Odessa, by Xaoc Devices, is one of my favourite modular sound sources. At the time of recording, it’s been available for well over three years, but as far as I can see it’s still pretty much the only Eurorack voice of its type - a one-knob-per-function, five-voice paraphonic, digital additive oscillator - and I think it’s often still a bit misunderstood.
So I thought now might be a good time to take a fresh look at Odessa and see how it stacks up in 2023. If you’re an owner who hasn’t used it for a while, I hope it inspires you to dig in again, and either way, I hope you just enjoy some of the sounds and maybe learn a bit about additive synthesis in the process.
Note: I’ve done a few videos in collaboration with Xaoc Devices recently, but this isn’t one of them. I bought Odessa with my own hard-earned cash last year, so it’s not sponsored - I’m making this purely as a fanboy and I have no other agenda.
More on Odessa:
http://xaocdevices.com/main/odessa/
More stuff from me:
https://tomchurchill.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/tomchurchill
https://www.instagram.com/tomchurchill/
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:05 Patch previews
03:33 Odessa 101
16:20 Simple sequencing
19:00 Mixing modulation
21:13 Dirtied-up techno loops
24:38 Deep house chord stabs
29:00 Synthetic percussion effects
32:09 Animating Harmonic Factor
36:42 Through-zero FM tones
39:01 Sequencing paraphonic chords