Neutron Storm

So, for a change I decided not to buy a guitar, much to the amazement of my partner and my son.

For many many years, any spare cash I had was religiously spent on synthesisers, and this Christmas I decided to revive that great tradition.

I had been keeping a bit of an eye on the Behringer Neutron for a while. I have long wanted a bit of modular action, and this red monster is getting some pretty good reviews across the interwebs at the moment.

“Behringer”, I hear you cry, “didn’t you…”

Yes, I have published a fairly scathing letter to Uli Behringer (which of course, although he appears to be stalking the social media for any mention of his name at the moment, he won’t have seen) about my Xenyx Mixer. But having bought a couple of utility items from them and seen no issues since, I am prepared to give this a shot.

I do have to say, Behringer are really on it at the moment. They seem to be announcing a new synth about every 2 months as it stands. There are a lot of accusations of plagiairism to which Uli Behringer seems to have a fairly well prepared stock response about the legality of doing so (which is correct). Personally I don’t want to get too into all that. The world progresses. I guess there is the legitimate fear that ultimately they will become the McDonalds of the music world, a massive global hegemony which has swallowed up all competitors, pricing out anything boutique, but again I think there’s a lot of doom and gloom from those who hate on them.

Let’s move on. Here she is, resplendent on my studio shelf.

I have to say I am impressed. The Neutron took a few minutes to warm up, dueing which time anything I did made a sad whining thump and worried me that I had got a broken one. It warms up quicker now for some reason, possibly the updated firmware (which once I had installed a specific midi driver for the app to work) installed easy as.

I am not going to do a full run through of everything it does. There are plenty of reviews doing that. I think most people on this site are either interested in the odd tune or photo really. But breifly it is a 2 oscillator synth (based on the ubiquitous Curtis 3340 VCO) with a standard VCO-VCF-ENV-VCA-OverDrive-Delay signal flow, the usual Osc Sync, PWM, LFO shizzle going on. But the biggie is the patch bay. This lets you fuck shit up to a pretty decent extent, basically patching the output from any section into the input (or mod input) of any other. And it is all done to Eurorack standard, so can interface with a million other lovelies out there. I have already been pinching the LFO from my Microbrute as an extra on the Neutron, and using the Neutron’s LFO (more shapes availible) on the microbrute.

I want a Modular.

Anyway. Let’s hear it in action:

I set the aim of making a 303 style patch. As some forum monkey vociferously pointed out during my research into the envelope settings of the 303’s accent “you can’t make a 303 as it is different filter”, but to be fair, I have made a pretty damn good acid squelch.

I then dusted off some of my hardware (literally in some cases) and this wrote itself really. A definite hardware homage to the hazy Megadog days of the mid-90s…

Ableton Live + Behringer Neutron + Arturia Microbrute + Novation A Station + Korg Volca Bass + SH-101 + Microkorg = Aciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!