Questions from a potential buyer!

Using MOD devices Setup Questions
#1

Hello all, and please excuse anything that’s painfully obvious here–I have spent some time trawling the forum.

Firstly, I am really interested in the Mod Duo X. It appears to be the ultimate Swiss army knife, and potentially the answer to a lot of prayers.

From my scanning the forum there’s a lot of talk about kernels and processors and stuff that quite frankly, I don’t understand! I’m hoping that my lack of knowledge around this stuff won’t be a barrier.

Question 1)

Please bear with me on the following - it’s quite a precise use!

Amongst many of the applications I would like to use the box for, I am wondering if I could set it up as a mixer.

My thinking would be the two main knobs to act as faders for channels 1&2, with bass, mid and hi on three of the smaller knobs, and a bi directional filter on the fourth.
Page two would be set up with various send fx (and the four knobs would act as a send fro each effect)
And page three to be decided.

Is this possible? Is it straight forward? And if it is possible, would I also be able to assign some kind of pre fade listen, just like on a ‘dj style’ mixer, and utilise the headphone out?

Question 2)

I’ve seen it mentioned a few times that the usb could send 8 channels of audio out.

Could someone explain how that would work? Would I be effectively looking at a stems type of thing here and each channel could be sent straight to my daw for further processing?

Question 3)

I was excited to see sequencers, drum machines and 303s amongst other things. I know that using a midi keyboard is how I could get sounds from the synths, however with regards to the sequencing of drums - are the sequencers ‘set and forger’ in the browser, or can I manipulate/program on the actual hardware?

Or is this a ‘well yes, if someone creates a plug in that does that’?

I quite like the idea of turning it into a standalone groovebox!

Question 4)
Could the box be used as a basic mastering device? There’s a lot of plugins, so I suspect there’s potential.

Question 5)

Sort of related to the last question - could I stick the mod duo x on the master buss of our live rig, and use as a compressor/limiter/saturation effect (analog heat style)? I’m sure I could, but I’d be interested to hear what others say.

Question 6)

I’ve seen that there’s Tal noise maker, which is great. Are there anymore Tal synths/effects coming or in store?

And as a bonus–any other ‘brand’ plugins coming?
(I know that’s probably not going to get a straight answer!)

Thanks all for taking the time to read and reply.

Cheers.

#2

Easy. Each knob is freely assignable any parameter of an effect. And there are all effects available for building a mixer. The only caveat is the PFL functionality. AFAIK this port is not really configurable yet but it seems more of a software feature.

First of all, this multi-channel USB audio thingy is experimental and not officially supported yet. But it’s already working pretty nicely. I’m using my Behringer X Air 18 mixer as a 18x18 audio interface on the Duo X. Basically this is my send effect work horse. To make this running, some general Linux knowledge and understanding in Linux audio is required.

The other possibility is using Jack over the network to send audio to a connected machine which is running Jack as well. It seems to be possible and working but I haven’t tried this yet. Same here for the Linux knowledge.

AFAIK there’s a feature coming soon which allows editing patches without a browser. This means that you sequences will be editable as well. Up to now this isn’t really possible. But I guess that this particular use case will be cumbersome in the beginning because you will have to manipulate numeric values (pitch, velocity) instead of a visual representation.

Maybe in conjunction with tight integration of an external MIDI controller like Novation Launchpad or Ableton Push. I don’t like the idea of squeezing groovebox functionality into this UI.

This is only a matter of taste and knowledge I guess. If you know what you are doing and when you are satisfied with the quality of the effects then why not?

I have both, the Analog Heat and the Duo X while the AH sits on the master bus. Working with the heat is pretty different because you are more limited. This is a good thing in this case. But I haven’t tried to replace the AH with the Duo X because my current routing architecture doesn’t allow this yet.

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#3

Hi @Klaustrophil thanks for the through response.

It’s good to see the mixer scenario as being a simple enough thing to do. From what I’ve seen, it seems a straight forward thing however always best to check.

Good stuff regarding the forthcoming bits as well. Even if rudimentary control of a sequencer is all that there is, it’s still going to be very useful.

I also have the X18, and I suspect it was your thread I was reading! I have zero Linux experience or knowledge, so perhaps I’ll wait till it moves out of the experimental side!

Now to find somewhere I can order one I think!

Thanks again.

#4

Hey,

If you haven’t seen this video already, it might give some inspiration as to what would be possible as a groove box.

Hope it helps

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#5

Hey @danmh

Thanks for the link. I watched the first one he did (the review), and have now watched this as well.

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#6

Wow nice concept. Will it work with MOD DUO as well as X?

#7

The overall workflow is the same, but the Duo has a weaker CPU and obviously way less forms of interaction, with only 2 knobs and 2 footswitches.
The Dwarf is probably more interesting for you I guess.

#8

that was really nice

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