Analog drive or Roland Torcido

Have been offered both of these, at similar prices.

I am wondering if there’s a reason to get one over the other.

The modularity of the torcido is interesting, and the idea of reprogramming it appeals.

The Drive is of interest due to its lineage, and the various distortion types it offers.

I am looking at something to add grit/distortion /warmth to things like the DT and op-1

Thanks.

Torcido is stereo, Drive is mono. Torcido is a lot more flexible with the reprogrammability and eurorack compatibility. It’s also a USB audio interface.

Drive is analogue. That’s its main advantage over the Torcido but I’m not sure many people could actually tell which was analogue and which was digital. The Torcido sounds really good IMHO. It has a reasonably wide range of tones as well with the combination of the drive/tone/“warmth”/mix controls.

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Here’s a demo of the Torcido (and later the AH) on some drums:

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Lovely. Thanks for the insight, and the link below.

I wasn’t aware that torcido wasn’t analogue, however in my defence I hadn’t bothered looking into that side of things as it doesn’t matter to me,so that was useful to be aware of.

I think I’ll go with the Roland then. That was what I was more drawn to initially, however like everyone in the 21st century, I can o ly make a decision based on the options of faceless Internet users :wink:

Cheers.

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Can’t go wrong with the Torcido, I have not used the Analog Drive, but I own a Analog Heat, very different of course, the Torcido could with some effort be configued to be similar to the Heat by using filter, env follower etc, although of course as you’d expect would sound totally different.

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Cool. Thanks for this.

Definitely seems to have more options going with the Roland.

I’d say Torcido too, purely for the modular/reprogrammable nature, great little boxes that range.

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That’s three strong votes for The Torcido!

I’ve looked around to see what can be achieved with the software, but can’t find much apart from being a filter.
Any advice on what else it could be used as?

Well you have all of these modules, you can add upto any 6 to a patch, you can use multiple examples of each if you wish, for example 3 filters and 3 LFO or what have you. The only slight limitation is the number of GRF (physical controls/inputs) is limited to 6, 4 knobs and 2 CV inputs.


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Fantastic, thank you. I’ve seen the Roland blog vids but thru don’t give this kind of detail. For example I wasn’t aware you could go up to six modules.

So in answer to you question you could for example make any of these:
Ring modulator
Basic synth
Drum synth
Drone machine
Noise machine
Clocking utilities
Plus tons more, plus you don’t need to use it as an overdrive, plus you can save, name and load as many as you want using the app.

You can even do simple things like add formant filters after the distortion but before the outputs, lots of options to explore.

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Yeah there’s really masses you can do. They’re capable of a pretty solid chorus effect for example.

Just running through the bundled preset configurations for the Torcido you have:

FILTER DIST
FILTER MONSTER
LOGIC OPERATION
MID BOOST
MIDI-CV SYNTH
MONSTER PHASE
RING MOD
ROBO TALK
SAMPLE AND HOLD
TUBE WARM EX
WOBBLE CV-GATE

There is a thread about the Aira modular effects in general here:

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