Some degree of downturn is inevitable. It happens whenever hipsters “discover” something and go whole ham on it. It will have a huge boom due to their collective buying power combined with their materialist insecurity and then they start to lose interest and it wanes. Maybe modular was the new fixed gear bike or microbrew ipa for a while. At least we won’t have to hear their crappy music as much.
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Still into those 
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I know! Its awesome, I picked up a great collection of modules for dirt cheap. Basically filled most of the case. Now Ive got a kick arse little box of exploration.
As for your end of golden era of eurorack discussion, I have no idea, and dont really care either way 
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It’s not that they’re bad, just that they were absolutely everywhere for a while when they were the height of cool and now have settled to a more reasonable level.
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Believe it or not, you can choose what you want to listen to regardless of what other people are into.
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True. But when it comes to accidental encounters it’s an odds game.
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I’m opening The Savage Modular Donation Bank for anyone looking to unburden themselves…
I’m off to set up a P.O. box, post haste. 
Cheers!
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Mutable only
the whole system can be different on a detail level only YOU could imagine.
open source
need faster lfos or custom oscillators/fx values?
people already did some nice work on Émilies code and work as a business with her work as a foundation. revolutionary stuff in terms of technical advancement which is far ahead.
Buchla
Moog
Serge
Gillet
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My personally bias says more people than ever are getting into it… but yeah maybe it is a bit more mainstream now, perhaps more people just dive in with no plan. I personally like to treat my modular hardware more like a bunch of 19inch rack gear that takes up next to no space and then do more wacky stuff in software like VCV.
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Covid shortages actually prevented/saved me from getting into modular. I planned to make a small system to go with my 0-Coast but nothing I wanted was readily available. And then Mutable folded so it’s not even possible to realise it anyway anymore. (yeah, second hand I know but still)
Then I got an Octatrack and it killed my modular gas completely for at least a couple of years 
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If you examine a lot of those systems for sale, you can see some reasons why they’re for sale. It’s easy to make mistakes when starting out in modular and end up with something pretty unworkable/unfun/uninteresting.
(For anyone reading this who is considering getting into eurorack: don’t just buy six high-level oscillators, four boutique filters, and three weird effect. Those things are fine, but without utilities and modulation to make them shine, you’re gonna be bored/frustrated.)
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I can feel the dunst rising just looking at him.
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supply chain stuff really hammered manufacturers to the point of having to put finished designs that were fully prototyped on hold and put out things that were not subject to chip shortages. the prices went nuts for many components in digital modules and other ICs and stuff that is common in modules.
so, many had their revenue stream screwed for good long while and couldn’t recover. other more agile/smarter manufacturers were able to keep moving forward or were just lucky enough to have gotten all the components they needed before all the supply chain drama started.
plus all the stuff also mentioned in this thread. economy woes, etc… but some manufacturer’s had their best year ever the first year of the pandemic.
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Is modular still relevant in 2023?
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No! Software is the future!
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I have been feeling that peak modular happened around 2019. So many new and exciting modules, huge demand, lots of hype and excitement, lots of YouTube videos about it and influencers getting into it, etc. It has definitely died down quickly. The pandemic maybe kept the golden age going for an extra year or so but the resulting chip shortage made short work of that bump. I think the peak has past, it will die down quite a bit more for another year or two and then remain steady. Are we taking bets?
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Do you speak with some Danish dialect in your neck of the woods? Or were you really reminiscing about a wild night out with the Hoff in Copenhagen?
Dunst is a queer performance art and activist group in Copenhagen, Denmark. The group began in 2001 as an informal network, but since 2004 it formally works as an association. Among its projects are art shows, dinner nights, performances, film nights, parties and political manifestations, as well as TV and radio shows. The name means odour or reek in Danish.
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Modular has always been a revolving door since the big eurorack scene started, I think that due to the number and speed at which modules were released is a big reason, which can be a pro or a con, depending on if you are buying or selling.
Throw in recent events and it is inevitable that the scene would be impacted. Don’t really see it disappearing though.
I think analog modules probably have a longer shelf life than most digital modules, partly due to increases in digital technology like faster processing, better ADC/DAC etc. Pretty much everything that can be done in analog has been done, so it is less likely to be subject to the same technological redundancy.
I know a number of people who got into modular then completely lost interest in modular and left making music, so I think there is also a collector mentality behind some people’s interest. After all it is probably quite gratifying for a newcomer to just patch up some cables and make some weird noises, with lots of flashing lights and impressive looking gear, and the barrier to entry is relatively low, but after a while when the novelty wears off they move it on.
I think it has parallels to the chip tune and circuit bending scenes, a core die hard base and a steady stream of lots of other people trying it out then eventually deciding it isn’t for them.
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Is that Dachshund being held up by fishing line? That’s some weak sauce Hoff 
So… kinda perfect, then?
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