Hi everyone
I’m tryin’ to understand which is the best solution for my eurorack system in order to have my Digitakt as a Slave and also as a Master clock. The goals are:
send the clock from Temps Utile to the Digitakt (but what about the transport here ? ahah)
send the clock from the Digitakt to the clock inputs of my eurorack system
receive a steady clock from Ableton Live that I can send to the modular system through the Digitakt
maybe send some interesting MIDI messages (not just the clock) from Digitakt to the modular system
This is a photo of my eurorack system just to be clear:
If you’re out of rack space, I’ve heard good things about CV.OCD for one of the directions, so that seems reliable. Haven’t heard much about the Kenton, but their utility gear is generally good. What are you anticipating going wrong/do you need help with? It should be a fairly simple set up if you just want to be able to send clock back and forth.
Personally, I have good results using the Befaco VCMC to send clock to MIDI gear, and the Expert Sleepers FH-2 for MIDI to modular.
The VCMC gives you some flexibility with generating start and stop messages at the same time - you can use one of the inputs for generating start/stop and set it to send a start when a gate is high and a stop when the gate goes low, or some other permutations of that. If Temps Utile can’t output a constant gate if and only if it’s firing pulses, you’d have to figure out some other way to patch that together, but I was able to do that before I had a modular master clock that had a dedicated start output by slewing a mult of clock signal. Looking at the Kenton manual, you can set it to send a start signal as soon as a clock signal is received, so your life is easier there.
The FH-2 is pretty straightforward for the other way (at least, once you’ve got your head around the classic confusing Expert Sleepers config tool).
Expert Sleepers FH-2 is very powerful. I have mine up for sale on Reverb right now only because I went to the 1U MIDI module from Intellijel. I only need simple MIDI to CV. Otherwise the FH-2 is as good as it gets IMHO.
I really do not want to swap any of the eurorack modules, so I’m looking for something external. @dokev@d4ydream I saw the FH-2 before and I’m reading about the VCMC on the Befaco website, but if I go for one of them, I need to buy another case (like the 4ms PODS) cause I’m out of space.
Maybe I’ll go for a Doepfer Dark Link when I need the Digitakt with the rack, I think the simplest way to enjoy the Elektron sequencer, without sending anything from the rack…
… and when I’m alone with the euro, I use Temps as a master clock as I did before.
Need to focus more on the way the system will interact with the Digitakt.
CV.OCD is great (I had one but upgraded to an FH-1, then FH-2). If you want an external solution with bi-directional clock, you might consider something like the Korg SQ-1. This has two pairs of MIDI to CV/gate conversion plus sync in/out. It’s relatively cheap too.
For CV to MIDI, I use Befaco CV Thing, which runs the same firmware as VCMC, but lacks the buttons, sliders, and some jacks (so is only 6hp). In the other direction, CV.OCD.
I use the korg sq-1 as a 2 channel midi to cv/gate converter for my DT and 2 voice modular. It’s cheap and flexible and is basically plug and play. You’ll need a phone or computer to act as the usb midi host (I use the iphone app midimitter) so the DT and SQ-1 can talk but from there it’s all gravy.
Also the polyend poly 2 could be a good solution, depends on what ur looking for
