I love showing friends who are familiar with my "strange hobby" (their words; I liken it more to an obsession) certain modules or instruments to see their reactions. Instruo's Scion always gets interesting responses when I explain what it does, and anything by Teenage Engineering or Landscape always gets my design-oriented friends excited, but I love nothing more than showing people something they can't make heads or tails of; that I'm excited about. AI Synthesis' AI028 Voltage Controlled Matrix Mixer is such a thing, with its no-nonsense academic, test-lab look. With nothing but a bunch of jacks (forty-nine, to be exact)—no pots, no switches, no screen or anything that lights up—it couldn’t look less like something you'd use to make music with.
This isn't AI Synthesis' first foray into matrix mixers, as they have two more "conventional" matrix mixing modules: AI008, and AI018 (mono and stereo, respectively). And AI028 certainly isn't the first VC matrix mixer, but while almost all other offerings have some sort of attenuation/level control for the incoming CV, giving both a visual break to the monotony of jacks as well as more control, AI028 does away with this, fully committing to help support 3.5mm jack manufacturers bottom line.
A six input X (1-6), six output (A-F) mixer that can be used with CV or audio signals, this means that there are thirty-six total VCAs on board. That might be a record, definitely for the size. It must be, right? The only flourish here is the addition of a dedicated 5V output used to feed passive attenuators for manual control at the CV input of a channel. Now, I only used the +5V to measure it once and then left it unpatched, for really, I wanted to patch this thing to its max capacity. It was not easy. Patching up thirty-six VCAs means needing thirty-six modulation sources. Again, a lot. Some of this was accomplished using a Zorx 1U CV Bus to mult and attenuate various inputs, and along with Five12's QVL, XAOC Batumi, Pamela's New Workout, Black Noise Modular's Cosmos, and whatever else I could conjure up that had multiple CV outputs, after much searching, I was able to source the thirty modulators. I laid the unpatched modulating cable ends next to my rig as neatly as possible for when I was ready to get going; it was a mess o' cables, indeed.
As for the inputs, I used two inputs of a copied sequence that was fed into two very different sounding sound sources (WORNG's Acronym and Entropicloops' Grackle), one related bassline via Erica Synths Fusion VCO), and three inputs for a kick, snare, and hi-hat-ish sounding thing that was part Winter Plankton ZAPS, part Malstrom Audio Mandrake, and part Zlob Entropy (for noise duty on the "hats"). The outputs all went through various effects; two different sounding delays (Endorphin.es Ghost and Vongon Polyphrase), one short reverb (Expert Sleepers Disting Alpha), one looooong reverb (Strymon Starlab), a chorus (Morphor Ensemble), and distortion (Eurorat), without doing too much effects stacking for ease of differentiation. This was already a pretty involved patch, especially for something I thought I was just messing around with, and with thirty-six CVs, it was about to get even more so.
From there, each went into their own separate channel in my output mixer, the WMD PM MKII, which I was testing as well. After getting the basic input and output levels situated, I started patching up the CV inputs on AI028. I decided to give each input an audible voltage using various amounts of the supplied +5V at their A Output to use as a sort of reference mix, with everything always playing; no muting or modulating happening. It's easy enough to just throw modulation into each CV input, but I figured I'd try to make sensible, musically related and relevant type of patching closest to the A Output, and get more random and esoteric the further out I got towards the F Output. I think I accomplished this, though the audible difference was minimal (except for my reference track). Going into the PM MKII and I was able to mute each track easily once I had the rest of AI028 all patched up to compare mixes, as well as play. Musically, I preferred the mix at D Output, but even though it had a mixture of random and intentional CV'ing, it mostly sounded random, with a lot of interesting movement.
My next experiment involved a generative ambient idea I wanted to create. Slowing all of the modulation down to a crawl, replacing the percussion tracks with droning notes and stopping my sequences so that all sound sources were simply droning, I then adjusted some of the parameters on the effects to make them more drawn out; long tails for the reverbs, and plenty of feedback/repeats and super slow delay times. The result was beautiful, mesmerizing, with hollow notes lingering for days while newly played parts were stacked on top, creating more substantial tones. I tweaked the tuning of the sources to be spread out from one another so that some low bass notes would come through while chiming bell-like notes floated on top. To anchor all of this, I repatched Mandrake and had it sustain as long as it possibly could while being triggered slowly and randomly at long intervals. Tweaking the modulation at the source, while changing the feel of the music, proved unnecessary; with that amount of modulation, with that much going on, changes sounded different, but not necessarily better (or worse), at least to my ears. After some fidgeting with settings, I came up with a pretty track (mixture of tracks, really) that I wound up letting play in the background almost the entire day. The sounds were beautiful; the movement felt human, and the track felt very alive.
With thirty-six different voltage amounts going into keeping AI028 going at its maximum usage, even Frankenstein's monster would tip its carriage-bolted head in appreciation of the mammoth amount of cabling applied to bring it alive. It was no small feat finding enough modulation (even with a bunch of self-patching) just to get AI028 all patched up, and this was without using any stackable cables for any of 028's entry points as they would inherently block an input or two. When it was all patched up, there was nary a spot of real estate with which to rest a wary cable or stray knurlie. Good thing that the layout of 028 (and any matrix mixer worth its weight in salt) is intuitive, as if it were necessary to read any faceplate text once all the cables are set, it would be regarded almost as a techno-archeological dig to break through the cable crust to get the aluminum surface.
AI028 is an interesting piece to the modular puzzle. Teamed up with plenty of LFOs, EGs, and whatever else you can throw at it, its uses are many, and its exploratory options immense. As a voltage controlled (or control voltage) mixer, an ambient soundscape machine, or a gnarly rhythm-maker, this machine plays as serious as it looks. Just make sure you have your cables all laid out nice and neat and all your LFOs free. Still, you may have to borrow some modulation from a good friend.
Price: $329

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