The Rubicon, from Canadian Eurorack wizards Intellijel, is an analog triangle core VCO, capable of thru-zero frequency modulation. Originally created by Dave Dixon, it is rightly considered an analog VCO design masterpiece.

Braids, by French Eurorack pioneers Mutable Instruments, is not an oscillator. It sort of looks like one, with fine and coarse pitch/frequency controls, a v/oct input, and voltage-controllable tone/timbre controls. It even sort of sounds like one, in as far as it outputs audio.

Mutable Instruments call it a macro oscillator, but even that is an understatement. It’s a hugely sophisticated digital synthesis engine, able to produce and manipulate complex sounds by means of 45 or so fully-realized synthesis algorithms, featuring multiple oscillators, wavetables, filters, VCAs, ring modulators, and so on under the hood.

It's time to take control of time itself, with the Doepfer A-188-1 Bucket Brigade Device for Softube Modular. Our officially licensed software version of the BBD module represented a new challenge in terms of component by component analog modeling, and the results were worth the effort.

By passing your signal along a line of capacitors, the BBD delays your sound in time, but also degrades it with high-frequency loss and additional noise (as well as noticeable sample-rate reduction and aliasing at high delay times). This creates a warm and dirty effect, much sought after in the mid/late '70s, and still loved.

Ever since the low pass gate was invented by Don Buchla for his 200 series instruments in the early 1970s, low pass gates have been heralded for their ability to add a lifelike and organic response to modular synth patches. They work by applying an envelope to a low pass filter with its 0-voltage cutoff frequency way below audible range, so when the envelope is down, the 'gate' is closed. As a note decays, its high frequencies die soonest – just like most acoustic sounds.