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Sinamsis wrote:A bit of an aside, but the RxMX makes the DPO seem pretty appealing again. But that's a lot of hp tied up in one "voice."
I got it recently and love it and yes its loads of hp.
Wired them internally and things get interesting very easily and have a great stereo image by panning the RxMx outs.
I have been using the DPO day in, day out for the last year or so and I am still learning it.
The Final out is pure magic. I wish its wavefolder could accept external signals.
MrNovember wrote:I pretty much just traded my DPO for the Rubicon-Dixie-uFold combo and I definitely could not be any happier.
Also what exper said is totally right. It may be cleaner and track really well, but they can get really warm and weird and downright dirty too. So many more options
I'm curious to know how you are getting on with the uFold vis-a-vis the timbre section on the DPO. I get the sense that if I were to miss any one thing about the DPO it would be this.
I haven't actually gotten the uFold yet. It's in the post to me right now though, so I'll let you know when it gets here. The Rubicon and Dixie showed up last week and I've been exploring them extensively. The only thing that I think I may end up missing is the strike input on the wavefolder.
I ordered the Rubicon and uFold. I have a Dixie already. The Mangrove looks wicked. I may get that and return the uFold. I think the Mangrove would be epic with the Rubicon. I may not even need the Dixie.
I've had a very strict "analog only" approach with my eurorack setup the past year, with Verbos complex osc and Cwejman VCO-2RM as my oscillators (both are fantastic).
But, after last month's SF synth meet I broke down and bought a Braids, and OH MY GOD I feel like I have stepped into an amazing alternate universe exponentially bigger. Just out of this world amazing.
So I would recommend braids, as probably everyone else on here with one will agree. I'm already thinking about a second....
I had Braids when it first came out. Didn't love it to be honest. Not enough modulation. Great go to sounds but limited control. I have been curios about the alt firmware. I have Frames with the parasite alt firmware. It's amazing. I bet with Braids it's cool as. I still might get another. I swapped mine for a Cyclebox 2. That thing is nuts. So in your face. Lol.
DPO is a great module and my feeling is that nobody should be without one, but I understand that there are things like limited space and limited funds. I think the most direct replacement (upgrade?) for the FM capabilities of the DPO would be a Dixie (v1 of course) + Rubicon combo, as many have mentioned. As anyone using analog FM can tell you, regardless of the perceived cleanliness of Intellijel's sound, this is not some clinical well-behaved event. Rubicon can be switched into some well dirty sine waves, and fuxking with pitch relationships or even Expo TZFM will get you some wet fart sounds in no time.
I must take issue with the uFold suggestion though to replace the wavefolding capabilities of the DPO. I've tried a number of wavefolders and that's one of my least favorite. Go modular, you don't need the Intellijel brand folder to go with your Intellijel brand oscillators! In my mind the best one is the Toppo TWF, which has so many possibilities for modulation and different degrees of folding - also a killer, rich sound. A close second is actually the Doepfer A-137-1, which has a really great sound but more straightforward modulations.
All in all though, DPO gets you all this in a relatively compact package. For small systems it can't be beat. As Fatboy Slim said, everybody needs a DPO.
Replaced mine with a J3RK 258J. Far less features than the DPO but has more of a 'vintage' sound, which I like. If I could have kept both, I would. The DPO is great but for a simple man such as myself, the J3RK 258J is just perfect. Building another one in fact.
I'm curious if you paired a uFold with the DPO, would that give you the additional "external" folding options that so many wish for (and that are missing with the internal DPO Fold)? Couldn't you then use two separate outputs from the two DPO oscillators, folding them with the uFold, while still using the "Final" from the DPO's internal folding. Seems like that would open up a lot of options, with just a small amount of additional HP.
evs wrote:don´t just look into the "hip" modules.. there is a lot of other stuff that is great!
malekko wiard anti and osc.. the best sounding most complex combination.
and get the twf with it.
evs wrote:don´t just look into the "hip" modules.. there is a lot of other stuff that is great!
malekko wiard anti and osc.. the best sounding most complex combination.
and get the twf with it.
I would also go with this setup
I felt the complete opposite about this pair. I had them in the days before the DPO came out, and I always felt that they were very limited as far as being used as a "complex" voice. For one, I hated that the Anti OSC sends a square wave into the folder (mayhem). Yes, you could FM the Anti with the Unkle sine, but only through a triangle or square. You completely miss out on the beautiful tones you get from sine on sine FM into a good wave folder. Of course the Malekko pair offers other things beyond that, like phase mod, but IDK, they just didn't do it for me.
asymptote wrote:I had a hard time trying to choose between a dpo and the ruby/Dixie/ufold combo. I ended up with a dpo and I'm not convinced I made the right choice. The intellijel option offers way more flexibility and features. But I believe the general consensus is that the intellijel sounds cleaner, almost clinical and cold, as opposed to the fuzzy warmth of the dpo.
If you're interested in something more unique check out the mangrove. Great sounding vco with a very unique feature set. I'm considering getting a second because they appear to be more fun in pairs!
That's a bit of a misconception. The Intellijel are clean, especially in the sines where it counts, and also track extremely well. But that doesn't mean you can't make them do wooly andwarm sounds as well. It's also better to take sinething clean and stable and mess with it from there instead of start off dirty and try to clean it up.
As for the op, I had a DPO along with my Dixie/rubicon/ufold combo. After testing them together, the DPO was dropped. Haven't regretted the swap at all. Also have 2 shapeshifters for complex tones as well.
Thanks for the clarification on this point. I've never actually used the Rubicon/Dixie/uFold combo before, so I was basing my comments exclusively on hearsay. It's the clear sines and the precision tracking that makes me wish I had gone with the Intellijel option; not to mention the tzfm, the patching flexibility, and the insane number of waveform outputs. Now I'm really GASing!
Just to add some perspective, I had them side-by-side as well and would always choose the DPO over the Intellijel modules. The Rubicon has some quirks related to its TZFM implementation that get really annoying when pushing the FM index to its extremes and when doing dynamic FM patches. The great tracking goes completely down the drain when you modulate through zero, too. Also for me it's a case of too much of everything, as opposed to the DPO's well balanced feature set and user interface. The control ranges on the DPO are extremely well chosen, and the waveshapes selected for the SHAPE fader play very well with the folder. To be honest, I think the DPO is the definite implementation of the 259 idea, pushing the original concept just the right amount further without messing with the playability.
listentoaheartbeat wrote:The Rubicon has some quirks related to its TZFM implementation that get really annoying when pushing the FM index to its extremes and when doing dynamic FM patches. The great tracking goes completely down the drain when you modulate through zero, too.
Are there more details about this anywhere? Is it universal to all TZFM oscillators?
listentoaheartbeat wrote:The Rubicon has some quirks related to its TZFM implementation that get really annoying when pushing the FM index to its extremes and when doing dynamic FM patches. The great tracking goes completely down the drain when you modulate through zero, too.
Are there more details about this anywhere? Is it universal to all TZFM oscillators?
Any FM will sound crazy being pushed to extremes. At that point, you're not really interested in "in key" tones, so its a moot point IMO. Besides, I felt this about the DPO. Its FM index went to such extremes that the usable range was quite small before pitch started getting super wonky and noisy. I tend to like my FM tones to remain musical, only using such extremes for percussion fodder to feed into LPGs and filters.
Like exper, I have also found the FM on the DPO to have a limited sweet spot. The thought that the Rubicon's FM might be even harder to tame is almost scary!
And it's not like I dislike the DPO. Quite the contrary--there are things about the DPO I very much appreciate, and I don't see myself trading it the Intellijel option any time soon. For example, all the normalizations make the DPO very user-friendly. Plus the timbre section is truly excellent, especially the waveshaper and the strike input. So far as I know, there are no other dedicated wavefolder modules that can duplicate these features.
I swapped my DPO (and AFG) some years ago for 3 Dixie v1, Anti, Addac802 and I had the Toppo TWF at that point, so those 56HP's got filled up pretty fast but with so much more options in tone and complexity.
The WMD/SSF Ultrafold replaced the TWF later on with no regrets.
listentoaheartbeat wrote:The Rubicon has some quirks related to its TZFM implementation that get really annoying when pushing the FM index to its extremes and when doing dynamic FM patches. The great tracking goes completely down the drain when you modulate through zero, too.
Are there more details about this anywhere? Is it universal to all TZFM oscillators?
Any FM will sound crazy being pushed to extremes. At that point, you're not really interested in "in key" tones, so its a moot point IMO.
I am not talking about staying "in key", and I am familiar with how "FM will sound crazy being pushed to extremes". It's not what I mean. In my experience there are some strange high frequency artifacts (no, not expected sidebands) when slightly modulating through zero, and even with DC filtering the fundamental starts to fall apart pretty quickly when doing dynamic depth FM through zero. I am not saying you cannot get great tones out of this (I certainly have made some beautiful recordings with the Rubicon), however I didn't find the module very playable due to the quirks and shallow sweetspots. You cannot really achieve deeper FM than with standard linear FM without things starting to fall apart in an unexpected way.
i had also a rubicon dixie combo and i went with the DPO all the time. there is just more options to me and i really like the DPO in general.
I kept the dixie to have a triangle core single VCO-LFO .. cant go wrong
there is a new birdkids VCO-LFO coming for NAMM wich will be a tripple VCO-LFO with trigger and lots of modulation options. Not true Zero like they have it in their Bateleur but a Digital + 2 Analog Cores with a lot of wavetables und ultra stable for poly usage. just saying..
I had a listen with the WMD spectrum and i really loved it.
Overall i think its hard to replace the DPO with all his features.
Some great feedback here. So I settled on Rubicon, Dixie, Mangrove and uFold. DPO I am gonna hang onto. Just in case I miss it too much. I also have a Cyclebox 2 which is a Swiss Army knife of a module. I replace by A160-6 Xpander filter with Three Sisters filter too. I think I have a great selection here.
bazzevo wrote:Some great feedback here. So I settled on Rubicon, Dixie, Mangrove and uFold. DPO I am gonna hang onto. Just in case I miss it too much. I also have a Cyclebox 2 which is a Swiss Army knife of a module. I replace by A160-6 Xpander filter with Three Sisters filter too. I think I have a great selection here.
Thanks for the comments.
Sounds like a fun system! I need to try out those mannequin modules myself someday.
been pairing an STO and Z-3000 with great results can run the 3000 sine into the sto sync and the sto sub into the linear FM on the 3000 at the same time. lot's of possibilities.
