Camille here, the latest addition to the MOD Team. I joined the Berlin office a bit over a month ago as Marketing Coordinator and I gotta say, it’s been a lot of fun so far!
I thought I would tell you a bit about myself. I am originally from Paris but I’ve been living in Berlin for 4 years now. I am currently about to finish my bachelor in electronic music production and live performance and I’ve been working on my musical project for a couple of years, where I produce and sing as Lakmé. I am also a classically trained pianist - you could definitely say music is my thing.
Here’s some of my stuff, if you are feeling curious! https://soundcloud.com/lakkkme
Done with the shameless self-promotion now.
I am super excited to be part of such a passionate and motivated team, and can’t wait to see what the future holds for MOD! I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a wild ride.
Anyways, it’s nice to meet all of you!
Speak soon,
I have got a Mod Duo from the second kickstarter batch.
I am a software engineer specialised in scientific calculations (including non-linear wavelet filtering for denoising of signals) and Linux user since the mid 90’s. I have played the guitar for more than 30 years now, although never really getting further than hobbyist level (I miss free time to break out of the pentatonic box).
For many years I have been using Linux as a music workstation and dreamt of being able to make a portable effect processor that could fit in a pedal. When the Raspberry Pi arrived, I thought they were the way to go, but their sound processing hardware were not good enough yet.
While doing my research on the topic, I came across the Mod Duo kickstarter campaign and got hooked instantly. Note that it is my first effect pedal ever so I have no background in using “traditional” pedals. I find the mod such a fantastic new territory to explore !!!
Since I got mine, I have tried to contribute to a couple of things and to help users as much as my availability would allow. One of the things that interest me is enhancing the integration between the Mod and Linux based DAWs.
Musically, I am interested in too many things to list here, but I have a very particular interest in Frank Zappa’s music and his guitar tones. Watermelon in Easter Hay is one of my favourite piece of music ever, but to this day, I still have been unable to get my guitar tone right on this one. I think it would be great to have a section in the forum dedicated to specific tone discussions.
Apart from that, I am also deeply interested in the capabilities of the Mod for recording (being used as a high performance sound interface of my PC), especially from microphones. However, I was a bit unlucky on that one as my Mod is plagued by a hardware noise issue (it’s going back to Berlin very soon to be fixed).
Also, I live in South East England not far from London.
I am Marius from mid Germany and I play drums at my church, keyboards at my band www.queenandthegang.info, and some acoustic guitar and bass.
I became a electronic technician (telecom) but I currently work with different social projects.
I managed to record a short CD of my band a few years ago by self-learning and recording with very little knowledge, at that time with windows. My bad.
I am somehow involved with Linux since 2004 but never got to be a programmer.
I like the idea of open source programs and linux. Since I heard much of the mod project
via linux audio mailing lists I surely had to get one and didn’t regret it.
It became my obvious signature sound to play some keyboards through a leslie simulation box
and a shimmery-like reverb. Now I can have both effects in one box, crafted from guys whose names are so familiar through mailing lists to me. I am very thankful for that.
I like to program various effects pedals or keyboards and even synths to get workable sounds,
so when I fiddle a new patch/preset/pedalboard I want it to have a certain purpose to stand out
in its own way but not to cover up the other instruments.
I like to help the community in developing good strategies for the end user not to fiddle too much with the Mod duo.
Sometimes too much tweaking lets us get less inspirational regarding our music.
I’ m a happy new owner of the DUO, passionate of sound, I’ m playing guitar, bass, synths, shakers and triangles … and everything doing some noise. I practise Linux and it’s audio softwares since a few years. I have all the same full of (naives) questions to ask about hardware and software aspects of the DUO. I’m very happy to find this community and having the opportunity to share and contribute to the project in one way or another.
I have full of idea of plugin which does not still exist (it seems to me) but I have to form for all which concerns the appropriate (and easy ^^ ) programming languages and the LV2 format.
I play most of the time in my home-studio (Tourneriff Association Studio) where I compose, mix and fiddle for me and others. You can hear a part of my “job” here https://altrockproductions.bandcamp.com/album/le-bateleur as a bass player, few guitars and synths, percusssions,etc…a great part of this has been made under Linux/Ardour/LV2s !
In the pleasure to discuss with you all…
I just ordered a Mod Duo and I plan to use it with my Chapman Stick.
First of all, Duo will have to show its strength in managing hi-z signal from the humbucking passive pickups of the two separate Stick channels.
Actually I do use an SP2 SFX preamp which is doing a great job with its 3Mohm inputs.
I also plug the Stick direct into my Signature Series Soundcraft mixer hi-z inputs.
Being them around 1Mohm, which is similar to Mod Duo, I hope it will be ok.
I usually play jazz and bossa novas with minimalistic setup (just a slight reverb), but I would like to experiment a little bit to improve my sound more than adding effects.
That’s why I asking for some suggestions for my setup that I imagine will be as follows:
Two parallel channels, each one having:
compressor (to manage better Stick dynamic, high level attack and mild sound)
parametric eq (sound optimization)
delay (to be use as reverb reinforcement for great ambient, not for tapping, multitapping …)
reverb (to be set as a room for bossas or mid swings or hall for ballads)
shimmer (something that can emulate a sort of warm analog keyboard pad to be used just in case… )
Which are the best sounding plugins to start with?
I’m Dirk, guy from Belgium, I’m using Mod Duo for a week now.
Think it will be a new addiction, I’m not drinking coffee anymore since 5 days ago.
I’m a passionate photographer. Haven’t figured out yet how to take pictures with this Mod Duo, but give me an extra couple of days and …
So, I’m not a good musician, don’t want to play live (yet), but I just like to create melodies, wether it’s with my guitar or with a midi keyboard. And I want to share stuff online.
Feel free to visit http://www.soundcloud.com/bulevardi/
I hope I’ll find some time to record some new stuff in the next couple of months, as I have a job and a family/household to manage too. I guess everyone struggles with a lack of time here.
I switched from Windows to Linux (Mint) in the last couple of years, and I’ve been using and experimenting with lots of different music setups, linux distros, DAWs, guitar amps (simulations) and so on… And now I’m hooked into the Linux world, currently using Reaper as DAW.
Glad it’s all working now as it should.
So yes, you’ll see me around some more here in this place I guess.
Welcome @bulevardi, I’m interested in your setup in Mint. What tools/apps have you been using, which ones you like? Any good synth emulators (other than the Duo of course )?
Not much yet, the DAW I’m using is Reaper, they have a native linux version and it works perfect.
The synth I’m into now is Hive from U-He, also a Berlin based company btw.
And what my workflow concerns this is the best setup I can ever imagine.
And I worked with Waveform (Tracktion) before too as a daw, but there’s something malfunctioning why I always have to set the audio settings again and it doesn’t always want to configure the way it should.
What Linux concerns, I’ve tested nearly every daw available (ardour, audacity, lmms,…) and lots of distros too like Ubuntu Studio, KX studio, Guitarinux, … but most of the stuff were not entirely suiting my needs or some only working with Jack (which totally did not function in my setup the last couple of years) I’ve been busy troubleshooting long time making these connections with Jack, setting up Rakarrack, Guitarix, Calf Plugins and so on… but none worked because me and Jack were no good friends.
Now, here’s where the Mod Duo comes into the story as solution: it’s a Linux system, using JACK as audio server and loading plugins in LV2 format, it contains a few Rakarrack, Guitarix and Calf plugins.
So it’s already doing everything out of the box, I don’t need to worry anymore to troubleshoot on my own computer to figure out connections. Works straight away via my audio interface (Focusrite) into Reaper.
From now on, it’s time to learn to work with all these tools and play with it and record. Enough time lost with my quest
Before, when I used Windows, I used Reaper too and the free Synth1 vst. However, it doesn’t load correctly with wine under Linux here. For most people it does, but here it doesn’t.
Happy to see fellow Stickists on the forum.
The MOD Duo is an amazing platform for the stick because of it’s dual in/out and total flexibility of routing within the unit.
You will find yourself testing different plugins for your sound. But here are some of my favorites:
Compressors
Tap Mono Compressor - Lots of options to choose from.
Guitarix Compressor - Like the way it sounds with easy to use controls
EQ
x42 Parametric Equalizer Mono - Very versatile with nice HP/LP filters.
Delay
Bollie Delay - Dual delay with HP/LP filters for tailoring your sound.
Reverb - I change this depending on how much CPU I have available.
Shiroverb - Nice Shimmer set to whatever pitch you want. Very thick when set to unity.
TAP Reverberator - The HD versions are nice but use a lot of CPU.
FOMP - Reverb - Seems to use less CPU and sounds great.
Keyboard Pad -
This would probably be a combination of plugins. Maybe the Shiroverb into Stuck. Stuck is like the EHX Freeze pedal. You can experiment with all kinds of things in front of the Stuck to create your own pads.
Another option is to use a synth generator in the Duo by triggering it with a Sonuus G2M or i2M. But these are monophonic note-to-MIDI converters. Haven’t tried the Fishman Tripleplay with the Stick yet but would be awesome if it works.
I hope this helps as a place to start. Just remember that it’s all about your imagination and if you can think it, you probably can probably create it on the Duo. There is a fair amount of trial and error but it’s easy to just pick a new plugin and go.
I’m excited to hear and try your pedalboard creations.
I now have a fully working device.
I’m not even going to try the software on my computer anymore, what I tried the last couple of years without success. No more troubleshooting with … longstory
I’ll stick with the mod duo, no more wasting of time.
