The ALM Busy Circuits MCO is a digital wavetable oscillator which pays tribute to the nasty digital and hybrid synth tones of the early 90s, when the Ensoniq Fizmo and Roland Alpha Juno series took synth-based music into the future. It specializes in gritty, aliasing oscillations which can easily be warped and manipulated thanks to an intuitive layout. The waveforms of the MCO are full of tasty harmonics which are equally effective as an FM source, with a conventional Moog ladder filter, or with something wilder such as ALM's own Mum M8.
Despite its innocent design and ultra-simple user interface, the MCO boasts a few pleasant surprises, such as a Main output which responds to PWM and Type control in some modes, allowing for control that goes deeper than simply scanning through wavetables, along with dedicated Sub and Pulse outputs for added bass, syncability, and tonal variety. For Eurorack users seeking to push beyond basic analog waveforms, the MCO's massive sound and entirely reasonable price are sure to turn some heads.
MCO Features
Compact morphing digital oscillator
V/oct input with Coarse and Fine Tune control
PWM and Wave controls with CV input
PWM type input
Available wavetables: Noise, Triangle, Saw, Sine, Bell, Organ, "4 Oct," Organ 2, Voice, Pulse
ALM's MCO is a digital wavetable VCO with 10 waveforms inspired by 90s hybrid synths which hard harsh aliasing oscillators. We rand the MCO through the MUM M8 filter. The Quaid Megaslope is a powerful function generator based on the function generators from the Casio CZ series of keyboards. It can be an envelope, LFO or sequencer with control over timing, shape and level for each stage. Dinky's and Akemie's Taiko create the drums and the Malekko Varigate 8+ is sequencing everything.
MCO - Compact Digital VCO - ALM021
The MCO is a compact but powerful digital oscillator. It features a wavetable output with 9 morphing waves, a pulse output that allows for 4 types of PWM applied to any of those waves, and an octave down square wave output. There are v/oct and sync inputs plus CV over wave selection, PWM and PWM type. In this video we take a practical look at many ways to patch, modulate, and layer the MCO to create a wide variety of tones.
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