Doepfer A-118 Noise/Random

I love this little unit -- so much so that I've bought two of them. As far as I can tell, it's the simplest and most cost-effective way of getting a random signal generator (instead of buying a noise generator and a Sample & Hold unit separately) and you also get two flavours of noise thrown in.

The unit generates White noise from its top socket, and Coloured noise from the one below it -- the colour being determined by a mix of the Blue and Red noise knobs. These also control the source for the random signal generator, which can be further adjusted for rate and depth (level) and which pipes its output to the bottom socket. A pair of little red LEDs wink in time with the random signal, giving you immediate feedback on whether you've got a slowly-varying random wave or some kind of insane high-speed chaos going on.

Link this thing to the CV input of pretty much any module and you can get some craziness going -- everything from subtle fluctuations to utter madness. I honestly think this is the most fun you can get for the least money in Eurorack format! Build quality is standard Doepfer -- ie, solid but aesthetically uninspired. Still, it's the guts of the thing that count, and they're top notch.

I just love the A-118... so much so that I now have three of them (and my Eurorack isn't that big, either). Of course there's noise: mixable Red and Blue, for a wide range of noise colours, plus pure White on a separate output. This is handy but also pretty standard.

For me, the killer feature here is the "random output" jack – which is a SMOOTHED, rather than stepped, random waveform generated from the noise source. I've started to realise that smoothed random waveforms are rare on synths: when there's a "random" LFO option, for example, it's almost always stepped – which isn't usually what I want. It's the same effect you get with a slew limiter or the "output lag" control on old Roland sample-and-hold circuits – so, a random but smoothly wobbly waveform whose depth and rate you can control. It's very neat indeed for adding low-level, almost subliminal pitch variation to oscillators for a really gnarly vintage vibe, and I like to feed random CVs out to my more well-behaved monosynths to liven them up a bit :-D

A solid little module with a really neat trick up its sleeve: highly recommended.

This is a wonderful little unit which combines Noise output and a Random output.

The noise is split into a white output and a mix output of Blue (high end noise) & Blue (low end noise) - the results using the Red / Blue mix is great and worth spending some time to get just the right mix.

I was toying with the idea of buying a Sample and Hold unit, however, now that I have the A118 I'll not bother. It has 2 functions - one knob controls the rate of the randomisation and the other controls the depth over the octave range - which is pretty deep!

A highly recommneded unit - so good I bought 2!