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I’ve been rather quiet recently, but not without good reason! A lot of my time is currently going into a new online shop, which should make the whole ordering experience a little smoother and generally nicer to use. It will also finally solve the frustrating issue that ordering from mobile devices currently does not work properly — the existing shop system has unfortunately not received much support for quite some time. At the same time I’m improving the work behind the scenes, from receiving an order through to packing and shipping it, with a new tool we are developing specifically around the way we work. This will make the everyday process more efficient, so that less time disappears into administration and boring tasks and more can go into what I enjoy most: developing new modules and new ideas for AE Modular. There is another good reason to be excited: tangible waves will soon celebrate its 10th anniversary! There are already some cool new products in the works for that occasion, and I’m looking forward to sharing more when the time is right. So yes, things have been a little quieter on my side lately — but hopefully this is the calm before a fresh new chapter. tangible waves is getting ready to shine in a new light! New Products
Third Party ProductsA very big stretch for the third party makers: two long-awaited Symbolic Circuits modules have gone on sale, BF Synth's DRIFT has landed, Faux Cyrillic has a surprise new effects module, and Wonkystuff has overhauled how shipping works. Symbolic Circuits FERAL ꟻILTER — finally available! After more than two years of development, Henrik's screaming, snarling Feral Filter is real and you can buy it. It comes in two flavours depending on which logic chip is fitted, and the chip is socketed so you can swap it later. 7400 version — the wild one, the full feral experience 7410 version — the same topology as a Moog ladder filter but with one extra pole, so a steeper cutoff than a classic ladder; it is stable with the phase inverted, which makes it distort and saturate very nicely It can also be switched into 1V/oct 'track' mode and played as an oscillator, and at full resonance in hyper-drive it self-oscillates into a pure sine with no input at all. They are already turning up in people's racks — see @dizzeesatchel's video further down. Available now at Escape From Noise: https://escapefromnoise.com/en/modular/ae/symbolic-circuits-feral-filter-7410.html MONO ENGINE Also now on sale: the MONO ENGINE, a single-voice IMDI-to-CV module. If you have been wanting to drive one voice of your rack from MIDI without giving up a lot of space, this is for you. Available now at Escape From Noise: https://escapefromnoise.com/en/modular/ae/symbolic-circuits-mono-engine.html BF Synths DRIFT is out now! Zeno and M4vrick spent the summer on it and DRIFT — the controlled-chaos CV source teased back in April — is finally released. Four algorithms including Perlin noise, Bezier easing and a Brownian walk, plus a plain LFO mode; it can even be pushed into audio rate and used as an oscillator. Zeno has also made a proper deep-dive walking through every function with several demo patches, including one where he builds an ambient track on a small rack. It is long, but he has kindly timestamped it. Big restock — and BF Synth modules now at Noisebug M4vrick has built a large batch of all the BF Synth modules, so the shop is well stocked again. EU store (Lectronz): https://lectronz.com/stores/bfsynths Better still for our North American friends: BF Synth are now working with Noisebug in California, so US customers can buy without the tariff headache and with far more sensible postage. BF Synth at Noisebug: https://www.noisebug.net/search?q=bf+synth Faux Cyrillic mvFX — a tiny surprise multi-effects module @dizzeesatchel had a burst of energy during the heatwave and threw together a little multi-effects unit. It is built around the same FV-1 chip as the MULTIFX, but deliberately stripped back: mono only, no CV control, eight effects, and just 1U wide. What makes it interesting is the effects themselves, which he gathered from all over the internet rather than using the usual suspects:
@rockysmalls is giving it a workout, and more will be made once parts are in — so if you want one, say so on the thread. The full knob assignments for each effect are posted there too. You can find out more on the forum: forum.aemodular.com/thread/3890/updates-mvfx-new-website Wonkystuff Shipping to Europe and the US has changed for the better Since the start of July, Royal Mail only offers PDDP postage from the UK into Europe. PDDP collects VAT and import duty at the point the postage is bought, which means no surprise fees on the doorstep. John has taken the opportunity to simplify things:
The Lectronz storefront stays open for now in case anything misbehaves. John is actively asking for feedback on the calculator. https://wonkystuff.co.uk/ K2 firmware update If you have a K2, Bastl have released the Citadel v17 firmware update for the Kastle 2, which applies to the Wonkystuff AE version too. Details from Bastl: https://mailchi.mp/bastl-instruments/2026kastle_2_citadel_fw_v17_update News and MusicAEtherwaves vol. 8 It is this time of year again and if we want to publish our eighth community album on December's Bandcamp Friday, then you all better start patching! This will be a special edition to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the AE Modular format since it became a fully funded on Kickstarter in November 2016! Here are the main dates:
All of this is explained in a lot more detail in this forum post: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3902/aetherwaves-vol-special-anniversary-edition July Music Offerings A Eulogy for Ladies Macbeth and Macduff — @funbun A gorgeous piece of minimalism from Black Warrior Lures. It is a single take from a rig that now runs to six 20U rows: a whole row of sequencers (four SEQ16 and two SEQ8), a second row of sample-and-hold, noise, shift registers, switches, chaos, buffers, clock and quantizers, and seven sound sources including WAVETABLES, two VCO R2, two FMOS R2, Rains into CIRRUS, and ALGODRONE. Key changes are done by switching quantizer modes. You should check this out: https://blackwarriorlures.bandcamp.com/track/a-eulogy-for-ladies-macbeth-and-macduff Waeve82, coils and k2 getting me moving — @maydonpoliris In these two videos we hear WAEVE82 alongside Faux Cyrillic's Coils and the Wonkystuff K2. pt3r's one-word review was "Crusteeeeee!", which about covers it.
SNAPS — @pt3r A six-track album on the Dēofol page, full of scrapes and breaks for heatwaves. Which, given the summer Europe just had, feels about right. https://deofol.bandcamp.com/album/snaps First recording with the K2 — @JcAspes A first jam with the K2 and an LXR-02, recorded straight off a Mackie mixer's USB interface. As JcAspes put it, every time he starts up the K2 he ends up with a good sound, a sentiment several people in the forum agree with. Drones Into Clouds — @funbun Another Black Warrior Lures release, and this is a celebration of the two most notorious modules in the modular world. Enjoy! https://blackwarriorlures.bandcamp.com/track/drones-into-clouds Keurslager Kurt's Heatwave Acid Track Kurt's heatwave acid track picked up a good technical exchange in July. Saltatempo asked whether DRIFT's chaotic CV really works for modulating DELAY time, since he had struggled to get the same results from a SEQ8 or RBSS2 that he got by hand. The upshot: it does work, but the CV range is much narrower than the knob's, so it is better suited to subtle movement than to the wild ring-modulated feedback sweeps you can get manually. Worth knowing before you go patching. August and September Welcome, Jent! @jentulman lucked into a nicely-filled AE rack on eBay and finally took the modular plunge after years in Reason and VCV Rack. This is his very first recording, made within hours of plugging the thing in and it does not sound like a first go at all. Welcome to the community! Live acid techno at a real club — @keurslagerkurt Kurt played a live acid techno set at a local EMOM (electronic music open mic) night and got to run his system through a proper club PA. The AE side of the rig was a Wonkystuff K2 through the Symbolic Circuits Feral Filter and Faux Cyrillic's 3VRB, with Drift and Sloth handling modulation — a genuine third-party party. The recording is straight off the club desk with no post-processing. This also kicked off a discussion, started by @pt3r, about how people actually approach live performance with the AE — pre-made patches, transporting a patched rack, switching between songs. It is still running as of late September, so there is plenty of time to chip in: https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3886/play-live-discussion Professore @saltatempo — six videos in August An extraordinarily productive month, all with full patch notes in the forum posts, which makes them wonderful learning material: PLAY your SEQUENCERs — a four-layer piece built around a bit-shift sequencer driving everything. Use headphones. https://youtu.be/JcZpKm2BRBg Layers — four voices layered live plus a Solina-and-Cirrus pad, set against Webb telescope imagery of the Cartwheel Galaxy. Best bits at 08:22 and 11:20. https://youtu.be/hHraEl3kmCU Transitions — a sequence and a noise voice pushed through CIRRUS for granular textures, filmed at the Postojna Caves in Slovenia. https://youtu.be/2tEOTw5rYSk That's Amore — a noise-and-phaser drone bed under two sequences sharing a delay, one of them through the BOB transistor ladder filter. https://youtu.be/Ut69FEiFNy0 Family — a RINGS-clone layer, a ratcheting subtractive voice, and a delayed noise sequence that turns into water. https://youtu.be/0oJ3W-Uc094 Waiting for the match! — SEQ8 in CV mode under a very slow LFO, an FMOS bell voice, a bytebeat texture, and a massive deep-space reverb into MULTIFX shimmer. https://youtu.be/Gt_9gr9gxOc again and again — @dizzeesatchel This is the first outing for a Feral Filter in the Faux Cyrillic rack, which he is clearly delighted about. It's also a nice showcase of how much of the AE ecosystem is now third-party: a Telex555 sequence into the Feral Filter into a QVCA with a Piqued envelope, Coils into the BOB filter for bass, both filters modulated by the OG Sloth, and the output split to 3VRB and the new mvFX (in 'damaged tape' mode) before going out through Resistance is Futile. DIYMore sketches to @feijai's ever-growing GRAINS repository OFFSHOOT — a dual Bernoulli gate, essentially a Mutable Instruments Branches for the AE. Both gates share one probability setting (there are only so many knobs to go round) but there are plenty of extras on top. https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3887/offshoot-dual-bernoulli-branches-grains SLOWPOKE — an extremely slow loopable AR envelope generator, with optional random looping movements. How slow? The fastest stage is around six seconds; the slowest is about thirty hours. He suggests it for music installations, which sounds exactly right. (6 Sept) https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3897/slowpoke-slow-loopable-envelope @feijai's whole GRAINS repository can be found here: https://github.com/eclab/grains/ Custom EEPROMs for the MULTIFX @solipsistnation's long-running thread on burning your own EEPROMs for the MULTIFX module kept going through August and is now well over forty replies deep. If you want to customise which effects live on your MULTIFX, this is the place to start. https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3624/custom-eeproms-multifx Eugene's ESP32 MIDI thingy @rodney shared an ESP32-based MIDI project. https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3879/eugenes-esp32-midi-thingy CD4069 mixer — input coupling and 2.5V bias @isomura is working through the design of a CD4069-based mixer and has some good questions about input coupling and biasing. Anyone with the relevant analogue knowledge, please chime in. https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/3877/cd4069-mixer-input-coupling-bias Meetings and EventsAt the last meeting in early September we tried the Jitsi, a free meeting platform with mixed results. For some of us it worked really well, others preferred the Zoom meeting which we've used in the past. For next month we may go back to Zoom.
You can find out more about those online meetups on the Forum, but you have to be a member and logged in to see this page: https://forum.aemodular.com/board/29/online-meetups Comments are closed.
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AuthorRobert Langer, founder of tangible waves. Here, I will share some thoughts, background infos and news about AE modular and tangible waves. Archives
September 2026
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