A couple of years back, we developed Cosmic Background as a standalone percussion voice. The concept was to bundle all required sub-modules behind one panel, pre-patched, yet also fully modular, with each sub-module having it’s own inputs and outputs. We loved it, as did you. We soon realised that is we were to replace Cosmic Background’s noise generator with a VCO (and do a few other tweaks), we’d have  a cute little fully modular synth voice ripe for sequencing – and that’s how Dark Star was born!

 Dark Star consists of 4 sections:

- Voltage Controlled Oscillator based on AS3340 with sawtooth, triangle and pulse waveforms
- Voltage Controlled Filter with lowpass and highpass options, Drive control, Sweep control which attenuates amount of Release CV
- Release generator with CV input for voltage control of release time. Option for sustain via jumper on rear panel.
- Voltage Controlled Amplifier
- Together they form a pre-patched super versatile analogue synthesiser voice.

Additionally, each section is fully modular in it’s own right, so there are patch points for:

- 1V/oct CV input
- PWM CV input – attenuator doubles as manual pulse width when no external signal is present
- Gate input for Release or Sustain/Release
- Release CV input for voltage control of Release time
- VCF audio input with attenuator, for introducing external audio
- VCF CV input with attenuator (1V/oct CV is normalised to this input)
- VCA audio input (VCF is normalised to this input)
- VCA CV input (Release CV is normalised to this input)
- Release CV output
- VCO audio output
- VCF audio output
- VCA audio output

Here are some useful patches to try:

- Release CV output to PWM CV input, for swept PWM
- VCF OUT to VCF IN, thickens and further overdrives the filtering
- VCO OUT to VCF CV input, for fizzy FM of the filter
- use a multiple to patch 1V/oct to Release CV input, lower notes will have longer release, higher notes will have shorter release