With Taiga, Pittsburgh Modular presents a semi-modular analogue synthesizer that opens up its full potential with the use of patch jacks. The instrument is monophonic or three-voice paraphonic playable, clearly structured and addresses beginners and professionals alike with its architecture. All control voltage inputs and outputs are Eurorack compatible. Of course Taiga also works without patch cables plugged in, the green labels on some jacks and knobs indicate pre-wiring (normalized signal paths) which are only used elsewhere by patching.
The three analogue oscillators are equipped in the same way and offer besides pitch control, FM input and waveform selection also
Part of the mixer is a preamp for external audio signals with line level. It works with high gain and is able to roast incoming signals properly before they are processed with the sound shaping elements of Taiga and thus open up completely new worlds of sound.
The signals from the mixer and
The VCA alias Dynamics does more than one is used to from most VCAs. It can act classically as a VCA and be modulated via envelope, or it can be used as an LPG or Plucked LPG. In plain language we are dealing with a Low Pass
The last element in the signal path is an analog BBD echo, whose delay time can be modulated via CV. The range goes from nice echo effects from the 70s to flanger-like with very short delay times to wild chaos sounds, depending on which modulation source is in use.
With all the possibilities, it almost seems like the modulation sources are getting short shrift. Two nimble ADSR envelopes, an open
The MIDI interface of Taiga is equipped pleasingly extensively for this device class. Standards like an assignable MIDI channel and transposition can be found here as well as a clock-synchronous arpeggiator, clock divider and a pseudo-random sequencer mode. The latter cuts a fine figure especially when Taiga is used on its own in an experimental context. Of course, the MIDI interface is also pre-wired with parts of the sound generation. The oscillators, for example, can be decoupled from
The patch panel with a total of 60 sockets takes up the entire width of the lower third of the user interface. Each function has (several) inputs and outputs for audio, CV, gate, trigger and clock signals. Often two or three cables are enough to turn the sound completely upside down. If you connect any oscillator output to the FM input of the other oscillator, you get cross-modulation, which is useful for metallic sounds. If the cable goes into the filter instead of an oscillator, the result is filter FM, which is one of the most extreme modulations. It also gets exciting when the VCA is modulated by an oscillator in the audio section, which produces amplitude modulation respectively sideband modulation. Since the MIDI CV/Gate interface also outputs control voltages, the filter could also be played with