ADDAC’s 809 Chain Router is one of those utility modules that you don’t realize quite how cool and handy it is until you get your paws on it and put it in your system. While chain routing isn’t the flashiest of utilities, 809 gives you the ability to easily route one signal six different ways by way of the input having two different send and return loops, A and B. These can be either run in series or parallel, or you can just use 809 as a switch to try out the two different paths separately and see which path fits your fancy. Want to try out one signal with two different reverbs and go back and forth without needing to patch/unpatch every time? Feeling unsure which delay is what you’re looking for? 809 makes it easy to do this and find what you like, and this auditioning aspect is merely the starting point; It’s the running of one path into the other and the ability to CV all of the path features that makes it so useful. Nicely illuminated soft switches for BYPASS, PARALLEL [if the effects are in series or parallel], ORDER [A feeding into B, or B feeding into A as well as choosing A or B], AND DUAL/SINGLE [one path at the output or both] make this painless.
The ability to CV all of this is really what makes this module interesting. Using CV you can synch up effect switching, effects stage switching, path switching, or even complex oscillating; switching out complex or modulation oscillators and synching that up, too. One thing you can do is to use CV to scroll through all six of the pathway options, which can get really wild. Modulating this with an LFO is really interesting and I found that doing it slowly made it possible to not only hear the differences in the paths, but to also just intrinsically feel the changes without having to focus so much on it. Modulating any of the parameters at audio rate is a completely different story, and it mostly sounded AM’d and slightly ring-moddy, though still interesting enough at times. I felt like I had to try it out this way, you know, to be thorough and all, but it’s not where 809’s strengths are. Synched up/syncopated changes in the parameters is where it’s at here, and 809 kills it in this way. It was cool to turn on/off a snare reverb in time, to switch from a delay feeding a reverb to a reverb feeding a delay in time, and to bypass it all every so often by using just a few related LFOs.
809 really does do double duty as both a chain figure pathway selector and an effect all unto itself, kind of the way a panner or crossfader can be; and whether you use 809 as a rhythmic accentuating effect or just to figure out the path you want for your signal so that you can hone in on the perfect patch, it’s an incredibly useful module.

6 HP +12v 80mA -12v 30mA
Price: $165

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