I’ve sung the praises of Noise Engineering’s Versio and Legio line for their ability to load custom firmware before. But here’s a real killer app, and it comes from a third party making use of NE’s SDK. It’s a drifting looper for Versio, with some gorgeous results.
Okay, this is not exactly news in that the firmware debuted earlier this year, but it did filter onto the Interwebs recently with a beautiful video and some chatter over on ModWiggler. As it happens I have an ambient festival gig in about a week, so it seems like it’s time to recklessly update firmware again! And talk about a demo – John Schussler’s video opened my eyes to this as I opened up my YouTube subscriptions. John writes:
No commentary from me in this one, just listening. VCO is a Cwejman VCO-2RM, with one side going to the left channel and one to the right. Seqencer is the OK200 Degree. Envelope: Zadar. Last in the chain is a Yester Versio module. If you hear a regular delay, it’s that, not the Praetereo. And occasionally I bring in the Yester wavefolder. If you hear effects happening but don’t see my hand making them, it’s the Yester.
John writes more on ModWiggler, as well:
Noise Engineering Versio: Praetereo evolving loop firmware
Praetereo Versio is the custom third-party firmware – technically an asynchronous probabilistic two-channel looper.
The basic concept here is, you trigger and play back loops in irregular fashion, producing these nice, organic layers. (I’ve been tending to patch stuff like this in VCV Rack, just by sending triggers to the looper – in case you want the software approach.) Parameter mappings:
Knob 1 – L Buffer Record Probability (0-100%)
Knob 3 – L Record Slice (1-1000ms)
Knob 5 – L Feedback (0-100%)
Knob 2 – R Buffer Record Probability (0-100%)
Knob 4 – R Record Slice (1-1000ms)
Knob 6 – R Feedback (0-100%)
Knob 7 – Wet/Dry
Button – Force Record
Switch 1 – L Buffer Length (12, 24, 36)
Switch 2 – R Buffer Length (11, 23, 31)
Of course, it’s a godsend being able to transform your Versio module into this – provided it’s not busy doing something else wonderful, that is.
The firmware is located on a Google Drive folder, with docs:
From Negative Theology (who also link a lot of their ambient music), with the declaration: “it can be a straightforward sound on sound looper, but at its heart, it wants chaos!”
True description of all of us, really.
Previously, on Noise Engineering on CDM: