Dreamboat is a dual chaotic oscillator with 2x CV inputs, a Gate output with adjustable threshold, and two sets of X and Y outputs. There are two oscillator sections to the module, the top half is an audio rate chaotic oscillator and the lower half outputs LFO rate signals.
After trying out all the modules in my ‘portable waveform mangler’ Eurorack box, I decided that the Mutable Instruments Peaks module was not a good fit for the box. M.I. Peaks is a dual LFO/Envelope Generator with trigger inputs. It’s a great module, but more suited to regular beats, and not so much for drones, which the waveform mangler seems to have as a theme. So I went looking for a replacement and chose Dreamboat.
Here’s my initial experience.
The VCO
The upper section is a chaotic VCO with Pitch and CV knobs, a CV input and two outputs, X and Y. A bi-color LED indicates the output. With both pots turned all the way down you get nothing! Oscillator peters out. As you raise the two pots (the CV pot also has a different function with nothing patched to the CV input), first a periodic sinusoidal waveform appears on X and Y, and the farther up it starts becoming chaotic. Here’s a demo recording of just the Dreamboat itself. I manually faded between X and Y and fiddled with the two pots.
The LFO
The LFO has the same set of pots and jacks as the VCO, but it runs at a lower frequency. It has similar behavior. However, I noticed an interesting thing that applies only to the Y output. While oscillating at a fairly high LFO rate, say 2 Hz to 20 Hz, there is a much lower periodic jump between being biased above and below zero volts. The oscillation rides all above zero and then suddenly shifts to below zero, at a rate of several second per shift. This can be useful to trigger events.
The Gate
The random Gate output is somehow related to the LFO frequency; if the LFO isn’t going, there aren’t any pulses. It’s an 8 volt positive pulse. The Threshold pot changes the rate of the gates. It’s not a clean gate; there are glitches even when the rate of gates is slow.
More Recordings
Here is a recording of using Dreamboat in a patch to do phase modulation of the WMD PDO with one path going through the Warps Parasite Delay. I used a random S&H and envelope too. The S&H was triggered from the Dreamboat LFO Y output.
Here is a recording of Dreamboat with its CV input modulated by a group of I.F.M. modules, then passed through the Sprott filter and the dual Warps Parasite Delay.
Here’s a video posted by another user.
