VCV Rack is a free and open source software-modular system that provides Eurorack-like functionality as a desktop DAW. There’s a great community with thousands of free modules out there for endless beep boop fun without the cost of Eurorack or the lead-fumes of DIY.
I’ve made a whole bunch of modules under the name RJModules, and I’ve produced a whole bunch more as Black Death that I haven’t published yet. My longer-term plan is to port some of my best VCV Rack modules into hardware format (maybe with kits for sale) once my Kosmo system evolves.
Hi, and welcome! I have browsed your github code on several occasions while I was developing a module (Vocode-O-Matic) for VCV-Rack.
We seem to be on somewhat similar paths (although I have no ambitions on selling any of my software/designs (yet)). I also want to make hardware and started out with software. The reason I made the VCV-module was that I wanted to redesign my file based vocoder to become a real time version in hardware (actually on an FPGA) and VCV-Rack made it possible to test the real time version of its core software as an intermediate stage. I’ve recently implemented it on a Daisy Seed (not an FPGA) and posted about it in this thread. I’m currently working on a real time spectral display to add to it.
What I found difficult about making a module for VCV-Rack is the lack of documentation on the basic structure of a module and how it interacts with the engine etc. Apart from a link to some example code, there is not much of a tutorial to get you going. Most problems I encountered had nothing to do with the DSP-side of things (that worked from the start) but were related to the C++ api and basic structure of a module.
Ha, well I’m sorry about that. Not my cleanest code, I didn’t know what I was doing at first. It didn’t help that a lot of the modules were built for the pre-1.0 VCV Rack, when things worked very differently and there was a lot smaller library of modules to steal from.
I’m going to play around with your vocoder today! The whole project looks awesome.
Agreed about the interface, which there were some more in-depth tutorials but the Discord community is pretty helpful. I’m also looking for a really solid Rack-to-Hardware-to-Rack interfacing solution so I can build a hybrid modular. Ultimately my reason for moving to hardware is just that my CPU can’t handle all of the stuff I want to do, and it creates a horrible digital distortion as the computer melts.
Yesterday I set my Beatstep pro for VCV Rack and I have to say, it’s the absolute TOP HAMMER when, like me, you have little hardware synth and only a few modules and then suddenly these possibilities, this feeling is awesome. The Beatstep Pro is ideal for controlling VCV. Unfortunately my bad machine;) is too slow. It works a lot, but with patches with more than 15 modules it slowly kneels. But that shows me that I just have to build more modules to get this result with hardware. I also used this tutorial video by Omri Cohen.Using Arturia's BeatStep Pro with VCV Rack - YouTube Omri is the best, very personable, helpful and friendly guy, with a very good knowledge of VCV rack and modular systems at all!
