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Ring Mod
10 HP. Multiplies the input by a sine carrier.
| Control | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Freq | 0.1 Hz to 4 kHz | 200 Hz |
| Mix | dry to ring modulated | 100% |
| Port | Direction |
|---|---|
| Freq, Mix | CV in, one per knob, each with an attenuverter |
| CARRIER | audio in. Replaces the internal oscillator when patched |
| IN L, IN R | audio in. R is normalled to L |
| OUT L, OUT R | audio out |
Bypass routes IN L to OUT L and IN R to OUT R.
Freq CV tracks 1V per octave with the attenuverter fully open, so the internal carrier can be played from a sequencer or a keyboard.
The other four modules default to a 50% mix. This one does not.
Ring modulation is normally wanted as the whole signal rather than as a layer underneath the dry one, and a half-wet default would have meant the first thing anyone heard was a mostly clean signal with something odd happening behind it. That is a bad first impression of a module whose entire job is obvious.
Pull the mix back if you want it as a layer. Plenty of people do, particularly at low carrier frequencies where the effect reads as tremolo rather than as modulation.
Ring modulation produces sum and difference frequencies. Push the carrier high enough and the sum products of ordinary material exceed the Nyquist frequency and fold back down into the audible band as inharmonic content that tracks the input in the wrong direction.
This module does not oversample, so that folding is real and audible rather than theoretical. Capping the internal carrier at 4 kHz keeps it out of the way for most material without costing anything musically useful, since almost nothing interesting happens to the internal oscillator above that point anyway.
The CARRIER input has no such cap. Once you are patching your own carrier the choice is yours, and limiting it there would have been the module making a decision that belongs to you.
Unlike the three modulation effects, this module does not offset anything between left and right. There is a single carrier oscillator and both sides are multiplied by it.
That is deliberate. Offsetting the carrier phase between sides would widen a mono source into something artificially stereo, and the result sounds like a trick rather than like ring modulation. A stereo input stays stereo, a mono input stays mono, and nothing is invented.
The lack of oversampling is the real limitation. Bright input with a high carrier setting will alias, and it will sound like aliasing rather than like ring modulation. If that matters for what you are doing, keep the carrier low or feed it something band-limited.
At the very bottom of the range the carrier is slow enough that the module functions as a tremolo, which is useful but is not what the panel says it is.
Modules
Reference