Hi,
all I wanted to do, was look for a way to control my DFAM from my desk or preferably DAW and I ended up falling into some kind of eurorack trance, where I took the last 3 days to try to 'solve' assembling a proper case. I'm kinda healed for now. This is what I came up with (below), after assigning a more fixed purpose to the build (at first I thought "great I can get a BBD & spring reverb!" but i had to quickly realize to prepare all those things for stereo processing is not worth the effort, sadly).
Some notes on purpose: What I usually do when producing is creating loops and mangling them with heavy modulation in bitwig, multifx (triad, hy-filter 4 that kind of thing), stacked comps, chained reverbs etc. I then print those loops and slice them again using the new slices in creating the actual track. Now, I'm trying to do this same process assisted with my eurorack case and also have better integration of my DFAM (which i avoid using atm, as its too much trouble). That's the goal with the case.
Some notes on the module selection: The top row has lots of stereo units, because I want to use it as a stereo processing chain from an external signal. That's why there are also 2 Antidotes. In my imagination, I can use those Antidotes as a dual channel signal processor. Love the sound of it, love bbd and the broken strings that come out but not sure it will be useful in the way I imagine. The single OSC + Noise is there for layering. I can also use the Multimode Filter + Noise to create a snare or hihat sound to use with the DFAM. The smooth oscs of the DFAM should also go well with the Antidote as contrast. There's only 3 VCAs now and thats maybe not enough. I honestly forgot that the Noise is a voice as well. The Antidotes don't take VCAs for loundness as far as I understand, i didnt count the DFAM and then it was basically 1 voice (+noise). Data Bender, Inertia, Ataxia are there to bring variation to the loops (with Pam). But honestly, I don't really understand what Inertia does practically (how I would use it) but it sounds like something I want to use.
Trade-offs: I decided in Pam over FH-2 because I wanted a dynamic clock source to start thats more hands on, even tho I have a launchpad so FH-2 would be great for midi sequencing. I would also like to have an EQ in there at some point, a better way to interface with my daw (ES-8 e.g.) and an envelope sequencer (Maestro). I decided to skip on disting/ex for now, as I want to integreate the setup tighter with my DAW and see what digital functions I would really want after (and no need for e.g. sample based voice or a dsp granulator etc.).
Questions: (a) I'm not sure Data Bender is a good idea. I really like Data Benders concept but its basically alot of what I do ITB and maybe I shouldnt just try to recreate my ITB workflow (because this rack should add something different). Maybe someone has an opinion on this? (b) I'm not really sure how I would use rise/fall practically (offsets and signal delays to a lesser extend). Also the whole VCA thing still throws me off, I understand conceptually, why i need them but I never think about VCAs ITB and I don't yet understand why I wouldnt just get a FH-2 + expander and just do everything over those units. (b.2) With that im not fully sure what Inertia/Demix will do but I hope, I'll learn after getting a couple modules to start out.
Right now I only have the DFAM (and a Model D), so my plan is to actually get the Mantis case (this one already became cramped at the end and I would like to have the DFAM inside the rack for practicality reasons) and maybe 4 modules + i/o. I would probably start with something like DFAM + Eumonia, Ataxia, Antidote + Pam and some I/O. Im not decided yet on the midi & i/o part.
TL/DR: Man seeks to mangle audio from DAW and create quirky loops with DFAM. Did he do this right?
If you made it through the long write up (or not :>), what do you think? Is there anything conceptually or practically broken with this case layout in regards of what I want to do?
