Stereo Modular

I finally set my ER-301 up for stereo. This is a brand new luxury for me, having my modular in stereo. Works like a charm!

Thought I’d start a thread to talk specifically about stereo tips, tricks, techniques with the ER-301. I guess it’s not all that different from working in stereo in a non-modular context, but yet, it seems like maybe there’s new possibilities here.

Whatcha got? :slight_smile:

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Yes - been working in stereo for quite some time, but not all channels, got to keep a lot of it mono until later on to avoid having to double up on a lot of modules.

A constant in my setup is the kick drum on a mono channel with a mult of it’s trigger feeding the side chain on the RNLA that has a full mix of everything else fed into it for either some nice gentle compression or full on pump action!

Drums in the ER-301 are always a stereo chain for pan - works great and can also take in mono drum sounds from elsewhere in just another mixer to make them stereo too!

Other stereo source and effects:

Elements
Clouds
Cold Mac
Pico DSP (really wish this had stereo in sometimes)
Warps Parasite - Doppler effect is just wild!
DLD - sometimes as a stereo effect

… probably loads more in the ER-301 here and there!!

:slight_smile:

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Nice idea for a topic! I tend to keep things in mono except for Clouds and a few other things (Strymon Timeline). It works nicely to add a reverb at the end. I’ve found that sometimes you can run into strange phase issues with multiple stereo sources, which just means it’s more challenging.

One trick that I’ve used in Logic is to add a very miniscule delay (talking 10-20 samples if I recall correctly) to one side of the stereo signal. This adds a subtle width/doubling to the sound. I think it wouldn’t be hard to transfer this idea to the ER-301.

I haven’t explored this yet, but it would be nice to do a ping-pong delay on ER-301.

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Oooh yes… I have the Big Sky and the Deco, both stereo, both stunning!!

Invariably processing Elements - just pure magic :slight_smile:

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I use a BlueSky - it’s great. Also, the El Capistan has a nice spring reverb as well. I run my modular into a mixer and run the BlueSky on the Aux send.

My pair of ER301s are permanently in two stereo setup. One for two stereo sources and the other as a FX send/return unit.

I’m finding I routinely add a fixed delay at some point in a stereo chain with full wet and 1-2ms on the left channel and 2-4ms on the right to create subtle stereo space - it can sometimes really thicken out the sound spatial.

Same goes with the Pitched delay but setting the speed to be a little more or less than 1.

For clocked delay I’m setting the left and right to be a multiple of the other to create a ping pong effect (it’s not quite right as the shorter delay play twice but it’ll do for now).

Looking forward to some ideas from people!

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The morphagene/clouds/301 combination has been incredibly fun on all fronts :slight_smile:

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Oh my… how could I forget Tyme Sefari and Sound of Thunder - an absolutely brutal approach to sampling and the total antithesis to the ER-301 - they make an excellent match!

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Hmm. I don’t have too many stereo modules. A couple of Distings each have some stereo programs, and Rings has two outputs (not specifically stereo but you could split even/odd up that way). But no matter, there’s plenty in the ER-301.

I guess my going in position was to have one set of channels grouped in a stereo pair a master mixer on the top of that chain all by itself for master volume (to avoid damaging the line level gear it’s going in to). Then start adding mixers inside that mixer to control individual voice volume and pan.

I notice some of the units change when placed on a stereo chain. E.g. the delays get left/right time parameters. Nice touch!

Argh… also forgot the Erbe Verb!

Yes @Joe the ER-301 used as a mixer like that is probably worth the price of entry alone, look at the other offerings of similar ilk that simply don’t match up in terms of options and flexibility. OK you don’t get the dedicated interface for controlling it, but as we all know that’s just a matter of patching in to some key controls.

Brings to mind the possibility of USB MIDI/OSC control again, something like 60 Knobs from Bastl going directly into the heart of the ER-301 would be so much fun!

Exactly what I thought when I saw the 60 knobs interface. At the moment I only have 6 manual CV control available (all other inputs are being used) so having a MIDI interface for the ER301 would be amazing. When this was first brought up I was pretty much against an ER301 midi interface as I thought that 16 CV ins was plenty but now I’m thinking I was wrong as I’ve got more into it so would love a midi controller!

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just wanted to come out here demanding a stereo looper, since at this point the looper / recorder is mono (at least on the fw i’m on) just had a wonderful baseline thru short wet stereo reverb from the EOS (i dont know how good the erbe verb is, but i’m happy as a clam especially with a stereo input), that just completely died when it switched to mono. it became instantly obvious to me that my fussing about keeping things stereo is worth it…

then i realised i just need to wiggle in a looper for left and right

You do know you can convert the channels into stereo in the admin section @vesa.kartesalo?

Stereo chains have been available on the ER-301 for a long time!

yeeeah man i know they can be linked, i’m constantly running 2 stereo chains. one of them an FX send usually. might need a 2nd 301 soon…

EDIT for future reader: the looper only needs a stereo buffer to record stereo.

my point is: take a stereo chain, add in a looper / recorder (i forget the exact unit name, but the one that records to buffer, loops, you can modulate start point), and see if you can record a stereo signal. i couldnt yesterday. it took either left or right or a sum of the two, but it was deffo a mono signal recorded & coming out.

what i meant with wiggling in a looper for L&R is; add a mixer channel for looper L & R. L looper’s input is L+L hard panned to L, R looper’s input is R+R hard panned to right, separate buffers, identical reset / punch modulation - stereo looping.

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Oh wow - that’s quite left field thinking, I wouldn’t ever have thought to do that and I can imagine it’s really cool - all kinds of weird possibilities because it enables the possibility to treat each channel separately whereas the one channel approach would result in the same thing being done to both left and right.

Nice one :smiley:

edit: 2 ER-301s is everything you might dream of, I don’t worry about processing power any more as I can distribute everything across both. Highly recommended if you are feeling it :slight_smile:

man dont make me crawl out of bed to test some stereo looping weirdness, it’s late in scandinavia =)

but seriously, i’ve also just gotten into tilting the stereo image in ableton by shifting L or R a few samples off. moves the sound around nicely

must…resist…another…301… a local friend is selling… i just got into researching the monome stuff though, and i really think i’d go for that. i mean it’s all theoretical anyway since i dont have the funds right now for that kinda splurging…

edit: but thinking about what a great part of my system a 301 COULD replace, i just might go on a module selling spree. i think i’m more for deepening the rabbit hole rather than expanding it’s 2D UI at the moment… if that makes any sense

Scandinavia huh… I have a bit of a soft spot for Finland, but also really like Norway, bizarrely I’ve never been to Sweden and Iceland (I know not strictly Scandinavia, but I think of it as a sister country) has been on my travel list for far too long! I have good friends in Helsinki and visit there every so often, they have a family house up in the north, silver birch forests for miles, it’s awesome! Sometimes, as a kind of anathema to synth music, I like listening to heavy metal and well… why does Scandinavia suit this music so much? I always have a great time there :slight_smile:

Anyway, if you like stereo weirdness, try Warps from Mutable Instruments with the Parasite installed, it has a doppler effect mode and it’s super strange! I wonder if this could be recreated in the ER-301?

Further down the rabbit hole rather than 2D expansion makes loads of sense… I feel like my system is much bigger than it is physically with the ER-301 - I think this is one of it’s greatest selling points; “double your moduar” in effect!

Don’t get out of bed, there’s always tomorrow :slight_smile:

@vesa.kartesalo

The looper most definitely records and plays back stereo. You just need to make sure to load it with a stereo buffer:

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You beat me to it - I even recorded an example to verify the stereo effect was preserved - it’s really basic, but you get the idea:

/original/1X/8c70ac0945c14695f1dd4d5acbdbfc182e91610d.mp3

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Ok, thank you guys. Had a facepalm moment here.