Intellijel Cascadia

With Cascadia, the Canadian Eurorack forge Intellijel presents its first stand-alone synthesizer. Cascadia is semi-modular, which means that many functions are interconnected (normalized), for which otherwise a cable would have to be patched. With 101 patch jacks designed as inputs or outputs, you have absolute freedom to rebuild your signal path at least partially, add or replace functions, and integrate Eurorack modules or other semi-modular synthesizers at will respectively create interactions. Missing the VCO B at the top of the mixer? Just patch the desired waveform eg. into In2 and make the connection - done. The manufacturer has made a big hit, because Cascadia combines the best of West Coast and East Coast synthesis. This refers to technical procedures and approaches of the very first modular systems by Moog and Buchla, which still have their justification today and are built into current instruments and modules.

A sound lab the size of a backpack

Almost no function is available more than once; main functions such as the oscillators, envelopes and VCAs do exist twice, but in different configurations. This provides even more flexibility and exponentially increases the musical potential. Oscillator A masters among other things PWM, Thru-Zero FM as well as Hard- and Softsync. In addition, a sub-oscillator with -1/-2 octave spacing follows the frequency of VCO A. The waveforms of the first tone generator are combined in the mixer and also output. The levels of the ring modulator, the noise generator and the sub oscillator are also available in the mixer. The Noise generator provides white and pink noise and some other noise colors. If you want to have other sound sources like eg. the function generator in the audio section or Sample & Hold with two square waveforms at the inputs for analogue Bitcrush you will find two inputs for this in the mixer. The second oscillator B is simpler, it is intended as a modulation oscillator for VCO A, can work as a VC-LFO and is generally freely patchable.

The mixer is followed by the 24dB mutimode filter with eight different characteristics covering lowpass, bandpass, highpass, notch and even phaser. For modulating the filter there are four CV inputs with attenuators, which should be enough in most cases. Parallel to the filter a wavefolder is implemented on whose input the sine of VCO A is pre-patched. If you go by the normalizations, VCA A is the end of the signal path, this is equipped with a minimixer with Wavefolder and filter on the inputs and is modulated with the ADSR envelope.

Of course, VCA A cannot be the absolute end of the signal path in Cascadia. On the upper edge there are controls for Send, Return and Mix, these refer to the connectors of the same name on the rear panel, it is a loop-in path for effects units with guitar or line level! The signal flow is consistently kept in mono. Before whatever signal leaves Cascadia the really last stage is an adjustable distortion.

Modular modulate in a box

What would such a well equipped synthesizer be without its modulation sources! The first one is a USB/MIDI interface that outputs eight voltages along with MIDI LFO, gate, clock and trigger. The most important modulation sources are the two envelopes. Envelope A is an extended H-ADSR with some finesse and Envelope B is a very flexible function generator. In plain language EnvB acts as an AD/AR envelope, can be an LFO, an oscillator and even a Burst generator. If you include the three CV inputs the generated modulations become even more complex!

The middle section contains a number of other functions that ultimately put Cascadia on par with a comparably equipped modular system. Here, too, most inputs and outputs are normalized and accordingly interchangeable. Sample & Hold is initially composed of the MIDI-Clock and white noise. The S&H output leads into the Slew Limiter which can smooth or bend any incoming voltage in six variants. Alternatively, the Slew Limiter acts as an envelope follower that extracts a control voltage from the Line In input that steadily follows the level curve. The Mixuverter is intended for mixing, attenuating and inverting up to two signals. LFO X/Y/Z generates only one waveform that is output in parallel at three of five speeds. The utility block holds three buffered multiples, a 2-channel unity mixer, an inverter and a rectifier, with such a "module variety" these additional functions are simply obligatory. The utilities are followed by the analog ring modulator; the sine waveforms of the two oscillators are normalized to the inputs. This circuit belongs to the classics of synthesizers and tends to produce metallic sounds. But there's nothing to stop you from ringmodulating an envelope with an LFO to get even wackier results. The final circuit is the second VCA B, which can be freely patched in the signal path and also has a resonance-free Lowpass filter.