The glory of Shruthi's bass

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

previous to having my A4, I used a Shruthi-1 for bass (sequenced with my OT)
I always missed those pure deep base tones wich I don’t think you can quite get with the A4 - not like this… pure, clean sine tones.
I just plugged it in and I’m happy I didn’t pair with it.

EDIT: also I just think that, for some reason, it just worked great on the mix with OT’s sound. I don’t know why, but they just seem to fit together sonically really well.

I might eventually sell my A4 after all - I love the FX, the amazing modulation matrix, the macros are great for live performance… but, as with many users, the sound of the oscillators sometimes frustrate me a bit. And yes - although I haven’t mastered it yet - I know some tricks to get good bass - lower osc volumes, pw, HPF resonance, tracking, etc.

Then again I’m not sure what to pair my OT with… Digitakt feels tempting, although I’m not sure about going samples only.
Digitone also seems like good contender - smaller form factor, more polyphony, input processing (wich the A4 also has but still)… but I’ve never worked with FM synthesis, so I would need to play with it before making the call.

any other Shuthi enthusiast around?

5 Likes
#2

never owned one. But I love the demos. Might still get one in fututre.
That said. Can you share the bass sound?
Curious to try if I can come close with the A4

#3

the Ambika also pairs excellently with the octatrack but isn’t cheap, potentially costing more than a digitone, and the shruthi offers delicious filters (and sometimes other fx depending on filterboard) to process your samples. if I were to pair only one shruthi with the octatrack I’d have a tough time deciding between 4pole mission (don’t own mine anymore) and the polivoks, with an honorable mention for the yellow magic. the SMR4 shruthi sounds fantastic and in a perfect world that’d be my true choice, but it unfortunately lacks the versatility of the other filterboards

3 Likes
#4

I built a shruthi-1 back when the midnight edition (dual svf) came out. I had a lot of fun with it for a while, then it sat on the shelf for a while. I jammed with it a couple weeks ago and strangely didn’t click with it as much as I remembered. I was sequencing it from Digitakt and just couldn’t land on a patch that fit the tune I was working on. I’m actually considering selling mine. I’d rather someone put it to use vs. it sitting on my shelf. Having too much fun diving into digitakt and a couple other items.

#5

the shruthi is possibly my favorite monosynth. I have the 4 Pole Mission filter. I’ve sold off a bunch of synths and other gear but kept my shruthi. It’s my third shruthi btw… I missed it the previous time I sold it.

I too love the bass tones I can get out of it and they are easy to dial in. That said I bought a tetra again (3rd time) and found that I get richer tones (analog osc). and equally pleasing bass results.

My love for the shruthi comes more from its versatile settings. Various osc modes, great arp, sequencer, mod matrix and in the case of 4pm the filter modes. Once I run it through some FX it really comes to life.

1 Like
#6

I had one and it was my main synth for quite a while. Used it with my MPC until I got my Octatrack. I have tapes of jams with it where I got some pretty mindblowing sounds but I have trouble “getting there” with it anymore. Mine has the digital board which makes it even crunchier than normal. Maybe it’s a case of crunch overload but I’m sure there’s people out there who love that sort of sound.

#7

I have a Shruthi (non-XT) with a 4PM filter, not selling it unless it is to flip for an XT version. Mine had the SMR filer and a polivoks filter before settling on a 4PM, I like it best hands down, not too clean, not too dirty, jus perfec!

I admittedly don’t use it much these days (quite menudivey and not in a good way) but love the sound.

One of these days imma catch a 4PM XT model for cheap and have the money for it too! There’s one polivoks XT for 350€ in my local music 2nd hand classified board, but I’m not sure if my 4PM could be swapped out… and even then, I’d miss a second 4PM filter so I could have 2 voice polychain :diddly:

1 Like
#8

I have SVF Shruthi, DSP Shruthi second hand and also built TubeOhm Ambika with all SMR cards. So many sounds to find. And yes they are very punchy with bass!

Andre Laska at TubeOhm has a software editor here if that’s what you like. http://www.tubeohm.com/page30.html#

The DSP Shruthi is crazy. Olivier Gillet really let his imagination run wild with this one. “… the sounds coming out of this filter board are pure lo-fi. At best, it’s Amiga-scronch, at worst, it’s [insert here the name of your favorite Arduino-based bleeper] crap. In your dreams, this filter board will sound like a WTPA, but when you wake up it won’t, and there will be an Alpaca sleeping on your couch.”
https://mutable-instruments.net/archive/shruthi/build/dsp/

“The signal processing is done with a 12-bits resolution ; except for everything involving delay lines in which case the samples are converted to crunchy 8-bits when written to the delay line.”

2 Likes
#9

I have to admit I’m not really sure what board I have. How can I tell? I know it’s not anything special like the polivoks… It’s the most “standard”, if that’s a thing.

#10

SMR board… which is the Roland copy

1 Like
#11

I’ll just pop this here shall I? :blush:

#12

BTW, here’s what I think is one of the better sounding demo videos:

4 Likes
#13

I have the CEM 3379 board in mine, it was one of the last pre built units Olivier sold.
I did a preset demo not long after i got it. I don’t think i will ever sell it

I always told myself i would get the Ambika as well but i never did, I would love one with 6 of these CEM’s in!

2 Likes
#14

Some demo I did … whoa … 7 years ago.
Some of my patches ended up in the v1.0 firmware :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#15

I briefly had an Ambika… It’s a whole lot of synthesizer to be sure. Brutal to edit and I don’t mind menu diving either.

#16

Still have mine, but I don’t use it much anymore… I should come back to it, now that I would know more how to use the matrix !

My favorite demo is from EATYone :

2 Likes
#17

I’ve got shruthi , is it possible / easy to swap filter boards
Mine was pre built and apart from noodling with it I don’t know much about it , it does sound great though.

#18

I have a SVT, 4Pole & the digital board.

Great looking, even better sounding. They actually keep my Ambika (6xSMRmkII) stored away for the moment (can’t justify my cat sleeping on the Ambika; Shruthis are okay until I get a more isolated desk setup).

I run them thru a MIDIPal to create some interesting sequencer vs. sequencer patterns. Definitely always have new samples saved everytime I play with them.

I’d love to control them externally from hardware but for now I just program them in ableton via the Push. I’d definitely say I will be holding onto them indefinitely - such a small footprint for a large variety/versatility of sounds.

Being able to control them via an iPad editor would be fantastic. I know theres an amibka editor floating around…wonder if there is a shruthi version as well.

Great investment if you can find one!

1 Like
#19

There are several Shruthi editors, it seems.
Here is one :

2 Likes
#21

love mine, although weirdly I always seem to struggle to get bass sounds I really love from it somehow…
sweeping the vowel sounds around for leads is BRILLIANT though.

thinking about either the Polivoks or Digital board to replace the standard filter…have a board to make the Polivoks one already when I can be bothered to order all the components…