Listening to Your Eurorack: What You Actually Need
So you’ve got a few modules thrown together in a case, and you realize it may not be totally obvious how to actually get audio from your new synthesizer into your ears. Well, you’re in luck, because this is something we’ll discuss today, and we’ll see if you need any extra modules to do so!
Levels
No matter what external device you’re using to put your euro signals through, you’ll almost always need some way to bring down your audio level. We’re definitely not going to get into a discussion of what ‘loudness’ means here, but conceptually speaking, eurorack gear is louder than pretty much every other instrument you have. So, before leaving your eurorack case, be prepared to attenuate your signals.
The precise amount doesn’t matter in most cases, just as long as it’s enough to not clip your signal. For that reason, most of the time I’m recording my eurorack gear, I simply use a regular old VCA or passive attenuator to bring down the levels. Output modules exist, but most of the time it isn’t even worth it for the HP cost. For recording specifically, I do need a 3.5mm to ¼ inch adapter, but that isn’t difficult to arrange.
An example I use pretty frequently is to patch the Mutable Instruments Veils back into itself to get a final volume control independently from the other VCA stages I’m modulating.
So here’s a question, at what point would you want a dedicated output module?
Stereo Compatibility
You may notice that your headphone cables look slightly different from eurorack cables.
This is because (most) eurorack signals are passed through a cable that transmits only one signal and a ground connection. This is why there are two conductive components on the eurorack cable, as opposed to the three or four on other cables you might come across.
This means you can freely plug your headphones directly into your VCA output, but one of the speaker outputs will have nothing coming out since it’s connected directly to ground.
If you have an audio interface or mixer between your eurorack signal and your headphones, however, they usually expect a balanced or unbalanced mono signal anyways, so you’re fine there. This only becomes an issue when you want to listen to your system with only you, your case, and your headphones.
Again though, you may not need an extra module to listen with headphones either! While it is a bit of a hack, I’ve used alligator clips in the past to manually make connections if I desperately needed a stereo or duplicated mono signal.
The Verdict
So, do you need a dedicated output module to listen to your eurorack synthesizer? Not to get started, no. But once you want true stereo outputs, some extra convenience, or you need your VCAs and attenuators freed up for other duties, it might be worth filling in that extra HP.