Chords Melodies Harmony And Polyphony In Eurorack

Lets just call it ART

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Musical Harmony Goes Modular

ART takes the power of musical harmony and fully enables its potential in a hardware modular synthesizer.

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Patch Polyphonic Synthesizers

Our new Polytip cable and connectors makes polyphonic patching effortless.

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ART Bring Great Solutions

Solve old technical problems and creative flow stoppers to open up next level multi voice composition and sound design in Eurorack.

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Modules

ART is a new set of ideas, a paradigm. At the heart of it is the new ART control signal. Building upon the potential of the new ART signal a new generation of modules that had never existed before are now coming to life and give breath to possibilities we could only dream of prior to that.
OCTOPUS

Is a powerhouse ART controller that takes MIDI in via the USB or DIN connector and outputs 8 ART channels with 8 velocity CV plus 8 drum triggers. Together with the ART oscillators the OCTOPUS provide unprecedented simplicity connecting the modular to your computer sequencers, hardware midi sequencers and keyboards...

ATX1 VCO

A classic all analog saw VCO core with 3 switchable modes, ART, 1V/Oct, LFO and is recommended as the basic building block for ART systems. It is designed for patching analog polyphonic synths from discrete modules or multi-mono patches in ART mode...

VORTEX

An ART wavetable dual oscillator mono voice source that can be used to build polyphonic patches and multi voice patches. It generates its harmonically rich sound using two 80s vintage D/A converters to feed your filters and effect processors...

CONTROL PATH

Is an all in one voice dynamics module that helps build full voices quickly. It contains two analog envelopes with velocity cv, and one VCA. In a typical voice patch the left envelope will control a filter and the right envelope will be the voice VCA...

POLYTIP

Is Tiptop Audio’s new type of modular synthesizer patch cable that can pass multiple audio channels using minimal panel space. This innovative design finally adds to modular the capability to patch more than one signal at a time and unleash the full potential of polyphonic system using ART...

VORTEX6

Is a polyphonic 6 voice ART wavetable oscillator inspired by the hardware design and sound of the PPG Wave 2.2. Dozens of wavetables are provided internally and user tables can be loaded via SD CARD. VORTEX6 has built in Vibrato, Glide, and six wave table scrolling envelopes all with CV...

OCTOPASS

Is an eight voice 24db/octave low pass filter based on the classic 2044 filter. All eight filters are fully analog with gain compensation of resonance and the lovely lush sound of classic synths. A global frequency modulation CV using a 3.5mm jack can be used to modulate all eight incoming CVs of the Polytip jack...

OCTOSTAGES

Is an eight voice fully analog envelope generator. Its typical use is to patch polyphonic synthesizers with the use of only a few single Polytip cables. Each of the eight envelopes feature a Gate in, Envelope OUT, Velocity CV in and Attack CV in control as well as an output led indicator...

OCTOGAIN

Is a eight voice polyphonic audio VCA plus a eight voice mixer with master level control and two ODD/EVEN channels for a stereo output and clipping indicator. All eight VCA ins and outs are simultaneously available through Polytip jacks and 3.5mm jacks so the module can be used in a variety of ways both polyphonic or multi-voice monophonic...

OCTO I/O

Is a bi directional passive Polytip to 3.5mm expander and a Polytip Mult. The expander section lets you break out to each individual voice from a polyphonic module. The mult section lets you mult Polytip polyphonic signals from one source to multiple destinations...

FAQ

To get started simply get Octopus and a few ART Oscillators. Have your DAW, Keyboard or Hardware MIDI sequencer ready to connect to Octopus and feed the ART system. We are assuming you already have a Eurorack case and some envelopes, filters, VCAs and effects.
Make sure to sign up to our newsletter for updates and pre-order openings. You can also check out ART products with our dealers. Release dates and estimated price are listed next to each module.
Yes, ART modules are Eurorack modules and use Eurorack signal levels for oscillator audio and gate/cv controls, same power connector, and are designed to blend into any Eurorack system.
All of your filters, envelopes, LFOs, VCAs, effects, signal processors, mixers , patch cables will work with the ART modules. 1V/oct based sequencers and oscillators will not work with ART control inputs and outputs.
No, 1V/Oct is no longer needed with ART. ATX1 is the only oscillator in the ART line that can still be switched between ART control and 1V/Oct, which is only for legacy compatibility purposes. Although ATX1 has a single jack for both signals they are not compatible or interchangeable.
No, we decided to make Octopus first to solve the problem of integrating Eurorack with other hardware and computer DAWs. There are several Eurorack sequencing and pattern generation products in development.
Yes, ART was tested using Stackcables and should work with Passive mults too.
ART Control and MIDI have some similarity in the fact that both are digital communication for music and use digital commands. However ART is mainly a modular synthesizer control signal while MIDI is a global studio control system and has many legacy aspects to the protocol including low speed. ART is extremely fast so it does not lag behind the very low latency of CV and Gate signals we use in a modular synthesizer. ART also does not require any channel configuration which makes it simpler to use. For the user patching ART is exactly like patching 1V/Oct.
ART control has precise pitch information as well as performance data about the note (velocity, mod and pressure). The ART signal is high speed for near zero latency and an analog ‘feel’. ART is also much cheaper to implement compared to the old quantized voltage based analog method.
ART does not define anything about the nature of the module, since it is just a communication method. ART adds a functionality to either a fully analog module or a fully digital module or a hybrid.
Each tone generator is responsible for allocating its available voices based on the incoming ART data. For monophonic VCOs this is a single gate that activates with any note data. In Polyphonic modules like Vortex6 a voice allocation system is programmed into the module to assign the pitch and gate to the correct outputs including voice-stealing if needed.
Polytip patch cables are completely analog that use the USB C type connectors, everything inside the cable is completely different from USB. Please note, Polytip cables are not USB cables and should never be used to plug USB devices. Conversely, standard USB C cables will not work with Polytip modules. Internally the Polytip patch cable is all analog and the signals carried are all analog audio CVs or Gates.
No, Polytip cables are required only for modules that are strictly polyphonic by design like OCTOPASS and OCTOSTAGES. HEXAGAIN and Vortex6 are Polyphonic too but have options for both independent signals over standard patch cables and Polytip cables.
Polytips do not define anything about the nature of the module, since they are a passive multichannel analog audio patch cable. Polytips adds a polyphony patching to either a fully analog module or a fully digital module or a hybrid.
Yes using the OCTO I/O expander module you can bring all the Polytip signals to 3.5mm jacks.
The ART terminology was developed so we all speak the same ‘language’.

Signal flow:
Voice = can refer for example to a single filter in a poly filter module or a complete voice like VCO + VCF + EG + VCA patch.

Patch types:
Poly synth patch = patch with only Polytips. Patching with Polytips is like a higher level patching, you don’t patch one monophonic signal like you usually do in Eurorack, you patch blocks of voices.

Discrete polyphony patch = a polyphonic patch made from single modules, like multiple ATXs that goes into multiple filters and multiple vcas. Obviously it is very interesting to try and make each voice different from the other.

Multi-Voice patch = a patch of multiple mono voices.

Paraphonic patch = a polyphonic tone generation mix, like the MIX out on Vortex6 or multiple mono voices (ATX1) mixed together goes into a monophonic processing (VCF, VCA, EG, etc) path.

Module type:
Polyphonic module = module with poly tips jacks like OCTOPASS
Polyphonic module with discrete I/Os = like Vortex6 and HEAGAIN, having both Polytips and 3.5mm jacks in parallel.

Jacks:
Polyphonic jack = the Polytip jacks, these carry multiple audio signal in one cable
3.5mm jacks = the standard jacks used in Eurorack

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