On the surface, Xaoc Devices Berlin is a simple compact VCO offering square and saw waves with hard sync, FM input and octave switching. The most interesting part lies behind the panel and that is the Leibniz Binary Subsystem interface, namely LBZ out and LBZ in. The frontpanel LBZ LINK button and its corresponding gate input switch between the default saw wave and a signal that has been passed through any Leibniz module (or a combination of Leibniz modules) connected to Berlin. Add Xaoc Devices Jena for wave processing and the output is no longer a simple saw wave â you now have a vintage-style wavetable oscillator with a penchant for the experimental due to its open, hackable nature.
Berlin operates in a way similar to the classic PPG Wave and Fairlight CMI synths and employs a variable sample rate of an extremely widerange internal clock. As the sample rate changes with the oscillator frequency, Berlinâs internal square and saw waves exhibit no aliasing effect. The whole frequency range spans from 30 seconds in LFO mode up to 250 kHz (!) with the clock reaching an astounding 20 MHz. Add to that voltage control over all parameters and the result is a highly versatile module capable of creating a significantly diverse palette of unusual waveforms.
Can anyone provide a quick executive summary of what the âLeibniz Binary Subsystemâ is all about?
Iâve checked out the descriptions on Xaocâs pages, but I honestly didnât grok what âUniversal subsystem for creating and processing analog signals in the 8-bit digital domainâ means in terms of synthesis/sound creation. Is it simply a cool bit-reduction technique?
I havenât used it, only been very intrigued and tempted by it, so please donât take this as gospel since Iâll no doubt get stuff wrong. Itâs somehow pretty hard to grasp on a conceptual level even though the things itâs doing are super simple in themselves - just really low-tech transfer functions in a primitive computer style I guess.
On the sequencing side the system can be used to generate or process gates in various ways⌠Put gates (or anything really) in one end and get a totally different set of gates out the other according to how you set up the processing. I guess you can think of it a bit like a gate randomizer in terms of results, except it isnât technically random - youâve âprogrammedâ it.
On the sound processing side itâs pretty similar and, as you say, can kind of just be seen as a fancy, super configurable bitcrusher/waveshaper. Feed something in one end, quantize it to a fairly low resolution, shift the quantized data around and get a totally different result at the end.
I think if you look into the Drezno specifically the whole thing will probably start to make more sense. It converts an analog signal to digital then that digital signal back into analog, but you can tell it to mess around with it inbetween those two things so the output is quite different from the input. On its own youâre limited in how different it can be but you can insert other modules inbetween the input stage and the output stage to make things more drastic⌠Like say Jena, which you could use to more or less modulate the conversion with a wavetable.
Where it gets a bit head-mashy and anyone trying to explain the system starts to lose everyone is in all the different ways you can connect the modules behind the scenes since the order you do it in will affect the outcome. This is kind of the coolest thing about it but also the thing that puts me off since it seems like something Iâd endlessly fiddle with to the detriment of learning a âsettled systemâ.
I did just buy a Kermit to be my âjank digitalâ wildcard in an otherwise analog-focused setup but I really did think about getting a few Leibniz modules instead⌠If this module had existed at the time it wouldâve been a harder choice!
