Qu-Bit Electronix Mojave is a new 14HP stereo live granular processor for Eurorack with hands-on control over the grains.
Granular is the new wavetable. In recent months the market has been flooded with hardware and software granular instruments and processors. Superbooth 23 already showed what the big topic of 2023 will be.
This is also the case in Eurorack. With the Mojave, QU-Bit is showing a new stereo live granular processor module that goes deep but remains very hands-on.
Qu-Bit Electronix Mojave
Mojave is the new versatile 14HP stereo granular processor module for Eurorack. The engine runs on the Daisy platform, which is used by Qu-Bit Electronix, Noise Engineering, and others as hardware for their digital modules.
The engine offers granular processing but can do more than just chop sounds into tiny snippets and cycle through them, promises Qu-Bit. It was even more important for the developer to make the whole process as immediate and hands-on as possible. So that even novices can use it and have fun with it.
It is not a successor to the popular Nebulae DSP module, which also has granular power. Mojave is a standalone module with stereo granular processing and creative, twisted features right at your fingertips. The front panel includes the leading controls for generating and manipulating grains.
Including grain size, shape, generation rate, grain pitch, the position in-time where the grain grabs audio, and the audio playback direction. But these only scratch the surface of Mojave’s potential, promises Qu-Bit developer Andrew Ikenberry.
Distribute & Structure
Two intriguing controls are the distribute and structure controls in the center of the front panel taking your grains into new unusual spheres. Distribute adds rhythmic displacement to the grain rate with quantized ratchets, repeats, and more.
Structure, on the other side, adjusts each grain’s pitch within a defined system. With this, you can create subtle semitone pitch changes or with higher settings quantized arpeggios. In the right settings, you can achieve a polyphonic sound generator.
This function has also a direct line to Mojave’s different modes (Sky Mode, Twilight…) which determines what scale Mojave is quantized to (major, minor, chromatic…). All this is fully customizable using the Narwhal module web app. The button in between the distribute and structure knobs activates it.
Then, you can mangle the granular process with other parameters. “Drift” drifts the grain through the audio buffer adding random bits to the result. Add stereo panning to each grain using the whirl control on the opposite side.
There is also a freeze function for glitch stutter effects and a function to lock the audio buffer in place. You can also mimic the time-stretching effects of the Nebuale module
Capture Audio
Mojave also hosts an onboard, high-quality MEMS (Micro- Electro-Mechanical System) microphone positioned just above its USB port). Once you have removed all the patch cables, you can capture any acoustic audio and use it as a sound source.
To put the grains even more in atmospheric worlds, the devs added the gust knob. It can be either an internal feedback loop for the grains or a lush reverb effect to fill the voids between the audio.
On the connection side, Mojave has stereo input and stereo output on two mono sockets, CV control over all parameters, and a USB port for new updates and possible alternative firmware.
First Impression
A very exciting granular FX for Eurorack. This makes my Mutable Instruments Beads afraid that I will sell it. I really like the feature set because it includes some new ideas for granular synthesis. The fact that you can operate it on the front panel without menu-diving makes it very tempting.
QU-Bit Electronix Mojave is available now for $399.
More information here: QU-Bit Electronix
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