I feel like it was nearly five years ago that I first saw Mod Devices Mod Duo (€649.00) at a NAMM show. It seemed like a great idea at the time: a hardware pedal that could host plug-ins. I had just begun exploring the unique sounds I could get using plug-ins on the computer in Ableton Live. These were sounds unavailable in stomp boxes at the time, but since then, more and more boutique pedal manufacturers have released the kind of granular, filtering, and ambient effects that were until now only available in the computer. Still, the Mod Duo offers both freedom from a laptop on stage, and a plethora of pedal style and plug-in style effects in a small footprint. Its open source nature also bodes well for modern sounds not yet available from stomps. What do you think?
dedicated audio processing platforms, in (more or less) compact form, with (more or less) “freely” assignable resources, have been around for some time and have enjoyed alternate success.
indeed this seems compact enough to carry around, though still bigger than an H9, and (apparently) easy enough to “instruct” even by the less tech-savvy ones.
what might really set it apart from most, though, is the notion of a public repository of patches, be them shared on a cost-free or pay-to-download basis, pretty much the buzzword in today’s creative commons realm of connected world.
to my own taste, though, it still seems too much “stomp” and too little “box”, which as such i can’t figure as the playfield on which to tweak knobs in the tabletop, noise+glitch soundscape application that i’m most familiar with.
alas, this might just be the initial launch phase, soon to be followed by an even bigger offer of not only patches, but hopefully controllers and other connected hardware, too.
on a side note, though, even as the far-from-perfect nobody i am, i can’t find myself at ease with a website describing it without any meaningful specs of engineering relevance in sight.
without even a word on its converter(s), internal memory, dsp chips, interface protocol, processing throughput, in/out audio data (and electrical current needed, even) i feel like a chained guinea pig in front of a weird (and not much ethically transparent) lab tech.
this fact alone doesn’t fail to impress me negatively, if i can speak out for my own perception. because the lack of real information on factual specs but one-too-many boisterous user feedbacks does sound to my ear more like the dialect of marketing launch campaign hype than the lilt spoken in an open, caring-and-sharing tech-minded community.
just my jumble opinion here, and of course your mileage may vary. but of this romantic view on audio technology, i’m aware i’m mostly alone when i think of my soldering iron as the weapon of choice of many an (audio) jedi knights.
Looks interesting but all of my effects are VSTs inside Ableton on a laptop. I am waiting for something as powerful as my 2012 i7 quad core machine in a tiny form factor – then I would be very happy to ditch the laptop.
The concept sounds cool, but when I look at the price and the onboard functionality (with such digital devices I like to be able to fully control them without the need of a computer or smarthphone/tablet), I still prefer my trusty Zoom Multistomp.
Oh man – forgot about these!
I have drooling over this thing for about 4 years too, brilliant idea…