CV Expander?

[custa1200]

Has there been any thought of creating an expander that handles CV input/output?

[Jesse Johannesen]

I don't think it is something that we would undertake, but I would enjoy something like that. What are you thinking it would it do exactly?

[vectorwarrior]

I'll jump on this as I had come to the forum to see if this were on the cards and also thought how this would be such a good addition to the product. People in Eurorack land have a lot of hardware and inevitably have a lot of midi gear. Many eurorack modules also have midi too, either 3.5mm, usb or old school 5 pin so usually already have midi integrated into their systems.

The idea of being able to control CV based gear with midi gear and vice versa would be pretty compelling and there'd be a fairly big market for it I'd image. Modular is a pretty big, active market these days, it's very popular right now. I first heard about the MRCC on a modular YouTube channel.

In order to be useful in this context, it would need a reasonable amount of connections. Ideally connections would be configurable between input and output to suit people's circumstances. But if not, I guess separate physical ins and outs would suffice. Worse case, outputs only.

It'd need both gate and pitch (1v/Oct) output pairs. So a four CV output device would need 8x 3.5mm mono jacks. 

With this addition to the mrcc, you could take a midi sequencer like the ndlr and have it control modular gear, or use your pc to control modular, etc. Yes you can do this already with other products but it really plays to the strengths of the mrcc being the central connectivity brain. Currently my modular is just not interfaced with my other gear directly so having this would bring everything together.

Thanks!

[Jesse Johannesen]

As a primarily modular synth user who also owns a boutique Eurorack synth company (Altered State Machines), I agree that the potential is there, but in my experience this is usually best handled "in the case", though of course your mileage may vary. The Polyend Poly2 has an enormous number of outs (I think 18, which can be reconfigured to your liking with the configuration software). Since it's in the case you don't have to constantly rewire it if you change locations.

I've also used the 64pixels CVOCD and it's in the case cousin Hexinverter mutant brain. Both work well, but it was a chore to have to rewire and remember what ports were set to do what with the CVOCD, the Mutant Brain also has the benefit of showing you what the gate outputs are doing with LEDs which were sorely lacking on the original. Also case power means not needing to keep track of a power brick.

There is a Befaco CV to MIDI module that I tried a while back, and it was really annoying to configure and I never really got much use out of it, unfortunately.

The Dudes (Darryl and Steve) are just getting started with modular now so it's possible that there will be more stuff splashing that way in the future if it continues to spark their interest.

[vectorwarrior]

Yeah, there's plenty of options, I have a Poly Hector that has 8 outputs and a ton of midi filtering/processing options. But I was imagining an addition to the mrcc being more integrated into the whole system and presets. So at a push of a few buttons you can change presets and have a different midi controller wired up to send CV data to a different port, etc. If instead I have to wire it to a midi/usb output and then to one of these midi-to-CV external boxes I lose that control and am now having to setup two devices each time I want a change.

But maybe I'm asking for too much as I don't currently have an mrcc and perhaps it's fiddly to setup and change presets. I was just curious as adding CV, if it integrated well, would certainly demand a purchase from me!

Thanks

[Jesse Johannesen]

We currently have an expander bus that could be utilized for something like this. I'll think about how that would work and pitch the idea to the team. It's unlikely to be something that gets implemented by the team, but I may have a go at it personally and see if I can figure out how to make it an in the rack device that works as both a MIDI to CV as well as an MRCC expander I could see that having some legs. Send me an email at support@conductivelabs.com and I'll follow up if I make some progress.