Clavia Nord Micromodular

Using Version 3.03. Most of the presets sound crappy, why they put in a harpichord for example? But who needs the presets. The editor ist cool. Friendly layout, LEDs :), Direct communication with the snyth so you can test the changes directly. Making sounds is easy if you know about about modular synths. If not it's also funny, and the manual explains most of the stuff. 1a manual!

Well the features are great!
96khz! Very clear sounds!
You can use it as effects device. I tried it with a guitar, great Sounds. The Polyphony is ok. Church Organ for example has 4 voices which is ok for Black Metal. Some Sounds only have one voice, but thats ok. Most of the times you can get an extra voice or two by editing the patch a bit.
You cannot expand it, but thats no problem.
3 knobs are not so much, but with a Midiman Oxygen so something similar you have enough knobs.

You can do much Sounds with it. I really like the Church Organ for example, just four Sinus Oscs but a very very clear Sound, ver realistic. Classic Analog Sounds are no problem, but the fun comes when you do strange stuff. Just plug in cables somewhere and see what it sounds like. It never sounds cheesy or crappy. I play Black Metal & Psychedelic. Fits well in both styles.

It's made of metal, looks very reliable.

Sure i would gig with it!

Great website! You can download manual and editor! The poeple at the customer support are very friendly & fast.

I paid 200 Euro for a new MM. It just kills! Kills kills kills! Fits well with my Korg DW8000 and X5D. I am not a friend of VAs but that thing convinced me! It really fits into my music.

Not the easyest, but the most creative synth I bought. It's also a good way to learn about synth editing. The editor has a browser. We just have to pay attention at the different sorts of wires. A so complex instrument cannot be so as easy as a nord lead.

It's the light edition...but it's enough for every kind of mono synth. It can even handle more than 5 notes if we use the simple oscillator, very few modules, and a single adsr for all the voices.
It can be usad as an effect (filter) or vocoder (very good).

The best I played with. Pitch can be modulated in many ways. It reponds quickly; sound is only altered when it supposed to. It can be aggressive with its filters, quantizer and overdrive. No aliasing, no digital scales.

The device is very relyable. The only problems I encoutered were the transformer, and connection with the soft (but the problem should be the interface or the pc or mac). I performed more than 200 gigs without any bug.

In france, I have to congratulate Olivier Bonet, who was really helpful (Guillard Msk)

That's my best synth. It's not as powerful as Reaktor, but it allows to play without any computer. It's so light and small that I keep it with me everywhere. I cannot play without it. I'll certainly buy modular G2.

Version 3.03. The software is so slick - it works on my crappy home PC (Windows 95, no USB) and on my work PC (P2.66, USB) with no discernible difference. I was initially sceptical about editing a synth using a computer, but it works superbly. It could, however, be confusing to a newcomer who has no idea about synth structure.

Polyphony is usually a max of 2 notes at once on the MM, which can be frustrating with pad sounds. However, for the price you can't complain - and the sounds are utterly fantastic. The MM also has 2 inputs, so you can use it as a compressor, sound processor, drum machine or an excellent vocoder. You can easily patch external controller keyboards etc to ANY of the patch's parameters, such as filter cutoff, LFO rate, aftertouch etc.

I can honestly say the MM is one of the best-sounding synths I've ever used - and I've heard the lot. Warm, expressive, gorgeous analogue filters, but also capable of harsh digital klangs and FM bells.You can have everything from screaming synth leads, to acid blips, to Aphex weirdness, to sequenced madness - you're only limited by your imagination. One website I found online has over 24,000 sounds to download! You won't get bored of this. Start editing and the hours just melt away...

Has worked without any problems so far. Would definitely use it live.

Not had to deal with Clavia yet, but their website is excellent.

If my Micro Modular was stolen or lost, I would replace it immediately - plus, as you can save all your patches on a Mac or PC, I wouldn't lose my killer sounds! I've got a Z1, 303, DX100 and CS5 and it's already become my instant fave. I actually bought this second-hand from a well-known electronic music producer, which shows its top-class pedigree. For under 200 notes (UK) used, I can't see any reason why anyone wouldn't want one of these miniature marvels for producing dance/electronic/trance/electro stuff. GET ONE NOW!

I have the last/latest software 3.03. I can't believe everybody does not own a micro modular.? ?! What a great synth. ! I can't thinkn of the things I would do with a nord modular, ..four micro's in one. I thought it would be boring to use the computer to modify the sounds, ..but people who know me say. .."you look like a mad man when you use the modular editor".

The polyphone depends on the use of DSP in a patch, ..sooo oif you use 10 classic filters and 100 oscillators, ..it may be a problem with voices. The specs says the micro has four voices, ..but there are preset patches with more than four voices, .. ? Last weekend I put my micro in my pocket and visited my friend in a town close by, ..it's just increadible how portable it is.

the sounds , ..hmm mthis is really up to the user, ..but the presets are really cool. , ..more like illustrations of what you can do with the micro.

I have not had any troubles with the stability or connection between the hardware and software.

the support is great, ..may be it has to do with me being Swedish, ..but I always get great support. And the people at Clavia are really friendly and down to earth.

get it now,. .throw away your old crappy Juno 106, D-50, and other gear you only need a micro modular, ..(no but almost..)

This is a pretty straight forward synth, if you know your way around sound design. I was able to start creating my own patches the very first night I had it. The editor is easy to use, no clunky interface to get in the way of working.

4-voices of polyphony at best, but the bigger the patches get, the fewer voices you have at your disposal. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The most I ever use with the NMM is 2. You also have to remember that the old analog modulars where monophonic, so 4 voices is a godsend compared to that! Sadly, it's not expandible, but that's also not really a big deal either. Some may say that the fact that it only has three knobs on the front panel is a bad thing for live use, but how often (once you have a patch set up) do you need to control more than two or three parameters in a patch? What I do is when I create a patch, I figure out what parameters I will need to adjust easily (usually the filter) and assign the knobs to those parameters. With 99 patches that can be stored in the synth itself, that's enough to keep me going in a live situation!
I really like the separate MIDI ports for the dedicated editor too.

Your imagination is the limit with a modular synth. The NMM has that classic Nord sound with a little more. Great for any type of music.

Never crashed. Not once. I'd gig with it in a second.

I haven't had to deal with their support staff, but I'm sure it would be helpful. Their website is pretty useful for OS updates, free patches, and tutorials.

The Nord Micro Modular is one of the best synth purchases I've ever made. Sure, I would have loved to get either the rack or the keyed version of the full Modular, bot I have no complaints about this one! Two thumbs up!

With software upgrade its easy to upgrade via MIDI.

It sounds great - big, warm, fat

With only up to 4 voices, depending of the complexety of the sound, its sometimes to few voices, for instance to fat vocoders when only one voice can be played. But for one sound at time its ok. I use to record a Micromodular Midi-track to audiotrack and then continue. It works and is worht the money it saves from the large Modular

The strength is not to imitate othe instruments, but analog synthesis.

It works pretty good.,

The edit program sometimes lose the connection

Have never used costumer support for this one

A nice little mashine that sounds awesome

Please visit my Clavis Nord Micro,odular page at www.soundofmusic.se

using the software is easy- when connected to my computer all parameters can be adjusted- when not connected to the computer-its more like a preset machine with only 3 knobs and a single switch.
about 30 of the presets sound o.k. the rest need to be changed.
manuals o.k.

polyphony sucks, but so did the real mod synths.
i like the phaser- very powerful, but could do with a proper delay.
i would like a midi thru, had to buy a seperate box just for this, could also do with a merge to transpose midi clocked sequences

great for wierd sounds, which is why i bought it, with a bit of work you can get some truly original stuff.
but as mentioned by others it does sound like a nord, a bit too digital in quality

crashed once, not gigged with yet, but will be soon, let you know then.
its nice and solid though

just go to the website, loads of tutorials, mp3s etc.
they seem pretty helpfull

i bought because i wanted a synth that would be flexible and like a real modular have running in background- i thought sequencers would be really useful, but not as good as polymorphs.
ive had synths since early eighties, started with yamaha dx9, jen sx1000, roland sh101, boss drRythmn and various home made modules.
this synth can sound like them all.
i now have novation kstation(which i love to bits),korg n364,yamaha ex7 and rm1x,Quasimidi polymorph(another fave)and the micromodular.
the micromodular can do some great things but needs a lot of time to set up properly and could really do with a decent reverb/delay....its not perfect but no synth is.
take a listen to airsculptures later stuff or the mp3s on clavias site to hear it in its full glory

The presets suck bigtime on this thing, but i guess the presets are not the reason to buy this machine.
Editing the Patches on my Computer is very easy, and if you are not into this, you can download tenthousands of patches in the internet.

You can edit your own patches in some kind of a editor prgram, and thats easy to use...the hardware ist actually quite simple, three knobs for changing parameters is nt enough in my opinion. Should be 5 or 6 at least, but hey, you can buy a midi controller for that.
Its nice in how many ways you can use this box, also for playing live somewhere. You can use it as:
- Synth (off course*g+)
- Filterbank
- Mixer
- Delay/Phaser/other effects unit
- EQ
- Vocoder
- and possibly a lot of other things i cannot imagine now.

That a bad point for me..you can make a lot of sounds, but they always sound CLAVIA. Its not possible to make a decent Juno Patch for example, unlike Reactor.

Perfect like always on clavia products. Metal Potis, metal chassis...its great..

i didnt deal with their customer support

I would buy it again i think, its nice to have one, you can do so many different things with it, and i wish i would be more creative to use all of the things you can do with this.

This little box can be really easy or really hard to program. It depends on what you want to do. It's not as simple as some portable keyboard, but the manual is very helpful and very straightforward. Just invest some time, and you'll be having plenty of fun.

Simply put, you can take tons of modules and send and process audio, control, logic, and slave/master signals in any way that you want. It's virtually capable of anything. BUT, if for some reason you need lots of polyphony get the full modular.

I've read lots of people say that no matter what you model in this synth, it will always sound like a Nord. This is only my second synth, so I can't say much about that, but I'm sure it's a valid point. Regardless of all that, though, it sounds great, or (if you'd like) you can change the sample rate or digitize the audio signal in your patches and make it sound like crap.

No problems yet, although I've only had it over a week.

Before I got this, I E-mailed Clavia and they answered my questions very clearly within 24 hours.

It's wonderful. Simply a truly amazing machine. If you're thinking of getting one, make sure your computer has a good midi interface. My family pretty much has 2 computers, pretty obsolete ones by today's standards. The Micro won't even work on our newer one, but it works fine on the old one. With both I used a joystick to MIDI cable. When I first hooked up a keyboard to the newer computer, I notice the programs I used seemed to make up notes, so if you have a computer that doesn't interface well with a standard MIDI keyboard, think twice about getting this. Also, the top metal panel seems to come down too far on the rear panel, almost blocking the midi plugs, but I can still get them in with no trouble.

This is the easiest midi synth I have owned to use and I have had 3-4 synths from near every maker. That isn't to say that you can't get lost in it. YOU WILL. I have had patches that lasted for days. The 9 is for a little learning curve.

The midi control is fantastic and an outboard fader box is a requirement to enjoy this puppy fully though I am also finding that fruity loops is a fantasic addition to this. It does get an eight though because some of the sequence controls with this seem a little sparce. Being able to import a midi file would be a good feature. Also sound signals being able to go through the delays.

I deleted all the presets immediately so I don't event know what they were like , but if you're using this for the presets give it to someone else. I have been able to recreate most of the modular analog synths I used to work with a decade ago including most of the Buchla 200 they had at university. I now have a backpack modular synth instead of an ARP2500, but in many ways this thing is better and eing able to save my patches without taking a polaroid of it is fantastic. Techno sounds seem to just blossom out of this thing and i've even used it in some swing music. Someone said that it sounds like a nord all the way but I have been able to get SID chip and even TI-speak and spell filter-type sounds out of this.

had it for a year and no problems even when I haul it in my backpack with the laptop for a porta-studio. I'd gig this anywhere. It didn't like my old interface but it was time to replace that thing anyway

Never delt w/ company

I may be using this synth the rest of my life. Not only would I replace this (or get the full modular) if it were stolen but this synth is causing me to sell off a lot of my other more cumbersome synths. I just don't use those anymore
I would like to see a special version of the Micro-modular. A MM2 for me would
-have the ability to go up to 200% (double the amount of mods) which would mean double the dsp chips. I would have already bought the full nord modular if it were able to link all the DSP chips and get a huge patch with 400%.
-A lot better sequencers within.
-Maybe 2mg of sample memory to re-synth a few samples would be good but I am doing something like this running my sampler into the audio in.
-A USB-interface built in.
-A digital out.
-Some more oddball moduals. I'd like to even see if they can replicated some of the old Buchla control mods from the -700 and music easel. It really does seem that they tried to include only what most people use in this, not what would please the experimental crowd.
-at least eight knobs
Overall just a fatastico synth. I am no longer looking for an old modular. I like this new one just fine.