Steady State Fate Zephyr, a new thru zero analog oscillator for Eurorack with Z-modulation that opens the door to complex waveform generation.
Currently, the developers seem to be enjoying new oscillators again. We remember that only recently, three companies introduced new exciting oscillators: Make Noise the XPO, CubuSynth the Engine, and a few days ago, Weston Precision Audio the 2V2 dual analog oscillator.
And because it’s not hard enough to choose one of these, the US-based Eurorack company Steady State Fate has also released a new sophisticated analog oscillator.
Steady State Fate Zephyr
Zephyr is a new 10HP thru zero analog oscillator based on the SSI2130 chip. It is not only capable of generating classic waves, but it can also quickly dive into the complex realm. According to Steady State Fate, it’s a mashup of the excellent traceability and octave switching of their Spectrum VCO and the complex waveform generation of the Zero Point oscillator module. Plus some additional unique features.
The module produces classic saw, pulse, sine, triangle waveforms, and a sub-signal. There are outputs for each of the waveforms. You can adjust the tuning with the fine control with an octave range and the big coarse knob that gives you 7 octaves. Oh btw, you can also switch the tuning to LFO mode that turns the module into a 7-octave LFO. You can choose between a 1 or 2-octave sub output for the sub.
Then comes the exciting thing about the module. Zephyr has various built-in shapers allowing you to add harmonic content to the waveforms. Let’s start with the most classic: pulse-width modulation, aka PWM. This one isn’t that classic. SSF offers two flavors of PWM: edge and center, each with its own character. It affects the pulse output and the sub-generator, which is pretty nice. Plus, you get switchable linear and exponential FM.
Z-Modulation
It gets much wilder when you look at the Z modulators. In the center of the module, you can see a Z-WAVE control. It mixes an overdriven sine wave + voltage-controlled folding and a PWM pulse wave. Very rich waveforms arise from this extraordinary mixture, leading to complex oscillators’ spheres.
Further, there are three unique CV-controllable ZMOD modes available: through-zero phase modulation, ZYNC (hybrid reversing sync with linear TZPM), and FLIP (hard waveform reversal). This triples the shaping possibilities, and the results from these Z shapers are very special and wild. Additionally, you get a hard sync with a universal response to any waveform input.
And all these functions can be controlled manually with a knob or with CV. Also, the multi-mode ZMOD has a dedicated input with an attenuator and an index VCA CV input.
SSF has given its new Zephyr oscillator a lot of functionality on just 10HP. I really like the different ways to shape the waveforms in the Zephyr, especially the Z modulation. That you can immerse yourself in the complex Oscillator world on only 10HP is awesome. Normally these “complex” modules are way bigger.
Steady State Fate Zephyr is available now for $379 USD/438€.
More information here: Steady State Fate
Available at my partner
SSF has an unfortunate choice of letter for its Rossumesque mod core on the Zephyr.
One hopes we can welcome that letter back from the land of cringe at some not-too-distant time. That time is clearly not now. One hopes, further, the SSF guy did not purposely visit this now-fouled symbol on musicians for its terrorist-state messaging.
nonsense
A big ‘Z’ yeah, I want to look at that in my rack… NOT! Currently this stands for the global terrorism and war mongering of the Russian state.
lol, then we should ban all Zorro movies…
…or rewrite the alphabet without Z or V, perhaps it is better to adopt the Chinese alphabet…. oh no, the Chinese are bad according to the NWO.
Sounds amazing, luckily sales won’t be affected by the 1% who are scared of the letter ‘Z’ lol