I have three criteria that are always on top of my list when looking for electronic music gear, especially effects. They are: full stereo signal path; portability (i.e. small and designed for non-rack tabletop use); and (a little lower down the list) 1/4″ TRS-style input/output jacks.
It’s amazing to me just how hard it is to find stuff in any given category of hardware effect or processor that meets these three requirements. There are of course things here and there that do match my criteria , but then audio and build quality may not be up to snuff and there likely isn’t much in the way of alternatives.
The few people I discuss gear with regularly have been subjected to many rants by me over the years about this subject (including several in past blog entries), as it’s the one thing that drives me crazy about the music gear market. Sure it’s a selfish rant, since effects manufacturers mostly cater to guitarists (mono only) or DJs (RCA jacks and lots of blinking lights), and I fall outside of those two categories and somewhere in the “mostly insignificant niche” demographic. My hope is that if I and my few dedicated like-minded brethren talk about using portable outboard gear for electronic music on as many blogs and forums as possible, eventually we’ll convince enough laptop musicians to mix and match hardware with software so that we can build up a critical mass of demand. On a related tangent, go buy lots of Jomox effects, since both the M-Resonator and T-Resonator match my three criteria perfectly and they are really creative effects.
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with trying to find a compressor that is stereo, portable, offers at minimum a specific set of parameters (ratio, threshold, attack, release, output gain, and in a perfect world input gain/drive), and that has a bit of mojo. Closest thing I’ve found is a DBX MC6, which is now discontinued and I’ll likely have to subject myself to the great pains of eBay to get one. There’s also the FMR compressors (RNC and RNLA), but I’m dubious about the presence of mojo and I only really want a compressor in this case for extreme effects use. I suspect that the FMR boxes are best used as straightforward compressors. Now that I’ve pimped Jomox, I’m really hoping Jürgen makes a dynamics processor modelled on the Resonator series. The differential envelope follower he uses would be super cool in a little portable compressor/expander/distortion box.
I’ve mostly made do with what’s available to me, using RCA to TRS cables or mono effects sitting on a mono send buss (don’t get me started about portable full-stereo mixers), but in some case it’s a pain in the ass, especially if you want to effectively maintain a stereo field.
“It’s amazing to me just how hard it is to find stuff in any given category of hardware effect or processor that meets these three requirements. There are of course things here and there that do match my criteria , but then audio and build quality may not be up to snuff and there likely isn’t much in the way of alternatives.”
Amen brother! I feel the same way…there’s always some super lame attribute of an otherwise decent piece of gear that will usually me away. I’m apparently also another member of this niche insignificant demographic. A personal pet peeve is wall wart/line lump power supplies. I can understand if the particular piece of gear is relatively small, but if it’s approaching a “rackmount size” it should have an IEC power supply. >:(
I can vouch for the RNC, it’s a fantastic compressor, I’ve yet to hear something as nice for that amount of money, >$200. What exactly do you mean by “mojo”? Are you talking hard hitting pumping/breathing a-la slammed 1176? It’s pretty tough to get that outside of an 1176 or similarly design compressors/clones. While not necessarily cheap, you might consider the SPL Transient designer. I finally got an opportunity to use one and it was amazing. It was executing all the things I had tried and failed to do to compressors for years, and it did it beautifully and with only two knobs. The downside, again, is price, and also, they aren’t in a non-rack format.
Posted by felix - May 7th, 2008 - 5:47 pmPrice I can live with in many cases (with in reason), but hardware for me is mostly for playing live around town, which means I need to be able pack my rig into a bag and take it on public transit. So rack is generally out.
Regarding mojo, I have limited experience with hardware compressors, so wouldn’t know how to express it in terms of existing hardware. But in software, there are two compressors I use daily that I think I have mojo – Sonalksis’ TBK 3 and tbt’s 2095-LA. Both can really rip sounds apart with heavy pumping and sucking, but are very versatile and can change sounds fairly drastically. I’m sure there are a lot of hardware compressors with mojo, but none of them seem targeted at the niche insignificant demographic of backpack toters and tabletop-centric musicians. For instance, the stuff I’ve heard done with the Elysia m-pressor has mojo, but $4000 rack gear doesn’t have me in mind as its core market. Guitar pedal compressors would be a possibility, but then none are stereo and so few of them have more than two or three parameters to adjust. Something like the Jomox M-Resonator but a compressor would be my ideal–it’s compact and has a lot of character.
I would love something like the Fatso or the Distressor or the m-pressor or the Transient Designer, if only there was something similar in a compact form.
Posted by SIGHUP - May 7th, 2008 - 8:25 pmhey steve, i’ve recently sold my modular gear. mostly because i’m broke. but also because i’m not as happy with the ‘sound’ of most of the modules that i’ve owned (mind you, i’m a sample guy so i didn’t have any sound generators…only audio processing modules). i sold my table top setup (including the M and T Res) to fund my modular purchases. jomox really spoiled me. I can’t wait to get those beauties back!
anyway, to my question: have you ever used the jomox boxes as send fx on a mixer? thanks.
Posted by 22tape - October 21st, 2008 - 3:05 amHey Jared, I saw your modular sale at Muff’s, I like the scorched earth approach.
I have used the jomox box as a send on my mixer. My old mixer only had mono sends (one pre-fader, one post) but it still seemed to work out fine as mono effect. I’ve just recently upgraded to a mixer with more sends, so I could do stereo, but I haven’t done so yet.
Posted by SIGHUP - October 21st, 2008 - 8:06 amcool, thanks steve. if by scorched earth policy you mean selling everything at once, yeah, i had to get rid of the whole modular setup or else i’d keep spending needlessly on new modules. i’m very all or nothing that way. i have my eye on a machinedrum, t res, m res, and a nice mixer.
hey, any advice on a mixer with preamps that can get a little dirty? i had a tascam 246 and its pre’s could give a really nice overdrive type distortion. 8 channels with two sends would be perfect. i’ve heard good things about the mackie vlz3 series. thanks man.
Posted by 22tape - October 22nd, 2008 - 2:41 amNot sure I have much to suggest. I have an Allen & Heath Zed14 now, it’s very tidy sounding. I had a Tapco Line 6, which is a budget Mackie, but it didn’t exactly distort in a useful manner.
An M-res and a T-Res, isn’t that a bit overkill?
Posted by SIGHUP - October 22nd, 2008 - 7:39 amyeah, you’d think that have both would be overkill. i originally bought the T-Res to replace the M-Res. But once i had them side by side and did some tests, i decided to keep them both. Aside from the obvious similarities in design, they really do sound different. i think i remember this coversation we had–about whether or not the delays in the T-Res was worth the upgrade. I did some tests between the two. I zeroed out the delays on the T-Res and matched the other knob values for both and i couldn’t get the same sound out of them no matter how hard i tried. and i really wanted to get the same sounds cause i really couldn’t afford to keep both of them. The MRes is filthy and aggressive, where the T-Res seems more refined. of course, the TRes can get nasty too and the delays open up a new world of sounds but it can’t get the same sub-filthy rumble that the MRes can. Not to mention, its great fun to feed them back into each other.
Posted by 22tape - October 22nd, 2008 - 12:43 pm….I also wanted to mention how beautifully unstable the sound can get when you put the MRes before the TRes…with or without audio. they’re great sound generators in their own right. when you have them running together, the slightest knob movement gives you a whole new sound. i tried to get a similar sound out of vaious modular modules but it wasn’t the same. the doepfer a-188-2 tapped bbd came the closest. i love how differently the jomox boxes react depending on the sound source too.
Posted by 22tape - October 22nd, 2008 - 12:55 pmInteresting.
In general, I’ve found zeroing anything on the M-Res an exercise in faith, since the 12 o’clock position on the knobs isn’t always the 50% mark for many of them.
Posted by SIGHUP - October 22nd, 2008 - 12:59 pmvery true. ya, besides 12oclocking all knobs i tried many different tweaks on the TRes to try to duplicate the MRes sounds, without success.
Posted by 22tape - October 23rd, 2008 - 1:32 am