Hi! Spider is my brand new 6-operator FM synthesiser module featuring fully customisable modulation routing. Inspired by legendary synths like the Yamaha DX-7, it offers much greater user control than many of those traditional synths with fixed algorithm sets, bringing FM right back where it belongs in the world of modular.
I made this module as my dissertation project for my degree at The University of Manchester, and I’d love to hear your feedback! I’d really appreciate if you could take this quick 5-minute survey to support both my dissertation, and the continued development of the module for all you modular enthusiasts out there. I’d also like to invite testers outside of the formalities of all that dissertation lark to beta test the module for bugs and other weirdness. Please comment below or get in touch through the forum or on the VCV Rack Discord, my name on there is rsmh.
Just downloaded it, so no feedback yet, except IMHO it’s a very good-looking design; the mini-scopes, the equal division of space and color coding, and (being a visual-design child of the late 80s/early 90s) the gradient fade to black
Gave it a spin. Love the concept! I think it’s very cool, especially nice panel art and the mini-scopes. I’m a big big fan of scopes on modules, so you’ve won me over already.
You might consider making some DX-7 style presets for it.
Also, add documentation please!! In truth most of it was easy enough to figure out from the intuitive panel layout, but I’m not 100% on how the middle section works and I think it would help to have some simple example algorithms explained. (mainly because 6op FM is complex)
That being said, I was having some nice Star Trek engine room sounds going in just a couple mins. It’s sweet!!
I’ll do the survey and leave you some comments/suggestions. Congrats on the dissertation!
Thank you so much for testing it out! I won’t repeat what I’m about to say in a reply to @auxmux here about DX-7 presets. I think it’d be really cool though.
Yeah, it desperately needs documentation. I’m swamped with final year uni stuff atm and I need to get the dissertation for this done before that, but I will make some soon.
Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for doing the survey!
I’d love to and I think it’d be really really cool, but they wouldn’t sound identical. There’s no envelope generators on Spider itself, those need to be input via CV as level control (done on purpose so the whole thing is more modular) so the patches would all be ‘flat’ so to speak without the correct levelling of the DX-7’s… but it could be a good place to start. I’ll definitely consider it!
Not entirely familiar with programming expanders yet but if Rack lets you edit the properties of an expander module from the module it’s expanding, it’d be possible to import presets for Spider & its 6-way envelope generator from Spider itself. Then you could import sysex. Just throwing ideas around at this point, it’ll be a little while til I can dive back into the codebase.
EDIT: Seems like this is possible through message passing. That’s really neat.
