![]() Chuck the dice into the box and it will show you what to patch into where. You make yourself a colourful little box and arm yourself with the included black and white dice. It might sound ridiculous and the little cutout friends might seem superfluous but this cute dice game is a complete stroke of genius. It may have taken you hours to get anywhere near this level of enjoyment had you bought them separately. And while both synths come with comprehensive manuals it’s the Patchbook that really brings them alive in an integrated and interactive way. Semi-modular synths can be a bit daunting at first and can quickly become frustrating if you’re not sure what you’re doing or how things come together. The Patchbook is a vital part of the machine that will give you the best chance of having a satisfactory synthesizer experience. At the end of the book there are a number of Tips and Tricks to push ideas further and get experimenting. There are another 15 patches to explore that don’t only show you how to position the knobs and cables but suggest ways you can develop the patch. It just takes a moment to refer to the Patchbook and recover the patch as it is all laid out for you and you’re back at the Jumping-Off Point and in synthesizer heaven. Very quickly you’re messing with knobs and flicking switches and enjoying the interaction until you find yourself lost down some rabbit hole. The DFAM feels really loud and crunchy and was a complete surprise as I’d never used one before. ![]() ![]() You hit Run/Stop on the M-32 and they both spring into life in the most brilliantly banging way possible. You put all the knobs to the positions shown, patch a couple of cables, then they tell you to enter a quick sequence into the Mother-32 as you learned about in lesson 1 – which you now have to go back to because you skipped it to get to this first patch. The first patch is called the “Jumping-Off Point” which they say is a really good place to start exploring. Plug the DFAM and Mother-32 into inputs 1 and 2 and you have 2 spare ones for another synth or 2. It has 4 inputs which can be paired into stereo inputs and a single stereo headphone output which could also drive some speakers. So in order to successfully use these two synths together without assuming you have other gear to sort that out Moog have included a neat little summing mixer. They have a single mono output on the back and various outputs via the patch bay for routing into Eurorack. Neither the Mother-32 nor the DFAM has headphone outputs. Once it’s all together it makes for a neat little console-style workstation with everything you need within reach. For a more detailed look at the assembly check out my video at the bottom of the review. If you wish, you can mount the patch cable holder onto a wall or shelf if that’s more convenient. It’s a useful place to keep the 10 patch cables which are of three different lengths and is held in by the top pair of screws that hold the synths in the brackets. The “Patch cable tines” is a slightly odd way to describe a patch cable holder but I guess I understand what they’re getting at. With the factory also comes a bunch of cartoon cutout “friends” that lend themselves to creating a colourful Moog atmosphere around the synths. ![]() Along with the DFAM and Mother-32 you get a little summing mixer, patch cables, brackets for holding the synths, a “patch cable tines” which holds patch cables, manuals, a patching guide book, a poster and a pop-out Moog Mini Factory dice game for generating patching possibilities. The internal packaging is cleverly designed and you’re already feeling that a lot of thought went into this. It comes in a custom made and beautifully decorated box. The Sound Studio bundle offers a bit of a classic bass and drums combo for everything from instant Techno to acidic motions, through ambient explorations and banging wobbles – you know the sort of thing. They both have patch bays to the right which open up all sorts of modulation and cross-synthesis possibilities. The DFAM or Drummer From Another Mother is a rhythmic percussion machine with 8 steps of pitch and velocity running 2 oscillators and noise in new and interesting ways. In case you haven’t come across them before the Mother-32 is a single oscillator analog monophonic synthesizer with a classic ladder filter, 32-step sequencer and mini keyboard. For this review Moog sent me the Mother-32 and DFAM Sound Studio and I’ll be talking about this bundle specifically although the concepts and contents (other than the synths) are identical for both. There are currently two versions: one with a Mother-32 and a DFAM, the other with a DFAM and a Subharmonicon. ![]()
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