Instruo: Modules released

Yes, it’s official.

Sometime around Christmas, an almost complete repertoire of the Instruo line of Eurorack modules were ported to VCV Rack and are available for free (!!!). They are closed-source but it’s not a big deal.

There are three modules that are not included (I hope for the time being) which are Lubadh, Arbhar and Scion (the latter of which I believe it’s not really apt for a software-only experience). In spite of that, everything’s there and with mostly complete functionality. There are a few drawbacks with some of the modules (busted sync input on Ts-L and Líon limited to regular matrix mixer duties, for instance) but nothing to be worried about.

What are you guys’ thoughts about this situation and the modules themselves? Any patches/ideas?

https://library.vcvrack.com/?brand=Instruō

(Starting thread because they just silently got released and there was no fanfare made about this at all, considering it’s Instruo, of all module brands).

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Not sure what you mean about silently, there is this very nice overview:

also, iirc it was already mentioned that Arbhar was to cpu intensive to port.

I was messing with this one on stream a while ago and I thought the sync input sounded like cat having it’s spine ripped out. In a bad way. At least I know why now.

I just called it like that because it didn’t even work at all when I tried it. Everything else was perfectly fine, though (and is a really good utility osc. I’ll say).

I didn’t know about the Omri thread, When I said silently I meant nothing spoken from Andrew’s side nor anything really official (unlike the Kilpatrick line of modules, which did in fact have all of that).

Arbhar, CPU intensive? It must be the standards they’re aiming for (I can barely run 5 Instruo modules at a time) or just the code really requiring a beefed-up Mac Pro at minimum. I still do have hope on that module and Lubadh getting their shortcomings figured out.

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that saïch module is terrific

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Interview with Jason: https://disquiet.com/2021/01/09/instruo-vcv-rack-jason-lim/

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Such an interesting read, thanks for posting Nik!

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Thanks Nik. It’s a lengthy and really great interview, highly recommended. I like this quote:

I can see VCV becoming a very useful prototyping tool as I go forward.

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I particularly liked this:

“I very much wanted to mimic enough “analogue-ness” in the collection so that if someone were to become familiar with the modules in VCV, getting hands-on with the hardware would be familiar and a more seamless transition. To this end we actually went as far as adding characteristic randomisation between instances of duplicate modules. For example, the first Cš-L added to a new rack will be the same every time, but a 2nd, 3rd, 4th … would have a slightly different characteristic “fingerprint.” This is modelled to the same degree that two of the same analogue module would differ from one another when parameter controls are physically matched. When saving a Rack, the characteristic fingerprints per module will be retained. That is a feature I am particularly happy about! I’m very glad VCV allows for this capability as it means building an Instruō rack in Rack holds some similarity to doing it physically. The collection of modules will be unique to that instance of Rack.”

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Same here, I very much liked that idea, and I think all devs should read that interview :slight_smile:

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OK, homework accepted! Thanks.

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Thanks for having shared the interview here, @Nik.

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Thanks for conducting it Marc :slight_smile:

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That interview was super interesting.

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For me the most interesting part was the comment about how to make it sound more like the analog module:

“I added in minute amplitudes of pink and low frequency noise to all the parameters of the VCV Athrú. Immediately it became close to indistinguishable to the analogue!”

I’m very interested in such techniques; I would love to know more details on this. Does anyone know of a source (academic articles or whatever) that discusses this issue? I.e. exactly what components and parameters affect our sense of “warmth” from an oscillator? One thing that I think makes this hard is that it is not really enough to randomly tweak every factor independently - I think we detect some correlations in different frequency components in analog sounds that are important psychoacoustically.

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And of course that was after they did the necessary re-requisite of getting rid of the aliasing.

we actually went as far as adding characteristic randomisation between instances of duplicate modules. For example, the first Cš-L added to a new rack will be the same every time, but a 2nd, 3rd, 4th … would have a slightly different characteristic “fingerprint.” … This is modelled to the same degree that two of the same analogue module would differ from one another when parameter controls are physically matched. When saving a Rack, the characteristic fingerprints per module will be retained.

Cool, if you look inside .vcv with CsL you can find this parameters…

      "data": {
        "random": {
          "frequency": {
            "coarseA": 14000.0,
            "coarseB": 20000.0,
            "coarseLFO": 10000.0,
            "fineA": 400.0,
            "fineB": 400.0,
            "expFM": 0.980000019,
            "vpoError": 0.181999996
          }
        },
      "data": {
        "random": {
          "frequency": {
            "coarseA": 14414.6641,
            "coarseB": 20121.4844,
            "coarseLFO": 10075.1953,
            "fineA": 388.612122,
            "fineB": 412.826294,
            "expFM": 0.98603487,
            "vpoError": 0.181639865
          }
        },
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