The Cascadia offers a lot more in terms of utility and functions than those. As it’s a semi-mod, it won’t be any more difficult than the others to get sound. But it offers more in terms of what it can do, which will require more experience and knowledge on how to use.
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I chose cascadia to start learning this stuff. A4 is probably the deepest synth I have as previous experience.
It’s quite fun because there’s still a lot you can explore as a newbie and choose your challenges when you feel like it.
Nonetheless I do wonder where I should be learning more about concrete problems. When I can’t get past a problem I don’t really know how to search for the solution and that can be very intimidating when you’re in the middle of working on a track.
For example:
What would be the way to have a LFO only start modulating after a trig (I want the trig to be EOF from env B)?
Can someone help point me where to look?
You can send a gate to open a vca that the LFO is patched through, this will allow the LFO through when the vca is opened by the gate.
Use an envelope triggered by the gate if you want to shape the length of time the vca is open for.
Hard to know without knowing everything Cascadia has available, but you have to think very building block when learning modular. Often you may find a vca is the answer.
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Just got my unit last night after putting in an order with Detroit Modular for their 4th of July sale. Holy cow it’s awesome!! I’ve been deep in the Modular hole lately and the Cascadia is honestly really just spectacular.
I haven’t had much time to dive into the manual, but for the folks that have had theirs for a while: is it possible to use the fx loop unpatched?
As far as I can tell you have to patch into the “FX In” but I would have liked to see it normaled to the mixer/main output. Suppose it makes sense though…
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yeah FX is not normaled into the patch… that threw me for a loop the first time I booted it up… I suppose it encourages you to patch the FX a little deeper into your signal flow.
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Awesome, glad it’s not just me then. thanks for confirming!
the FX loop is out of the main signal path on purpose, since you could just patch the synth into a pedal if you want it end of chain.
the beauty happens when you patch your FX through modulated filters or the folder, use the return as audio rate FM for the OSC, crazy feedback patches.
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So a couple months on, how are folks enjoying their Cascadias? Any major issues to be aware of? Things you love? Things you hate?
I’ve built up a decent eurorack system (Doepfer A100-PMS12 Current - Eurorack Modular System from pmags on ModularGrid) so there’s some obvious redundancy with stuff I have already, but I always find myself attracted to the self-contained nature of semi-modulars. Besides another couple of oscillators and filters can’t hurt, can they? 
I still love it, use it on everything. Can’t think of any obvious cons, I do wish you could do everything from the front panel but the app only things are pretty minor like changing the alt noise or making the midi lfo quantized to notes. I never really find myself thinking of changing that stuff though. Mine is paired up with a mostly digital modular system, so I suppose for me it felt like a great way to add a complex analog voice to my system. I dunno its design feels very smart, lots of good tools but most of all it comes together like an instrument.
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This could just be a lack of understanding on my part, I kinda wish there was some sort of obvious way to do key tracking with the filter.
other than that, its kind of perfect.
Isn’t that what FM2 does? The input is normalled to the pitch CV.
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I love it. It’s gorgeous to look at and play. Still very little idea what I’m doing.
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I just got a secondhand one last week. Haven’t had an opportunity to play with it as much as I would like but so far I think the design is very well thought out, and build is very solid. I was worried about the sliders being fiddly but they aren’t as flimsy as euro modules.
I want to do a more thorough review once I get to know it better but here is a drum and bass sketch I made with it - Cascadia is the baseline and not the amens obviously. 
This is two sine waves using the TZFM and wavefolding, with envelope B and one of the LFOs modulating the fold amount. I changed the octave switching on the modulating oscillator (this knob feels really nice and performative) which added some of the variation, as well as modified the LFO speed manually.
No processing on the baseline whatsoever. Probably would have dialed in a bit of sub osc in retrospect. I wish I had this thing when I was cranking out jungle tunes in 2001!
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My brain keeps whispering: “what about 2 Cascadias?” but I know I’m brain damaged so I’m probably safe. 
Honestly, the more I play with it the more I love it. You think it’s missing something and then you realize there’s an obvious way to do it. Really cleverly designed. And I’m getting way more use out of my FX pedals with the fx loop. Brilliant.
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and that day is now. super impressed with it so far. build quality is excellent. first Intellijel product I’ve ever tried, actually. everything feels super solid. still getting my head around the patching I/O, as it’s a bit inconsistent. but everything is clearly labeled, so it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
sound-wise, it’s amazing so far. definitely not lacking in the having an option for doing whatever it is you want to department.
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My thoughts exactly!
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Not sure what I’m doing, but I love this thing.
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without digging into the manual, can both oscillators output sine waves for the TZFM? aka get some pretty standard 2 op FM synth tones out of this thing?
edit: ok I looked the manual. still can’t quite wrap my head around how to do this, but it does look like VCO A outputs a sine wave out of the Mixer 2 out. so maybe you can use VCO B’s sine wave to apply FM to VCO A and then get some nice woody tones out of the Mixer 2 out? this thing seems like such a playground 
I don’t own Cascadia, but I have Eurorack experience. From my reading of the manual, VCO A is the only one that has TZFM, and its TZFM input is normalled to VCO B. So, yes, you need to listen to VCO A, which goes into the mixer. But there’s no Mixer 2 out, only Mixer 1 and Mixer 2 ins (and if you plug something into Mixer 2 in, you won’t hear VCO A). There’s only one Mixer out. Good luck with the woody. TZFM implementations vary widely in their sound.
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I would say you can’t really get super pure sounding FM like a digitone/dx7 or something, but fairly close. You can get some nice bell sounds, but it doesn’t sound the same as digital FM to my ears. It can make a huge variety of sounds though, definitely a really awesome synth!
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