Genius Eurorack Module

OWL
#1

The Genius is now officially available for pre-orders, with shipping commencing next week.

Due to chip shortages and economic contraints we’re only doing a small production run of 100 units, and they will only be sold through our webshop. In fact, I’m building these myself, in my garage :slight_smile: .

The Genius is the next evolutionary step for the OWL platform, and the first product we release based on a Cortex M7 microcontroller. As discussed elsewhere, on average this gives about 4x improvement to patch performance, allowing us to do some more advanced DSP.

To give our long-time supporters a chance to upgrade we’re offering a 20% discount to forum members.
Please quote coupon code wl2q-7d5f when you place your order - valid until March 13th.

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Granular patch for Lich (inspired by Clouds)
#2

Maybe worth mentioning that an I2C connector is present on back PCB, even though there’s no software support for it yet. Someone was curious about it on instagram before.

#3

Hi,

The module looks fantastic and am interested in placing an order having been following both the OWL and Daisy platforms for a while. I tried to enter the coupon code in the basket but got an error saying the usage limit has been reached. Is there anything I’m missing here?

Also, I assume the unit is shipping from Europe so the price doesn’t include UK VAT?

#4

I can tell for sure that Martin’s OWL farm garage is located in Spain!

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#5

Oh no, my mistake. Fixed now - please try again!

Also, I assume the unit is shipping from Europe so the price doesn’t include UK VAT?

Yes that is correct, shipping from Spain by DHL.

#6

Ordered. Thank you! :pray:

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#7

Faust bells here Genius Teaser part 2 - YouTube right :wink: ?

#8

If the hint in patch name was too subtle, that was a battle of French&English bells from FAUST PM library. And also one of the tests patches for the new allocator.

#9

i recently ordered the genius and received it yesterday, hadn’t much time to dive in deep, i’m also not yet familiar with owl but i noticed that the bell patch preloaded on my module sounds high pitched and short, absolutely not like the bells in the teaser video or in the faust demos online. can someone who also has the genius confirm that yes, that’s how this patch sounds, eg short and high pitched bell? as far as i understand there’s no way to change the bells size to adjust pitch. am i right? anyway, happy to study the owl universe and hopefully i understand faust enough to develop or change these beautiful physical models :slight_smile:

#10

Have you updated firmware? There were some issues in earlier version, although I don’t remember hearing about anything like what you describe. There’s pre-release 24.1rc1 firmware that has some important fixes for Genius.

FAUST code in that patch uses results of actual bell’s measurements, so varying size is impossible. You probably won’t be able to easily change those models on your own, but it’s quite simple to add some effects after them (FAUST library is huge) or write a sequencer, etc. And there are instruments with varying pitch in FAUST - several wind and string instruments, but not bells.

#11

thanks very much for your reply @antisvin

no, and yes, i have an old firmware, so that needs to be done. can you point me to a description on how to update the firmware, also, where do i find the current firmware?
i’m sorry that i ask so much questions but i don’t find any documentation for the genius.

but do you think it would be possible to reconfigure the patches so they work like a resonator? eg one could use any audio input to “excite” the bell, or at least triggers with varying strength to get some dynamics? now it uses a fixed trigger i believe.

#12

Yes, those bells have a separate exciter (filtered noise with an envelope) and resonator models. And there’s gain parameter that sets exciter’s strength (not sure if patch exposes it)

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#13

Thanks for posting this in the forum @kilchhofer. There should be no need to upgrade the firmware.

I think in the video the sound was recorded straight out of the Genius, only going through the headphone output of a Mix 02. You should be hearing the same on yours.

How have you got it connected, are you using a line level output from your rack?

You could try listening to the digital output directly on your computer, by using the Genius as a USB audio source.
I like to use Audacity for this, it’s easy to set up. Simply select OWL-GENIUS as your input audio device, change the recording sample rate to 48000, then hit record.

And yes @antisvin is right, the bell size is fixed, just like on a real church bell! But there are different ones to choose from, not just the English and French. There’s a Russian bell (part of the Triple Entente) - and you can make your own too. Would be cool to make a carillon… Oh wait, maybe someone did!

The djembe is an example of a tuned physical model where the fundamental can be changed. Another is the human voice models, and they’re really fun!
I found that some of the physmodels examples and docs appear to be a bit off, I was intending to submit a PR with a few updates. But it’s a fantastic library to use.

Yes absolutely, and in fact in the FAUST code the exciter and resonator are separate. I was intending to try this out, but ran out of time and wanted to get the patch done. If you experiment with this, let us know how it goes!

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#14

that’s how the bell patch sounds here, unfortunately not the same as in the video :frowning:
i try to update the firmware tomorrow, i think i’m on 22.3

oh wow cool, so excited to try this all out!

superb, i definitely will try, but judging from earlier experiences in all thing code related i’m very bad at this, let’s see how difficult faust is for me !

#15

Thanks. I compared it to the Genius on my desk and… it sounds much the same. There must be some regression between when the video was recorded and the current version of the patch and libs. I will investigate, to find out what’s happened to those lovely, sustained resonances.

#16

Could that be due to FAUST version downgraded when building them in web patcher?

#17

ok thanks! and also, i don’t have a second bell on the second gate in/button.

#18

I thought it might be the FAUST version. But digging deeper it looks like the difference is due to the optimised transcendentals. It seems that I had temporarily disabled these while working on some recent FAUST updates, around the same time I made the bells patch and video.

So it appears that the slight loss of precision from using optimised exp functions makes a huge difference to the sound of the physical modelling bells. Maybe this is not so surprising. But I’m a bit surprised still! It’s a really interesting and kind of accidental result.

Here’s a recompiled version with std::powf:
Bells.syx (87.1 KB)

We don’t have an easy way to load patches directly from file in the ‘official’ web interface, this is something that would be good to add. Meanwhile you could use this hacky web i/f. Go to Choose files under Patches, select Bells.syx (download it first!), then click Run, or Store if you want to save it in a slot.

Would also be great to have the option to turn optimised maths on/off in the online compiler. Or even the offline one!

#19

No english bell on the right output? What about the djembe, do both buttons work?

#20

Here’s a Waveguide string experiment based on Henrik von Coler’s nice post:

I added the ‘Sustain’ parameter because I found that the duration of the excitation impulse made a big difference to the sound.

And from your suggestion @kilchhofer I’m summing the sustained button impulse with the audio input as the exciter, so you can send it your own excitation signal.

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