Warp Core, a phase distortion oscillator, now available in the Library

Good morning VCV Community!

I’m thrilled to announce that my first Rack module, Warp Core, is now available in the library.

You can read all about it in the detailed manual.

I hope you enjoy, and please feel free to drop any feedback here!

47 Likes

Congrats, packing some great sounds in there :slight_smile: At first I wondered why the default frequency was so low, but with all the harmonics we can add, it makes total sense, and it makes for a very deep oscillator. Nice work!

1 Like

Thanks! I honestly didn’t give much thought to the default frequency since I figure most people will just change it as they prefer. But yeah, I personally like to use it for complex bass tones so I guess it just felt right.

The spec suggest that C4 is the default for vcv.

1 Like

Phase distorsion and modulation, plus frequency modulation at the same time, for me you can tune it at any octave you want, I’ll use it !

Thanks for your work, and congratulations, I am already loving the sounds I get from it !

1 Like

Thank you, I didn’t realize that. Perhaps I’ll update it in a patch release.

1 Like

Congrats on the module and welcome to the forum! Warp Core looks wonderful; can’t wait to check it out!

MindMeld approves of any module that has a Warp Core.

6 Likes

Great oscillator! I’ve really missed the Animated Circuits phase distortion oscillator, but this will do nicely.

2 Likes

This is great – I’d happily add a real one to my Eurorack system :smiley:

Love it.

Yeah, please tune it to C4 otherwise it can get difficult to use in a patch.

Really looking forward to trying this, thanks!

1 Like

Thanks for all the kind words and feedback so far! I already have a fix in place to set the default tuning to C4 (on the develop branch in the repo for anyone who might be building from source). I am going to wait out the week and see if anything else comes up, then submit the update to the library.

2 Likes

Excited to give this a go once C4 tuning arrives. Tuning oscillators on Eurorack is the worst, which is why I prefer VCV, lol.

I hear you, for sure, and happy to follow the spec.

Overall though on the design I was a little torn because on one hand from a purely “voltage is voltage” standpoint, Eurorack has no official spec for voltage to absolute frequency, just relative frequency (1V/octave). Although 0V is commonly used as “C” in one octave or another, there’s no real official spec for that. And as a performer I like being able to tune my oscillators however I want for a given patch even if it’s not even in a traditional A=440Hz tuning.

But of course in a software environment like VCV, and even in digital hardware oscillators, it’s usually trivial to achieve whatever exact frequency you want. And now that I’m aware of the spec for VCV I definitely want to adhere to it. I originally had a different tuning based on semitones (note numbers) but I changed my mind because I wanted to keep this as close to feasible “virtual hardware” as possible and I have my own opinions about fluidity in hardware tuning controls.

Anyway the tuning defaults to C2 right now so you could always use an octave offset on your pitch CV input in the meantime, or if you right click the knob you can actually type C4 or any other note name directly into the input text field and it’ll set the frequency accordingly. Love that feature, Bitwig has it as well for frequency controls.

8 Likes

Nysthi Scala Quant has had that ability for ages :wink: Very useful indeed.

1 Like

I think you can do it with anything in VCV, right? Anyway, yes, it’s extremely useful! :slight_smile:

@InfrasonicAudio, Warp Core is great stuff. Base tones are very nice and I really like multing the output(s) back in to the A and B CV for some extra frequency-dependent texture and depth; it can be completely wild or surprisingly subtle, and the onboard attenuverters make the self-patch really fun to play and find sweet spots with:

image

Fantastic module!

I had one feature request (may be more than you want to do, now that the module’s enlibraried): any chance you’d consider a dedicated phasor out, maybe dead center on the A CV/B CV row above Ext PM? I’ve been getting some very nice sounds by manipulating the phasor in external modules (even an offset attenuverter is cool–try scrubbing the offset for hell-engine sounds!), then running it back into Ext PM, but I love the 90° output and its complex interaction with the phasor, and it’s a shame to have to pick one or the other…

2 Likes

I think you can do it with anything in VCV, right?

Yep! Any standard parameter widget supports this, it’s not something I specifically added.

I had one feature request (may be more than you want to do, now that the module’s enlibraried): any chance you’d consider a dedicated phasor out, maybe dead center on the A CV/B CV row above Ext PM? I’ve been getting some very nice sounds by manipulating the phasor in external modules (even an offset attenuverter is cool–try scrubbing the offset for hell-engine sounds!), then running it back into Ext PM, but I love the 90° output and its complex interaction with the phasor, and it’s a shame to have to pick one or the other…

Really cool idea! I hadn’t actually tried that yet. I’ll definitely have to think about adding a dedicated phasor output. The spacing would be very tight in the location you proposed, but there’s room higher up where the panel decorations are. I was hoping to keep all jacks bottom-aligned though. I’ll think about it!

FYI not sure if you noticed in the manual, but feedback patches aren’t quite as good as they could be in the module at the moment because the DSP runs on 8-sample blocks for performance reasons. So in feedback patches, the signal will be delayed by 8 samples before getting back to the input instead of just the usual 1 sample as is the case in many other modules. I am considering adding a low-latency mode that gets rid of the block processing and SIMD in favor of single-sample latency to improve feedback patching at the cost of higher CPU usage.

1 Like

Awesome! Thanks so much! An expander (even a 2HP one) might also be an option. You could get dedicated outs for all of the ALT options, and maybe some other input/output craziness as well. The only kicker is that due to the expander model, that would incur another sample of latency, so I’d suggest having all outputs (0 and four ALTs) on it, even though that seems counterintuitive/inelegant. In particular, 0 and 90 in stereo are the logical output pair (as you note) and having to do an outboard 1-sample delay on the 90 to escape a 1-sample Haas effect would create a little friction.

Yeah, I saw that in the manual after I had tried it, which made me retroactively surprised by how well it worked! One of these “better in practice than in theory” cases, I guess…

I’d 100% love a right-click low-latency option (I think that’s a great idea for all modules that use but don’t require block processing, actually) but my guess is that it will yield two different flavours of feedback patch, rather than a good one vs. a great one. In my experience, there are setups that really need minimum latency (even to the point of requiring analog hardware) to sound right, and there are other setups that are quite latency-tolerant.

I don’t have a Grand Unified Theory of Feedback Patching yet–although I’m working on it :slight_smile: --but I think it has something to do with whether we’re talking about feedback qua feedback–like mixer feedback or the feedback path of a filter–or whether we’re using feedback to self-modulate. In the latter case, it may not matter exactly when the modulation happens, just that it’s happening. Or so it seems to me!

1 Like

Is that really true? I don’t know if I (mis)read something, or if I just assumed, but I was under the impression that expanders were logically treated as part of the parent module, without any added sample delays.