I started my eurorack voyage with a Clouds. And not too long after I had the opportunity to buy a second one, which I instantly took advantage of. I also decided to pick up a Morphagene. At this point, I’m not sure I’ll be keeping the Morphagene. While it can record, it’s not nearly as integrated into the process as it is with Clouds-- and there have been several things I wanted to do with Morphagene that it seemed to fall short of.
On the other hand, I haven’t really explored setting up some kind of sequencing where it will bounce between record and playback in a useful manner. I wouldn’t say it incapable of it, but it’s not particularly straightforward as it is with Clouds. Also, trying to use a Morphagene as a triggerable sampler is not all that straightforward either. It can granularize, but easiest with pre-recorded, pre-prepared samples. And setting the splice points is difficult to do accurately as well-- in realtime it’s problematic and doing it on a computer beforehand isn’t well supported either. To try to get the splice points right every time for a live recording while recording the audio on the fly, isn’t really Morphagene’s forte I’d say.
All these things are possible but they’re not what I would call, convenient. In addition, it’s a bit finicky on the wav file format, not as forgiving as it should be. And the pitch control doesn’t support v/oct. In many ways it’s an overblown Radio Music. Or rather, a Radio Music is a poor-man’s Morphagene, that does about 90% of what I want out of such a device, and is completely open source Arduino so it’s quite hackable.
And what I’d like to see in a “better” clouds is bigger and multiple buffers, as well as more abilities in grain manipulation, such as combining grains from multiple independent buffers, assembling, selecting and overlapping them in more ways, etc…
I’ve just ordered a 4ms triggered sampler, which I think might provide better control and better wav compatibility as well as dual independent channels and simultaneous record capability. In my book, the jury is still out on the Morphagene-- if I find the 4ms can handle most of what I want to do I may very well sell off the Morphagene. But I can tell you I don’t plan on selling either of the two Clouds I have, and am very interested to see what MI comes up with next in that department. If it’s yet another Karplus-Strong/comb filter device, I may just pass on it, but if it does a better job at targeting grain synthesis, sign me up…
What I would like to see that none of these devices address as well as I would like is real-time granular ability. Morphagene may do granular a little better than the rest in some respects, but any “real-time” capability is clumsy to say the least. Actually, the 2hp Freez looks to be as good as anything in that regard and is way cheaper-- I’m planning on getting one or two of those once the dealers have them back in stock. And when I say “real-time,” I mean essentially, what Clouds does with the freeze/playback toggle, combined with its ability to chop up the buffer in interesting ways. When a device comes along that does more in terms of juggling grains while recording is in process, I’ll be right on board with that.
So at present, I haven’t yet given up on Morphagene. I’ve also got a Pamela’s New Workout on the way, which I think might be able to set up the kind of sequencing necessary to make better use of it. And once the triggered sampler is here as well, I’ll give them all some time and re-asess what I want to keep going forward. Certainly the Morphagene is a unique and interesting take on it, and given that, I’ll not dismiss it lightly. But as of yet, I’ve not found that it was the “go-to” module for anything other than random experimentation looking for lucky accidents. When I have a plan for what I want to do, I’ve found Morphagene so far, didn’t really make things any easier…
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Sync
