The Xaoc Rostock module I was curious about is a set of 8 parallel shift registers for the binary data of the Liebniz system, which can be individually clocked — kind of a neat way to mess with patterns, or potentially even program sequences, or perform all kinds of audio glitch duties. But unfortunately, it has no outputs of its own and there’s not a good way to get them from Drezno; if I wanted access to its binary output I’d have to buy another module as well. My curiosity about using it doesn’t run strong enough for that.
Something got me thinking again about the Schlappi Engineering Interstellar Radio. This is a module that purports to simulate an FM radio transmitter and receiver, but a square wave carrier frequency in about the 0-22Khz range instead of a sine at 88-108MHz. Which means a couple of things:
- Any audio you signal you put through it is going to be extremely dirty at best, if recognizable at all.
- Since the carrier is in audible range, with or without audio input you can use this as a sort of complex oscillator (though it doesn’t track 1V/OCT)
Put simply, it’s a noisemaker that does fun things when you turn the knobs. It can make various kinds of hums and buzzes and growls and chords and clicks and beeping and noise and that radio tuning sound. Kind of the essence of a synthesizer in its purest form.
In a more practical sense though, it can make a nice little drone machine, especially through some ambient reverb, or a delay with heavy feedback and some filtering. It can easily create the sort of noise used in synthesized cymbals. It sounds good making other percussion noises through an LPG.
Used as an effect, there are a few ways to get cleaner audio through it, dirtied to taste rather than extremely crunched. In particular, substituting a higher rate oscillator such as Synchrodyne’s, or bit output outputs from Drezno (whether it’s just translating the system noise or another audio signal) can give that level of control.
So I think it was a good choice. 🙂