I want polyphony.

So why I am excited about polyphonic aftertouch. It is because it gives you ability to change each note’s sound individually after you have hit the key. With channel aftertouch only way to change individual note’s sound is velocity and it happens when you hit the key. After that everything affects every note. MPE gives addition to polyphonic aftertouch pitch and mod wheels for each notes. But for that you need synth that works with MPE. Those are rarer than synths that work with polyphonic aftertouch. However it is easier to find synths with MPE because there are lists of those synths and everything that works with MPE. There is nothing like that with polyphonic aftertouch.

Polyphonic aftertouch gave new life to synths I had almost given up on. It makes huge difference when you can open filter or add more modulation for individual notes. You can have chords with less modulation and melody with more modulation. You can do that without polyphonic aftertouch but you have to record those parts separately or have two synths if you do it live.

I think my home studio is ready

I haven’t written anything about my homestudio for a while. I think I can write something about it since I feel it is now in state which you could say ready. You can use any other word which means it doesn’t need any changes for now. No major investments needed.

I made kind of new year’s resolution but not really to stop buying new music gear for a year. If something breaks I will buy replacement and upgrades are allowed but nothing really new for a year. I broke that already once because one plugin I have been looking for sometime was in sale for small price. I could have done without it but it was cheap. Next breaking of this plan might happen with Make Noise’s DXG. I could justify it by saying it is upgrade to Optomix. DXG is stereo low pass gate. Optomix is mono low pass gate. Both are same size. Optomix is in stereo system. Having stereo low pass gate would make more sense. I am not sure if I will get DXG or not. Need see and hear more of it. Optomix might be better in some patches.

It is bit weird to have feeling your home studio can do everything you could want from it considering the size you can dedicate to it. Bigger real studio could do much more but I couldn’t expect more from space I have dedicated. I think starting to record guitar and bass gave me this feeling. Everything just clicked. I stopped thinking what I could need in future. I started to think what I can do with what I currently have.

One of the last changes I made was to start using audio interfaces outputs. I added pedal board which allow me to use stereo pedals with everything. Now I can use different synths’ external inputs from DAW. Have planned to do that for ages. Finally did it. Should have done it much earlier.

The last change was hardest to make. I took Minibrute 2S away from setup and replaced it with Lyra-8. I had not used Minibrute 2S since I got eurorack cases. Played with it for a while but I couldn’t justify keeping it in setup when Taiga and other modules can do almost everything it can. Yes there is difference in sound but it creates other option which doesn’t really matter. I can do much more with Taiga case than with Minibrute 2S. Only thing Minibrute 2S can do what Taiga case can’t do is sequencer trick I use in video below. I don’t use external sequencers too often. That video is only time I have done something I have released with external sequencer.

I think it is good idea to limit unnecessary options. Lyra-8 gives something no other synth gives. Have had Lyra-8 for several years. I have used it only in one video. It has been more of a therapeutical thing I use every now and then when I need to get my mind away from something. Not sure what to do with BARP 2600. Haven’t used it either since I got eurorack cases. It can still stay because it doesn’t free space like Minibrute 2S did.

I am almost same point with camera gear. There are two lenses I kind of want to get. I could replace older lenses with them. I could call that upgrade which it would really be. My GAS has got to a point where I have started to think about selling gear without getting anything new. Weird feeling.

I am done with Diablo 4

I am done with Diablo 4. Current version is not fun any more. Just finished season’s story. Next task would have been renown grind which I just did couple weeks ago and doing same quests I just did in previous renown grind. You have to do renown grind to have any change to survive on world tier 3.

I played on world tier 2. It was quite fun until last few days. Endured it because I wanted to see the season’s story. Now that it is done I don’t see any reasons to log in. Game just isn’t fun any more. Before last couple days I understood why I died and what I should have done to survive. Some times reason was I was under leveled for the content. Now I am on correct level for content but I feel I am under leveled for some of the fights. Game just throws stuff that is almost impossible to survive. I don’t record my game play. I can’t watch why I died. At one point I am fighting the mob and everything looks fine. Next moment I am dead.

I understand challenge. But what Diablo 4 gives now is cheap deaths. I am playing on world tier 2 and have level 48 character. Whole screen shouldn’t be full of enemies and different effects and powerful enemies shooting from off screen. One time I died after I cleared dungeon. I got notification of dungeon completion. Right after that tons of enemies attacked and couple seconds later I was dead. I thought I could relax but no. It wasn’t over.

Blizzard offers increase of mob density as solution to game’s problems. It is one of the problems. Game becomes impossible when there are too many enemies with crowd control powers. You are in crowd control all the time and high density mobs kill you in seconds. That is not fun. Blizzard want to see more variety in builds but make changes that only certain kind of builds or classes can survive. I don’t want to study which skills and gear I need to be able to survive. I just want to log in and have fun. Not to constantly die for reasons I don’t understand.

Game has problems even when you are not dying. Inventory management is huge issue. You need to constantly get back to town to empty inventory. It just breaks the game play when you have to go to town during dungeon, event or quest and check what you want to keep and what to salvage or sell and what you can keep in stash. Blizzard’s solution is to add one more tab to stash. You still need to stop what you are doing. You can have more items in stash but it doesn’t solve the main issue. Season 1 made this worse because there are more items in inventory now. Having gems as materials doesn’t help this issue. I have this issue with my main. I stopped picking gems with it but still had to teleport to town constantly.

Horses. Almost everyone hates horses in Diablo 4. You spend lot of time on horse. You try to avoid mobs when you ride your horse. But there are places where you can’t avoid mobs. You have to fight mobs before you can continue and horses have cooldowns. You can’t continue to ride right after you have killed enemies. You have to run during the cooldown which make it harder to avoid mobs. Do you think increasing mob density will help with this issue? Most of the portals were locked at the start the the season. So you need to ride you horse to open them.

I feel like I am fighting against distractions more than doing interesting content. Tree of Whispers quests, legion events and helltides are fun. But to be good enough for them I need to do renown grind again and going to those I need to fight trash mobs. Increase of mob density in helltides could make those really annoying if they go too far.

Diablo 4 was fun until season 1’s update. Early season was reasonable fun but they have changed something since then which has made the game not fun to play. Don’t tell me to try different class. I play twisting blades rogue this season. It should be best at the moment but I think necromancer is better. I might try it next season if I come back. Probably won’t get back if renown grind is still a thing when season starts. I understand doing it once but not doing it every season.

Duke of Tone is the one

I don’t remember if I reported latest changes to pedalboard. I had compressor on board but couldn’t find good use for it. It just made board noisier without actually giving much. Decided to try replacing it with low gain overdrive. I had One Control Persian Green Screamer. It is based on Tube Screamer which was problem. Without mid push it would have been useful but with mid push it was not. It was too much in modern mode too. I got a year ago because Wampler’s Belle wasn’t available then.

I was going to get Belle but I would had to wait for a week and MXR’s Duke of Tone was available same day. Duke of Tone wasn’t on my wish list. I knew it but it wasn’t something I wanted like Belle. I know King of Tone is one of the most wanted guitar pedals and Duke is smaller and more available version of it. Went to check videos on Youtube. Decided to give Duke a change.

I didn’t like it too much at first. It didn’t change sound that much. Saturation sounded noisy to my ear. Don’t mean hum. There was noisy high end in sound. When I turned internal trim pot almost completely off pedal started to work better. Tried it with different guitars. Worked with them too. Screamer worked better with single coils. Duke works with everything. I can understand reputation of King of Tone. It should be even slightly better. Not going to put my name on waiting list. It is about five years long now and pedal will probably be discontinued before waitlist get to anyone who has entered lately.

I didn’t know how much one pedal could make to your setup. Duke just makes me want to play low gain stuff with different guitars. Goal was to have pedal which is good for edge of breakdown sound. I didn’t realize how good it could be. At first I didn’t like it that much but after using internal trim pot and trying different settings I have learned to use it properly. It is also coming expensive. Just ordered set of noiseless pickups for Stratocaster. Planned that earlier but Duke made me get them.

Two weeks in Sanctuary - Thoughts of Diablo 4 after playing the story mode

Little bit background. I am not even casual gamer. My familiarity to genre is limited to playing previous Diablo games. I played World of Warcraft to level cap before the first expansion and then stopped soon after expansion was released. I wasn’t sure if I would like Diablo enough to pay full price. I had Diablo 3 which I had not finished. First week in Sanctuary was with it. Then on second I played story mode of Diablo 4. Played both with barbarian and started with easiest difficulty. I was at level 51 when I finished the story. I farmed renown to claim all three rewards before world tier 3 on four regions.

It was bit of a culture shock to start Diablo 4 day after finishing Diablo 3. I died twice in Diablo 3 after setting difficulty to hard. I don’t remember using even one health potion during playthrough. Those deaths occurred in same place before I realized what I need to avoid. Diablo 4 was more difficult and fun. Difficulty wasn’t only thing causing culture shock. Diablo 4’s story is masterpiece compared to Diablo 3. In Diablo 3 antagonists are evil just for sake of being evil.

In Diablo 4 characters have reasonable motives. There were points when I wanted the player character to do what Lilith wanted. That felt better option than what player character did. Ending left me feeling did we actually do the right thing. After Diablo 3 I was clad it was over. I had enough of antagonists being plain evil. Really looking forward to expansion to expand the story. It ended with not a real cliffhanger but small set up for next chapter or act like Diablo’s want to call them.

Diablo 4 could be great game with some game play fine tuning. My main issue was that enemies attacked when npcs or something on environment started to talk and talking could start middle of fight. I wanted the lore but this prevented me from getting it. Difficulty varied too much. This is open world game and you can enter zone your character is underleveled. This happened to me few time. Even in story mode. I had to take break from the story and level my character to survive a boss fight. Everything scales up but won’t scale down. I think there were UI updates which started to show which is lowest level you should be on area. Don’t remember seeing those first time with that boss. When I got back to it I saw I was many levels too low first time.

Game has two memorable boss fights “Price of Knowledge” and “Anguish Incarnate” those were only boss fight in story where I died. I was under leveled when I got to Price and in Anguish my character didn’t have correct skills for boss fights. After I tuned character better suited for boss fights I didn’t have problems with them after that. That was the point where I should have changed to world tier 2. I don’t think these fights were memorable only because I died in them. Those were only fights I remember where I couldn’t go to boss and just spam attacks. There might have been one other but I am not so sure about that one. It was part of sixth act which was boss fight after a boss fight.

I hope Diablo 4 will get more boss fights like Price and Anguish and more variety to events. Events started to feel like work because there wasn’t enough variety and you have to do them to get gambling currency. You need gambling to get the good gear in lower world tier. I tried strongholds and dungeons once both but found out I was underleveled for bosses. Open world with other players is nice most of the times. There are some problems. I died once when someone else started side quest where I was and there was explosion. On the other hand you can get easy gambling currency if you come to event someone else has started.

I enjoyed these two weeks in Sanctuary. Will be spending more time there in the future. I don’t try to hit level 100 or start to farm gear. Next goal is to do not completed side quests, find missing Altars of Lilith and clear rest of the map using world tier 2. Maybe unlock world tier 3 soon. There is about month to season 1. Want to do those before it because it will give best starting point for season 1. I expect more quality of life updates to come to make the game better by then.