I acquired the Clavia Nord MicroModular synth recently through eBay. The Nord MicroModular is a stripped down version of the mighty Nord Modular system and can be considered to be “the mother of modular software synths”. A PC software application is used to virtually patch, tweak, edit and design the MicroModulars synth patches in a modular fashion. Produced in 1999, this is still a standalone PC application and not a VSTi to be integrated in a DAW, however.

Besides software the MicroModular consists of a small four-knobbed MicroModular interface/controller unit which houses the DSP power and audio and midi in/outs. After you’ve created a patch using the software you can load it into one of 99 memories within the controller. It can then be used live or in a MIDI studio as a synth module. The MicoModular controller has a volume knob and 3 other knobs that can be assigned editable parameters.

Limited as this might appear, you still get one of the biggest and most powerful modular synthesizer emulator software programs in the world: it contains loads of sound and filtering and effects modules, is fully modular in setup and has a simple and user friendly user interface. A nifty feature is that it can be used both as a modular synthesizer and a audio filterbank, by using the audio L/R inputs for filtering and modifying sounds of other synthesizers or samplers.

More information:

• Micromodular page on Vintage Synth Explorer
• Clavia web site with Nord Modular free sound patches