Vult DSP New Wolv Waveshaper For Eurorack

Over the last years, Vult DSP built a lot of synthesizer circuits. On a few occasions, Leonardo (Vult DSP) make full eurorack modules. For example, some years ago Leonardo designed the PCBs and panel for a Steiner-Parker filter. Leonardo gave away the boards to some of my friends and he believes that there are 4 “copies” in existence.

The last module Leonardo designed is the Wolv wave shaper.

Vult Wolv Sound Demo (Virtual Version)

This is a small demo of the Vult Wolv waveshaper. This virtual version matches the behavior of the hardware version.

Pricing and Availability

If you are interested on getting one of this you can pre-order Wolv Waveshaper here.  The estimated shipping is during July 2021.

Patch – The Card Game

For this jam I used James Cigler’s ‘Patch – The Card Game’ (available at Signal Sounds here) to make some patching decisions, but it’s – mostly – a jam and the cards disrupted it :). But that’s part of the game! You can find the game on patchtcg.com. It started with ‘patch every cable you can’ (fortunately I made a selection of cables because I have a lot of them) and making a video also required to make some decisions myself.

At one point I had to patch all inputs of the Loquelic Iteritas Percido and it sounded terrible. So I had to cut it and start over. I wanted to ‘manipulate’ Clouds so I had to film until the dice rolled into a ‘6’ without falling out of my closet. So 99% is real, 1% is creative editing :).

Freak Firmware v2.5

You may already know because most of the new features were requested by the Vult DSP customers. Vult DSP implemented almost all the requests; in one shape or other. The ones that didn’t implemented, are safely stored in the Vult DSP backlog and will work on them for a future release.

This release has a lot of UI improvements. Probably the most important is that now you can select filters backward! If you keep the filter button pressed for about 1 second it will go to the previous model.

A silent improvement that you may not notice is that now the filters change without producing audible clicks or pops. This was a bit tricky to get right.

More settings

In the previous release, Vult DSP introduced the possibility of using “integrated VCAs” to control the filter output. In this release there are a few extra things that you can configure in your module:

• Output signal range: lower the volume of the sound
• Modulations voltage range: accept either 5 or 10 V
• Stereo modulation: cutoff input inversely modulates the the filters
• Output mix: mix the L and R channels

New models

The first new model is Phonok: vowel resonator. Phonok consists of a pair of LP and BP filters tuned to the two main formant frequencies. This resonator changes the tone of the input signal and makes it sound like the corresponding vowel. Phonok can be use to add some nice harmonics to the sound or to make your filter scream in pain “ai-ai-ai”.

Nurage gets some love in this release. Vult DSP has been obsessively experimenting with vactrols in order to improve my models. My new vactrol model is nicer more nonlinear. Since simulated vactrols can be modified at will, the Nurage filter includes now three types. Basically, each model changes in a way that makes it feel like it has a longer “decay”.

The last addition is Nurage-VCA. Low Pass Gates usually have a mode that, for lack of a better name, it is called “both”: a low pass filter and a VCA. Because this mode changes the gain, it also affects the resonance. In this case I have replaced the resonance control for a single parameter that morphs between the different vactrol models. The result is a kind of “decay” control, but with a nice and natural envelope.

Current Filters included:

• Tangents: Steiner-Parker filter (three variations, LP, HP, BP).
• Lateralus: Ladder filter (6, 12, 8 and 24dB options)
• Nurage: Low pass gate/Borg filter 
• Nurage-VCA: VCA+LPG variable vactrol
• Ferox: CMOS filter (LP, HP, BP, Notch)
• Vortex: Russian filter (LP, BP)
• Stabile: State-Variable filter (LP, HP, BP)
• Unstabile Circuit bent State-Variable filter (LP, HP, BP)
• Vorg: MS-20 style filter (LP, HP)
• Rescomb: Resonant Comb filter (Comb+ and Comb-)
• Boomstick: Sallen-Key filter (LP,HP)
• Disjoint: DJ-Style filter (48db, 96dB)
• Debriatus: Wave Destructor (Bit Crush, Wave Fold, Distortion)
• Nopskate: Flip-flop octaver
• Flame: Analog distortion (Rodent, Cylinder)
• Phonok: Vowel resonator

Stability

This new firmware also has a lot of small optimizations that should make the module more stable. If you ever experienced your module freezing, I apologize for that. Hopefully, all future releases will be rock-solid now that I have detected the root of the issue.

Pricing and Availability

You can get the new firmware following the links in the main Freak page. The filter is available fully assembled or as DIY kit.