Okay, so I’ve been messing around with the Mopho, and I gotta say, it’s a pretty cool little synth. Here’s a rundown of what I did and what I found out.
Getting Started
First thing I did was just plug it in and see what sounds it made. No manuals, no tutorials, just straight to twisting knobs. I wanted to see how intuitive it was right out of the box.
- I hooked it up to my audio interface, pretty standard stuff.
- Powered it on, and bam, noise!
Exploring the Sounds
I spent a good hour just cycling through the presets. There are some surprisingly fat bass sounds in there, and some really cool, almost eerie, lead sounds. It’s definitely got that analog warmth. It feels… real, I guess.
Then I started tweaking. The filter cutoff and resonance were the first things I grabbed. You can really make this thing scream if you want to. The envelopes are pretty snappy, too. You can get some really percussive sounds going.
Diving Deeper
After playing with the presets, I decided to try building a sound from scratch. I started with a simple sawtooth wave and went from there. It was a bit overwhelming at first because there are so many options, but once I got the hang of the basic layout, it was pretty smooth sailing.
- I messed with the oscillators, detuning them a bit to get a thicker sound.
- Added some sub-oscillators for extra low-end.
- Played around with the modulation matrix, which is where things get really interesting.
Modulation Madness
The modulation options on the Mopho are insane! You can route almost anything to anything. I spent a good chunk of time just experimenting with different LFO shapes and destinations. You can get some seriously wild, evolving sounds going.
I tried to assign lfo to oscillator, and other crazy experiments, finally got some acceptable sounds, and then tweaked them a little more.
My Overall Impression
I only used it for about 4 hours in total, and then I was able to get a feel for how to use it properly.
The Mopho is a powerful little synth. It’s not the easiest thing to learn, but it’s definitely rewarding. If you’re looking for a hands-on analog experience, and you’re not afraid of a little bit of a learning curve, I’d say give it a shot. It’s a lot of fun, and it sounds great. I plan to get some more use out of it, and perhaps record some of my audio next time.