My first glance at WORNG's SoundStage II got me thinking how similar it looked to a leather jacket I had my freshman year of high school, during my "punk rock" phase, with the jacks on the module looking a lot like the rivets on that jacket. Even the writing on SoundStage II looks like the punk slogans factory scrawled on the back of that pleather (vegan, naturally) jacket, which was made complete with fake DIY looking patches of the Sex Pistols, Clash, and other major label "punk" bands that were permanently sewn in place, yet inexplicably still adorned with the requisite "punk" addition of safety pins to make it look like that's how they were held on. Not to mention that all the patches were perfectly spaced on the front of the jacket…not very punk rock. But did I look cool in it?
Unfortunately, no. I looked like the desperate tweenager that I was. Even in terms of functionality, the jacket flopped big time as it failed to keep me warm in winter, squeaked from rubbing together any time I moved, and those damn rivets were always getting caught on things like tree branches and table-mounted pencil sharpeners. But in some of the ways that the jacket—and the features found on it—failed, Soundstage II, with those reminiscent features, totally excels.
While most modules build off of the expertise of a designer in terms of the circuit design a module needs, SoundStage II builds off of WORNG's Morgan McWaters previous experience in the field of live sound engineering. SoundStage II simplifies mixing in a modular-based stereo space, hardwiring away some of the issues associated with mixing, both in terms of physical stereo space (left, right), and in terms of the space needed for the frequencies of each instrument/signal by filtering each input based on its location in the frequency and space spectrum. For anybody familiar with audio mixing of any sort, this idea is probably routine, and that's why phrases like, "sitting in a mix," "carving out space," and "cleaning up the mud," in reference to mixing are so common in mixing; these are some of the most necessary tasks of any mixing engineer. But it's anything but basic or easy, which is why mixing is so challenging and experience in the field is so important. It's something that took me a long time to fully appreciate when I'd read about how sound engineers like (specifically) Steve Albini didn't like to eq on mixdown, instead preferring to get the instruments tonality dialed and microphone placement just right, so that each instrument would have the appropriate space in a mix. It's kind of a preparation thing; know what you're trying to do, get the instrument's sounds to fit with what you're trying to do, and have fewer issues (hopefully) further down the road. It's a pretty powerful philosophy, this detailed preparation vs. "fixing it in the mix," and while Albini had a lot of polarizing philosophies and opinions on various topics, lucky for us, our engineer in this case, WORNG's McWaters, is only here to help us out, not preach or make his viewpoints known. This is very apparent, and he's done exactly this, by figuring out a patch and play way of carving out spaces in a mix, while simultaneously devising a fast and easy way to audition different spaces in the stereo spectrum as well as the associated hardwired tonalities in SoundStage II, for a given signal in a patch. How WORNG does this is, like mixing, both simple and complex.
Similar to the predetermined position of the patches on my sweet jacket, Soundstage II has twenty-one fixed and filtered inputs in the stereo and frequency spectrums laid out in horizontal and vertical rows. It has stereo outputs, a Level control (with CV in) for the output, and a mono/stereo FX Send/Return that sits schematically between the Level control and the main stereo outputs, which means that you can use the FX Return as extra inputs. If you attenuate your main signal while running through effects, you can get ghosty reverb tails and delay repeats, which I happen to love. Last, there's a Depth for blending between the unfiltered output and the filtered output over the entirety of the module and this acts like a final filter in the module's signal chain of many filters for some added sculpting control, and this can also be modulated with CV for VCA/tremolo like effects. While SoundStage II looks sorta bizarre, like a quasi-random buffered mult that had a bad accident, the deeper you dig—I'm talking inches here, not feet (or mm/meters for the EU crowd)—you quickly realize how incredibly intuitive this module is, and I think that's really the point; patch and play.
The twenty-one input jacks are divided in five rows from top to bottom: High, High Mid, Mid, Low Mid and Low, and this is a pretty good roundabout way of figuring out what goes where in a traditional sense. Highly pitched signals (cymbals, key leads, some vocals) towards the top, and low end (bass, kick) towards (or at) the bottom. If you've ever noticed that in most song mixes the kick and bass are pretty much shot through the center of a stereo mix, it's because it helps keep the definition on the low end, and SoundStage II operates this way as well, with fewer inputs at the lower end than the high. It's one of the ways that McWaters has made things easier for us, and that's what he's really done with the entirety of the module; it's basically a stereo mixer where McWaters himself helps you mix. He's a good guy, Morgan is!
Experimenting with SoundStage II, both in terms of trying to get better mixes and just exploring the differences in stereo space for signals is revelatory. It's just so easy to patch/unpatch a signal and hear the tonal differences due to the hard-wired filtering and placement in a mix, that it enables you to define for yourself (with McWaters' help, of course) what sounds best. While it's not really designed for patching into all twenty-one inputs, patching in the bulk of a track (kick, bass, lead, and pads, say) it's a fast and painless way to get a head start towards better sounding tracks. Running Modbap's Trinity drum module with a bassline coming from WORNG's awesome ACRONYM VCO was a fun experiment in spacing out the rhythmic elements of a dance track I was working on. Using the FX out for parallel compression of the drum buss, something I almost always do in DAW mixing to fatten up the drums, was interesting in that usually it's kind of a static thing; get the drums mixed how you like and run it through the compression, dial it in, mix with the rest of the track to taste, and move on. But with the ability to easily patch into different areas of space/frequency, it made for a more scrutinizing exploration in a way I'd never done before. It's one thing to pan a signal or two, but altogether different when it's automatically paired with some filtering. Again, McWaters' experience in the sound engineering field is what's informing the shortcut of the filter+space combinations on hand here, and it does indeed help create better/cleaner/clearer (and even more interesting, in many cases) mixes.
CVing both the Depth and Level brings about a lot of variation from slowly rising/falling level changes—just using a hint of modulation—to running audio rate into the Level CV input for some metallic sounding action, SoundStage II can get really wild in a dense patch. I found this to be good for everything from the rhythm tracks to a doubled (or tripled) up lead with various filtering and space in the mix to fatten it up and give it more dimension.
Since there are no controls with which to boost or cut incoming signals into SoundStage II, it's good to have some VCAs on hand to do just that, and wouldn't ya know, WORNG's SideCar fits the bill perfectly here. While there aren't twenty-one channels of attenuation/boost for each of SoundStage II's inputs, SideCar offers six channels (four mono and two stereo) of VCA/level control action. The spacious, almost luxurious feel of SideCar, with its smooth, longer-than-normal (for Euro VCAs, at least) light up faders, feels less like a VCA and more like a wonderfully hands-on mixer. WORNG always, and I do mean always, seems to get the perfect amount of function in their forms with nary the fluff, and SideCar doesn't deviate from this. There's nothing extraneous here, just those great 45mm faders and an excellent sounding circuit, but that doesn't mean there's not some extra flair hidden under the faceplate. The circuit is built to prevent clipping, offering a lot of headroom, and is focused on audio mixing, so each channel operates on an exponential curve in relation to the CV input, If no CV is patched into a given track a +5V signal is normalled for each.
One of the main features on SideCar that I found useful and unique is that it has cascading inputs, meaning that you can patch multiple effects in each channel (for more detailed control of each) and the inputs will cascade to the following input until an output breaks that chain. With Channel's five and six being stereo, you can also get stereo cascading, and the fact that you can mix and match between single channel VCA/level controls and cascading effects shows how useful SideCar is, so much so that calling it a sextet of VCAs almost seems like a slight. So while it looks like a fader-based mixer, calls itself a six-channel mono/stereo VCA, it's really something else altogether. Also, the way that the ins and outs (and CV ins) are situated on SideCar are such that everything is patched towards the top of the module, leaving the faders free of cable clutter and clearly visible, which translates to a really nice VCA/mixing experience. I almost always place my mixers in the bottom right of my rack, but moving it around to various locales in my big system, and the way the jacks were situated meant that in the top row, the bottom row, and even in the middle of center row it was easy enough to create a perfectly clear path to controlling all of SideCar's faders. In the last instance, it looked a bit like an oasis in the midst of chaos, a calm space to take a breather. SideCar is not going to replace my in-the-rack end-of-mix or drum/percussion mixers (1010's Bluebox and Cosmotronic's Cosmix Pro), but it really adds a lot of function, flexibility, and control to the mixing and level control in my patches, and works great alongside SoundStage II.
Mixing is a strange and tricky art, and I really love these two modules from WORNG for being my new "secret sauce" helping hand magic trick that pitches in to make my modular tracks sound better.

Price: SoundStage II $379
SideCar $359

worngelectronics.com