This unit is full of cool presets and fx that make different synth lines sound incredible, from bass lines to arps to pads, really a great retro treasure trove!
I really like the grittiness from it - Hainbach did a good video on using the reverbs from it, though I don't think he ever explored the midi cc side of things. Great FX box though, and still relatively cheap!
Oh wow excellent tips! I’ve got one of these and I only ever use it for the effects without midi but I’m definitely gonna have a play around with it now. New subscriber 👍🏾
Thanks for subscribing! Yeah, I've seen a couple of videos about using the qv just for big reverbs (Hainbach did a good one) but nothing about the midi control side of things..! It sounds pretty awesome when you start playing about with it as its own instrument!
Another trick with the ring modulator.. in the menu there is an option for up or down. By going up or down by just one degree you can get an up or down barberpole type phaser effect, i.e, a phaser which gives the illusion of always going upwards or downwards, a very cool effect.
@@bleepsandboops I sold my QV+ many years ago so the recipe might be slightly wrong. Not sure if it needs to be all wet or 50% wet.. probably 50% I'd guess.
Just thought I’d drop in and say thanks for this great little video. I own a QV and have never had a chance to consider real-time MIDI control - but this is what I’ll be doing today! Inspiring stuff and appreciate your focus on vintage classic hardware (like QV, Nord, etc). I’m also an enthusiast with added BassStation, DrumStation, A-Station, SY85, 3630, Esi sampler etc! Great that the music you make to demo is authentic early Warp IDM and not the trancey guff which almost everyone else on RU-vid creates! All the best for 2024 and beyond
I have 3 QVs. Purchased at less than $50/each USD. All of them have had the LCD go bad which I suspect is caused by the heat that builds up in these units. I use them with the lid removed. None of them have had excess noise problems people complain about on the web. You should use the official Alesis power supply and TRS cables. If you have to use an aftermarket PSU, get one that is transformer based and not a cheap switchmode PSU or you will inevitably have noise problems.
Thank you so much for this video, I always wanted to know if it was possible to control the Quadraverb via MIDI but never found out if it was even possible. Thanks to your video I've managed to successfully connect my Digitakt to the Quadraverb and it is absolutely amazing. I've uploaded a jam where I'm glitching out drums by controlling the delay parameters same way you show in the video. Can't wait to explore this setup more!
Wow! I never experimented much with the MIDI note side of the modulation matrix on these...what an amazing sound with the spectrum shift, proper pseudo-sample rate reduction!! Might have to dig it out again and have a rinse. Quadraverbs are such great boxes, only recently stopped using one - I could happily sit in front of one of these for hours making different patches. Well cool, and so glad they're not going for stupid money as of yet!
Do it! I've really only scratched the surface here for brevity (I got a bit carried away and needed to cut things back!!) There's (I think) 8 slots in the mod matrix that can be assigned to any parameter for a given configuration, so you can really go to town on it if you feel the need!!
@@bleepsandboops I remember watching one of Sean from Autechre's Twitch streams where he talked about doing it, but for some reason never investigated. I did go crazy with applying CC# values to parameters and sequencing them though. The great thing about the QV is that it's MIDI implementation is so tight and has virtually no aliasing - like you could drop the reverb decay time from max to min and then back to max and you'd get no artifacts whatsoever, and nothing would effect the trails...alright, yeah sod it, I'll make a track with it this weekend lol
Do it! To my shame I've still yet to watch Sean's Twitch stream!!! Yep - it's a weird box; I found changing the delay times mid-delay introduced glitches as if you were holding the delay time button down, but not the pitch-shifting you'd get with (say) anything that tries to emulate a a BBD style delay. Also that cap of 99% feedback is really cool for resonant boings and bangs rather than the howling crescendo you normally get - such a great effect
Thanks! I umm/arred over trying to do Glitch (you can hear the automated ring mod all over the intro on that track) or pairing with the R8, but hopefully this gives more of a broad set of ideas to try out - amazing to still be finding weird things on a piece of 30y/o gear... !
Thanks! Yeah, I only got it a few months ago but wanted to do something beyond the delay and reverb demos - I don't think many people realise how deep the qverb can go!
I had a pair of these back in the 90's. It was well worth updating the firmware to the plus. Mainly used them for delays in the end. First one i brought was the midiverb 2 which was even older but totally preset. Definitely had its own 'character' sound about it. Thinking about it had a midiverb 3 as well that i found hanging out the back of a skip at the end of the road i lived in. Also pulled a TL Audio 5050 valve compressor out the same skip! Bonkers, i was on my way to work grabbing some food from the local shop! That 2nd example sound with the resonator reminds me of Sinebeats in Reactor, that was a techno favorite back in the day.
That's mad! - I guess there was a point where it wasn't worth the hassle of trying to sell something like this on, so in the skip it went... I had no idea you could do similar in Reaktor - I *really* need to start looking at it tbh. I've had Komplete for a very long time, but it's a real investment of hours to get into making your own instruments. One day though 😁
@favoriteblueshirt It is noisy. And can be overdriven pretty quickly from the input but I'd argue that's part of its appeal in a world of everything sounding perfect now a days. Rawraw get off my lawn 👨🦯
I only found about the resonator modes a few months ago. I hadn't realised there were multiple versions of the Quadraverb like the plus and QT. Great video, it directly inspired me to order a 2.03 eprom for my garden variety Quadraverb this evening. Amazing channel, congrats 🙌
really nice video, bigup. have never actually done much with mine except using the presets but this shows how it could be used in lots of interesting ways. giving me BoC and early warp records vibes
Thanks! I think the availability of the qverb back in the day means it made its way onto a bunch of those early IDM records - great to be able to breathe a bit of new interest on to it too, even now!!
@@bleepsandboops definitely it was used a bunch by all those artists ! but just never thought about the other capabilities with the modulations besides just the standard presets how they probably used this to make simple synth sounds like the sh101 into more complex stuff
It kinda blows my mind that you can just pick which CC you want. The only thing that actually lets me configure CCs (that isn't a controller) is my Eventide H9, and that thing only lets you go up to CC 99 because I guess they're trying to save space on the ridiculous segmented display. But now I think everybody likes the Quadraverb, so it's actually almost twice as expensive as the Midiverb 4. But there's nobody making cool videos of driving the Midiverb 4 into interesting crunchy distortion like the Quadraverb.
ikr... I guess the synth manufacturers decided amongst themselves around things like cc 74 and 71 should be filter c/o and resonance, but for the effects guys those options don't really mean a anything... Quadraverbs seemed to be available for not that much in every guitar shop not too long ago. I'm entirely blaming current trend for 20-minute ambient jams if that's changing 😂... It's a shame too, the Midiverb looks like it has loads more power and potential but lacks the resonator and ring mod modes, *and* Alesis hard-wired the MIDI to their choice of two parameters only. Very odd decision!!?!
That's insane. I mean, I maybe the thing had a whole different architecture and at the time they didn't think the resonator was interesting so they didn't bother putting it in the MidiVerb ... but ... FFS it's called the MidiVerb how they gonna give it less MIDI functionality? I just think it's pretty exciting to have any basic FX where you can choose CCs to map params to whatever you want on a synth. And have a decent interface and rational form factor. I like pedals, but multi-FX pedals are completely ridiculous. Seems like there is currently someone in Japan and someone in Brooklyn with a warehouse full of MidiVerbs, because I saw a couple eBay listings with the seller having 20+ available. I just got one that looks brand new for $100 including shipping, so I sorta compulsively got two. I could only find a couple beat up QuadraVerbs for $200-$250, and the $200 one was missing the weird power cord. I think ppl go after the QuadraVerb because they see it in videos, but ... like people who watch this video and people who watch Bad Gear. Not exactly a crowd that's imposing substantial market pressure I don't think. But maybe. I mean try to get a Yamaha SPX90 and it's about the same. The SPX90 II is a bit cheaper. It's weird that eurorack is a thing but patching stuff together with MIDI isn't. I mean we don't need to try to go all the way back to the 1960s people. How come the only MIDI-controllable mixer I can find is a totally awful '90s thing from MOTU back when they said Mark Of The Unicorn? LOL. I don't know what's up with resonators. I know my SP-404MK2 has a nice resonator effect. Then the Volca Drum calls its delay section a resonator. Then I've seem some real weird stuff that says it's a resonator. Maybe I'm thinking of something different, but there's this Jomox thing with a bunch of knobs, and it's not a drum machine ... It's crazy. I think that said it was a resonator, too!
@@RaquelFoster be interested to see how you get on with the Midiverb. My guess is Alesis looked at what people were actually using Quadraverbs for and stripped back everything else, so you get your Jeff Buckley reverb, your FOH halls etc but nothing more creative than that... I think people like eurorack because it's straightforward and analogue.. midi is a weird 5 pin plug with channels and ccs and digital stuff, whilst modular is a cable for each bit of voltage you want to move around? I dunno, it's something I don't want to get it to for fear of going down that rabbit hole!! On the midi mixer thing, see if you can get hold of an older digital one, Yamaha O1V or something? Haven't seen anything do a resonator in a box for a while tbh - possibly one of the reasons the original qv still goes for reasonable $$.. expect some boutique pedal manufacturers to put out an Instagram-friendly version for $500 soon..! 😂😂
Thanks! I *think* this one was an RE20 through a DAV BG preamp. I do a lot of audio/band/singer songwriter recording outside of the bleeping and booping, and tend to grab whatever was to hand for the voiceovers
Thanks! I turn the direct signal down so you can't hear the original synth sounds - otherwise there would be a layer or white noise or resonant squelch over the top of the Quadraverb's output. As for pitchbend vs cc, you can use pitchbend though you need a synth or sequencer that outputs it - the S1 I'm using to sequence the modulation on the Quadraverb doesn't output it so I'm using CC instead
Are you familiar with the lead/ bass part that starts off Autechre’s Glitch track on the Amber album. Do you have any insights on how this was done? I’m almost certain it was a Roland 202 with a quadraverb. But I’m researching across the internet about actual settings. Is the oscillator a square wave, what is the ADSR, what is the cut off and res balance on the filter and then finally how is the quadraverb effecting the signal of the 202. 8th or 16ths ping pong delay with ring modulation? Any insights would be greatly appreciated Have a great day
Yeah! I love that track! I think it's probably the 202's resonant filter they're manually tweaking - so no actual square/saw waves needed, and then into the quadraverb which is covering the ring modulation and delay. Hope that helps!
Just doing some test at home with my quadraverb and I can't seem to find any configuration that states RING>DL>REVERB as shown in your video @ 5:06 timestamp. Also on my unit i dont seem to have any ring effect function at all? Is your unit the plus model?
@@bleepsandboops You're doing a great job. I would have wondered if your pronunciation was correct if I wasn't good friends with a former Alesis employee!
