I think you’re right, best thought of as a curated experience, user input mainly comes down to ‘more of this’, ‘less of that’, ‘faster’, ‘slower’, ‘spaced out’ etc etc. It really is a ‘give me automated pretty/glitch in sync and in harmony with what I’m already doing’ box. Maybe not missing the chaotic, more experimental side that you can get from other granular-leaning pedals as I go to MOOD for this.
I do hope they sort some of the firmware issues highlighted though.
You have to set in in stereo to distribute the glitches in space, it’s a lot more interesting.
I have used this pedal on pads, on drums, on vocals, and I like what I get out of it.
I’m pretty satisfied so far, even by the unpredictable aspect of it (IMO granular requires to embrace the unpredictable).
It takes time to really understand and memorize the algorithms, but I have found a bunch of them that I really like and have saved them as user presets.
This pedal is not really “set and forget”, unlike a reverb: I have found that some motion is required to get some life out of it. I would have liked a couple additional LFOs, and maybe a random one 
Anyway I’ll try to get modulations from MIDI soon enough.
I use it as a send effect so I have always the original signal and the Microcosm on separate tracks.
Using the looper pre-FX so far, I quite like to melt the original sound with itself at 1/4 or 1/2 speed.
Funny, I sold mine and started to search for a particle 2.
The lack of control and looper out of sync was what make me sell it. So now I am rediscovering my organelle and it definitely fits my pourpose best (use it studio, versatile, more control)
So maybe the best new pedal is none, actually
I’ve just sold my Microcosm and gone back to using Particle (v2) for freezing/ambience/glitching. Microcosm is great, but I’m leaning towards darker more aggressive music and the Particle seems to fit better with that. Microcosm was too polite for me! Also, the issues with levels, popping, looping, firmware etc played a part, I just wasn’t;t using it.
Having said that it’s a great pedal and massive feature set - just not quite for me and with a few niggles to iron out it seems.
I’d be curious to hear from someone with the Microcosm and Mood
The Mood was also on my radar when I got the Microcosm
I have both, what do you want to know? Very different in use and sound.
If you could only keep one, which would it be?
I was originally more interested in a “glitch machine”. I went with the Microcosm because it had more features for not much more dough and it’s stereo. I thought I could loop stuff and mangle it, but it’s more like, I loop stuff and can make it washier with delays and verb. I could do that with my verbs and delays and a basic looper.
If you wanna glitch, and truly mess things up, I’d go with MOOD. I think you add a lot to it by bringing MIDI into the equation with it and would highly recommend. If push came to shove I have other ways of getting pretty/spacy accompaniment and that’s Microcosm’s strong suit in my opinion. Some of the presets do introduce bit-crushing and some randomisation and it does respond to what it’s fed but I feel MOOD is more ‘alive’. I have not delved into MIDI (other than clock) with the MC, will be doing so and will be keeping as I love to cross the streams and use both! End up serving quite different roles for me.
All very subjective! Don’t take my experiences as gospel!
Cool
Thanks for that
I need to demo the Mood
What are you doing MIDI-wise with it?
Sequencing from Digitone MIDI track - on/off for each footswitch/side and messing with the clock, either via trigs or MIDI LFO.
Waiting on my microcosm batch to ship out. I want to use it with my moog dfam,grandmother and subh. Also my other analgue synths. Was also thnking i could send sounds of my daw into it and then record the results.
Hopefully this is a good use case for it. Seems like a lot of ppl here are giving up on them already.
I’m not necessarily giving up on it, especially if maybe there’s some updates down the road.
It’s just got a few quirks and definitely steers the way you work with it.
As has been said, this can be a good or bad thing, depending on what you want.
Yeah honestly I just want to use it to make unique sounds and ideas with my synths and samples.
As long as you get used to the idea that you can’t control every aspect of every algorithm, it’s cool. Sound quality is top notch
The way I think about those kind of devices that create « controlled randomness » is like if you invite someone to Jam with you in the studio, you never know what she/he’s gonna come up with. You just have to accept the proposal (or one of the proposals) and build around it.
I love the Microcosm.
Yeah, I agree, I like having those things around. I try to have “happy accident” machines and “ultimate control/tweaker” machines. It’s a good balance for creating.
My complaints weren’t so much with that end as the technical stuff. Like, if they don’t fix the stepping on the filter, that could eventually be a deal-breaker for me.
I like to think that it’s just another kind of Filter in my Arsenal, so I use it as a Stepped Filter.
That works good until you want to do a sweep as part of your loop
I, then, use the other Filter it goes in. 
so i finally got my MC in august and finally had time to use it in home studio this week as a send effect clocked by my ERM and putting EMX drums & re amping vocals through it….it was fkn amazing. went to turn it on today and ZERO power…checked the power supply on another pedal worked fine…must be the power supply inside the pedal…it’s gone completely dead and i’m so pissed off…anyone experience it not powering up??? i’ve emailed the company