Introducing Sofia's Daughter by Venom

Announcements
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I am super excited to introduce Sofia’s Daughter

SofiasDaughter
SofiasDaughter375×380 44.2 KB

Sofia’s Daughter is a polyphonic complex formant oscillator inspired by the XAOC Devices Sofia Eurorack module. Sofia is known for its huge sonic pallet made possible by an unusual analog FOF synthesis technique, plus a wide range of inputs and outputs. Sofia’s Daughter implements all the concepts of Sofia in digital form, then adds even more controls, inputs and outputs for an astonishing range of sounds. Without any need of filters, envelope generators, or VCAs, it can create both glorious shifting resonant voices, and punchy percussive sounds. So imagine what you can create when you throw your entire modular arsenal at it!

I want to thank XAOC devices for their amazing hardware module that served as inspiration, and for giving approval to reference their module in the Sofia’s Daughter name and documentation.

Special thanks also to Omri Cohen for being one of my testers, and for creating this wonderful video that introduces the many features of Sofia’s Daughter, and gives you a taste of what is possible.

Definitely read the Sofia’s Daughter documentation if you get a chance - It really is an unusual module, and understanding how it works can really help you discover exciting new sounds.

Sofia’s Daughter is currently the only module in the Venom Oscillations $15 premium plugin. I have tentative plans for at least one more complex oscillator for this plugin. If/when a new oscillator is added, the price will likely increase in $5 increments. But existing owners will get any new oscillator(s) for free.

If you want to explore some of the sounds of Sofia’s Daughter before purchasing, you can try out a prototype patch constructed from a host of free modules. But working with the finished product is so much nicer!

Below are a series of videos and patches featuring Sofia’s Daughter made by myself and my other wonderful testers.

Polyphony demo

Features moving formant tones that normally require resonant filters, but are readily available in the raw Sofia’s Daughter output.

Polyphonic Sofia’s Daughter.vcv (6.7 KB)

Sofia’s Daughter as a complete voice

I use one Sofia’s Daughter per voice, without any envelope generator, VCA, or filter, to create 6 totally different voices: Kick, closed hat, cow bell, toms, bell lead, and bass drone. Press the Rhythm Explorer Run button to start/stop the patch.

All Sofia Jam Band.vcv (11.3 KB)

From @cosinekitty (Don Cross)

From @rsmus7 (Stephan)

2025_06_29_3Daughters_rsmus7.vcv (27.4 KB)

2025_07_04_2Daughters_rsmus7.vcv (30.1 KB)

2025_07_08_More_from_Sophia_rsmus7.vcv (29.7 KB)

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Congratulations on the big release, Dave! It was fun being a member of the testing crew and watching this take shape over the last few weeks. This is a fun module to play with, and people can quickly get some very wild sounds out of it with a small amount of time and effort.

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Yes, this is a fun module. Once you understand what’s what it’s very easy to get good sounding results.

To start with I went with Omri’s setup of feeding the two ripples through a Sapphire Echo. The delay output is panned left and right, fundamental goes to the middle. Sounds impressive whatever you do. Well, almost whatever :slight_smile:

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Yeah congrats! This seems fantastic.

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Congratulations Dave! Instant buy. Looking forward to play with this!

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Congrats! Great stuff! Very versatile! All in one tool for something that is a pain to setup using multiple modules…

I guess this goes way beyond FOF (sine based and formant oriented). With different (non-sine) waveforms and all these options/modulations for envelopes and pulsaret/silence ratios, I guess this would be closer to Pulsar synthesis as discovered/invented in the 1970s but formalized and popularized in 2001 by granular synthesis pioneer Curtis Roads.

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Congrats Dave, it sounds great!

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Excited to try this out.

I skipped over Xaoc Sofia mostly because the demos I was hearing at the time of its announcement/release weren’t really to my liking. Immediately Omri Cohen’s video convinced me that it’s got a wider sonic palette than I originally thought. Happy to get this in VCV form and not have to give up other oscillators in my Eurorack rig to make space… :slight_smile:

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Cool, I am glad you like Sofia’s Daughter. I actually liked the Sofia sounds that Tom Churchill and Monotrail produced in their videos, which is why I became interested in emulating Sofia in the first place.

Many of the Sofia’s Daughter sounds are classic Sofia sounds. But some of the sounds are created by extra modulation options only available in Sofia’s Daughter.

Here is a summary of the known differences between XAOC Devices Sofia and Venom Sofia’s Daughter.

Inconsequential naming changes

Controls and CV

  • Global FM → Fundamental FM
  • Pitch FM → Global FM
  • Elements Mix → Ripple Mix
  • Fund-Elem Mix → Elems Mix
  • Damp A / B → A / B Decay (Decay time ratio)
  • Ratio A / B → A / B Freq (Frequency ratio)

Outputs

  • Impulse A / B → A / B Env (envelope)
  • A / B Out → A / B Raw

Main disadvantage to Sofia’s Daughter

  • The digital implementation limits frequency, and can also lead to aliasing. But oversampling options are available to mitigate aliasing

Global Sofia’s Daughter Enhancements:

  • Polyphony! All inputs and outputs are polyphonic (and all CV inputs support audio rates by the way)
  • Attenuators or attenuverters for all CV inputs (except for V/Oct and sync inputs)
  • Options for global linear through zero FM in addition to exponential FM (actually called pitched FM on Sofia)

Fundamental Sine VCO enhancements:

  • User control of sine saturation level, including CV input
  • Hard Sync
  • Soft Sync
  • One shot modes triggered by Hard Sync - great for percussion voices
  • Phase Modulation (frequently called through-zero linear frequency modulation)
  • Options for fundamental only linear through zero FM in addition to exponential FM (actually called global FM on Sofia)

Ripple Element VCO enhancements:

  • Additional triangle option to go along with sine and square
  • Phase Modulation
  • Multiple Warp modes available to all wave forms
    • Frequency ramp (the default mode that matches the XAOC hardware)
    • Inverse frequency ramp
    • J curve envelope decay shape
    • S curve envelope decay shape
    • Ripple PWM (even for sine and triangle!)
  • Additional Ripple shaping Warp modes available to sine and triangle only
    • Ripple skew
    • Ripple J-curve
    • Ripple S-curve
    • Ripple rectify

Additional Outputs

  • Saturated fundamental sine
  • Damped Ripple A
  • Damped Ripple B
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Fun. I am just playing around with it, without (yet) knowing what I’m doing, but it’s producing some beautiful sounds reminiscent of the Duffing oscillators in Gutter Synthesis, which I love.

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As an owner of the XAOC Sofia hardware model, I was having mixed feelings about this! Sofia is such a unique sound, making it one of the few modules in my (modest) physical Eurorack setup that seemed to somewhat justify having a Eurorack setup at all. Once again, I’m drawn to the conclusion that, as satisfying as physical knob twisting can be, VCV Rack is an insanely good value proposition relative to hardware Eurorack. Especially when combined with MIDI controllers like MIDI Fighter Twister and a 16n Fader Bank.

My mixed feelings shifted after I had a lot of fun yesterday playing with Sofia’s Daughter. It’s a faithful reproduction of original features, but also adds some great new features. And polyphony! Excellent work, Dave.

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Here’s a bare bones introduction to Pulsar synthesis by Ian Mahanpour using just a handful of VCV modules (3 years ago).

This demo explains/shows some of the basic manipulations of Pulsaret (where you can manipulate waveshape, frequency and envelope) and the Pulsaret/silence ratio. Hopefully giving some insights and understanding of the principles involved, so you can better exploit this synthesis technique for yourself.

Changing the frequency of the Pulsaret is somewhat similar to Oscilator Sync, where you increase/decrease the number of cycles/ripples within a sync window (the whole single cycle that determines the overal note/frequency). But in Oscillator Sync there is no inner synced envelope for the synced signal and no silence section.

There are other implementations that use a single (im)pulse and an audiorate delay/echo to create the Pulsarette and its decay characteristics. Similar to Karplus-Strong synthesis, but within a single cycle. A lot more limited approach obviously.

Anyway…

Pulsar synthesis
Pulsar synthesis734×456 285 KB

Pulsar Synthesis, Granulation’s Little Brother // VCV Rack Tutorials

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Music to my ears! Thank you so much for posting this!

I hope you have many happy days patching.

I would love to see any of your creations with Sofia’s Daughter. That goes for everyone. If you have created a patch with Sofia’s Daughter that you are proud of, I encourage you to post a video and/or patch here. Knowing that people are using modules that I created is a special feeling. But seeing the outcome is especially sweet!

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Bought the module, not only as I’ve used several free Venom modules in my music, but also because I think it will be very good for my various music output.

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A pleasure to buy a premium Venom module. The other ones are already premium without the pricetag.

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Thanks! But that is too damn sweet . . . I am blushing now. :blush:

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Yeah, it had been a while since I looked at Sofia’s front panel, and I’d forgotten what features it had. You’ve added quite a lot of features. There’s a lot of self-patching potential to play with :slight_smile:

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Here are a couple more interesting demo patches / videos.

Simultaneous Hard and Soft Sync

The interaction of the detuned hard and soft sync signals results in a nice rhythmic pulsing beat.

Venomous Drone IV.vcv (4.7 KB)

Undertone Series

Triggering Sofia’s Daughter in One Shot Trigger mode at a constant audio rate while slowly sweeping the fundamental frequency generates the undertone series when the fundamental frequency is lower than the trigger frequency. This is because the One Shot Trigger mode does not allow the fundamental to retrigger until the current cycle is complete.

Sofia’s Daughter Undertones.vcv (4.3 KB)

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That undertone series one sounds amazing. It’s such a great sound, so bassy and “full” when it’s playing in the lower registers.

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Just shelled out the well-deserved 15 dollars for this and had a blast this afternoon making basses. Very well done @DaveVenom, it’s fantastic.

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