Small Steps: In Praise of Mutable Instruments Plaits

Check this out. It's a piece of music made entirely with Mutable Instruments Plaits. By me, so you know it's good:

The world of modular synthesis is full of little companies who come and go. Usually they're solo operations run by a dreamer who saw a gap in the market for the world's most counter-intuitive function generator. A dreamer who believed that other people had the same dream.

It's a fascinating intersection of the worlds of music and electronics. Two worlds populated by broken, unsocialised loners who reject the beautiful chaos of human society in favour of a smaller world of numbers and frequencies, but some of their products are interesting. That's the thing about intelligent people. They're weird, but without them we wouldn't have cars or machine guns or antibiotics, so we're lucky they are with us.

I mean, yes, antibiotics are made out of cow pus. They already existed. They were discovered, they weren't invented. But it took an intellectual to squeeze cow pus into a jug and swig it down without immediately throwing it all up again. If that person had never existed we would all be dead of smallpox. I salute you, person who discovered antibiotics. You were a better person than I. Now you are dead but your discovery lives on. All of the people alive today who didn't die of smallpox owe their lives to you. I'm digressing here.

For the most part modular synthesiser companies come and go without much fanfare. Other companies come along to take up the slack. The great churn. It's not unique to the modular world. But some are sorely missed, among them Mutable Instruments. The company began selling Eurorack-compatible modules back in 2013, long before I gave a stuff about modular synthesisers. It had a good run. There were masses of modules, some of which had sequels. But the modular world is economically marginal, and a combination of component shortages and general economic malaise did Mutable in. The company ceased operations in late 2022. Nigel Kneale was right.

Mutable had an unusual approach. Most Eurorack modules use analogue components to process sound, but Mutable's modules are digital, built around ARM Cortex CPUs; the modules are essentially little computers running custom software. Why bother with physical modules? Why not just run the software on a computer? Because, that's why.

Almost immediately the company had a big hit with Braids, a digital oscillator, one of its first products. It stood out because it had a wide variety of different synthesis models. Not just digitally-modelled sawtooth and square waves, but also two-operator FM, formant synthesis that could imitate human speech, a digital model of a guitar string, wavetable synthesis, in total over thirty models. And it had a bunch of modulation inputs as well, so although (for example) the FM model only had two operators, it was capable of a fluidity that was difficult to capture with keyboard FM synthesisers such as the Korg OpSix or the original Yamaha DX7.

Mutable's algorithms and circuit designs were open source, so anybody could recreate them with the appropriate credit. In the long run this was a godsend, because although Mutable Instrument is no more Braids lives on, in the form of a perfect software emulation by Softube; its spirit also lives on in the Arturia MicroFreak keyboard, although the MicroFreak owes a lot to Plaits as well. And there are clones of Braids by other companies in the original Eurorack format, although they too come and go.

Braids was eventually overshadowed by Rings and Clouds, the former an expanded version of Braids' guitar string model, the latter a granular effect that chopped audio into tiny little grains that could be layered and multiplied to form a big wash of noise that sounded awesome when fed into a reverb. And eventually Braids was replaced by Plaits, which had most of the same algorithms in a smaller case. This is my Mutable Instruments corner:

The other module is Yarns, a MIDI-CV interface, although it also has a sequencer, a four-channel arpeggiator, and even four simple digital oscillators. This is one of the benefits of Mutable Instruments' CPU-in-a-box approach. The modules can do a lot of different things, and they can be reconfigured with a software update. Plaits also has a simple filter and envelope, so it can be used as an all-in-one synthesiser module. Mutable's designs can even be loaded with new firmware. In fact one of Mutable's final acts was a Plaits firmware update that added eight new synthesis models. In the image above I'm using one of the new six-operator FM models.

Did I mention the physical design? Mutable's modules pack a lot of functionality into a small space, but the clean layout and simple controls mean that they're really easy to use. The big dials are rubberised, the buttons feel solid, the sockets aren't wobbly, there's enough empty space that I can use the controls without feeling constrained etc. And because the modules are digital they don't go out of tune or require warming-up. Which means that I tend to use Plaits a lot because it's always there and it just works.

Incidentally some of Mutable's modules have hidden easter eggs. Yarns plays a tune:

As mentioned earlier the piece of music at the top of this post was made entirely with Plaits. The lead bassline is the two-operator FM model; the organ sound is one of the six-operator FM sounds from the new firmware update; the ever-present burbly sound effect that runs throughout is the new classic waveshape with the resonance cranked up. The drums are 808 samples played with Logic's pattern editor. The bassline was sequenced with an Arturia BeatStep Pro and recorded into Logic; the rest of it was sequenced the old-fashioned way, with manual note entry.

Plaits and its ilk have some problems. The different models assign different functions to the TIMBRE and MORPH knobs, which is bewildering if you want to achieve a specific effect, or if you just want to try out a lot of models. Some models have the 12 o'clock position of the knobs as "midway between 0-100", while others have it as "selection 16 of 32", and others still have it as "25 on the second of four 1-25 ranges". For most models the HARMONICS knob produces drastic modulation while on others it doesn't do anything at all.

The requirement to patch something into the TRIG input to get the guitar string models to work properly is irritating, because otherwise the TRIG input is only used to trigger the internal low-pass envelope. A couple of the dust / particle noise models have an unusually quiet output. The AUX output is unintuitive.

But there are far worse things in the world, and as a first Eurorack module it's excellent. As mentioned up the page it even has its own envelope, so it can be the core of a tiny Eurorack setup. The models have enough sonic variety that the overall sound doesn't become samey, and although the interface is puzzling you can go a long way by just twisting the MORPH and TIMBE knobs until it sounds good, even if you have no idea what those controls actually do.

Because isn't that a lot like life? When I turn the steering wheel of my car I have no idea what actually goes on inside the car. All I know is that the sounds change, and sometimes the airbag deploys, and sometimes it does not, but I am happy, and that's what matters.

2012 Mac mini: Floimann

Let's have a look at the Late-2012 Mac mini. Lower-case m. Apple spells it that way. They made the world. Their thoughts made the world. They made the thoughts. The world, the thoughts.

A couple of years ago I bought a 2009 Mac mini as a dedicated music computer. It's way old, but until fairly recently it still ran the latest version of Chrome, and despite its modest specification it had no trouble with Logic. But it's very slow, so I decided to try out a newer model.

Preferably one with FireWire, which last appeared in the 2012 mini. I miss FireWire. As a PC person I never had to deal with FireWire when it was a thing. FireWire was a mysterious other, beloved of Apple people. Apple people and their iPods.

The mini is an interesting proposition on the used market. The original G4 mini, way back in 2004, was sold as a budget Macintosh for PC users who might want to try out the Apple ecosystem. It was keenly-priced even by PC standards, but that didn't last. The mini became more and more expensive to a point where it was poor value for money outside a handful of niches.

What were those niches? At various points in its life the mini has been a gateway to the Macintosh ecosystem, a more versatile Apple TV set-up box, a media server, a style icon, a viable alternative to the Mac Pro as a server and audio-visual editing machine, furniture. There has long been a feeling in Apple circles that the Mac Pro is de trop for most things, that the iMac is lumbered with a built-in screen, and that an expanded mini is just right. Especially given that it sips electricity, and despite not being a laptop it's still portable enough to carry in a backpack to work or university etc.

The mini has never had the power and expandability of the Mac Pro, but it has always been a lot cheaper. As of this writing the M1-powered Mac mini has about two-thirds the power of the cheapest Mac Pro, but it's one-eighth the price, so you can buy a rack of the things and still save money.

And at other points in its life the mini has been an overpriced dog. 2012 was one of the good years, although my dual-core i5-powered model isn't a patch on its quad-core i7 contemporaries. But read on, dear reader. Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven, and read on.

This was Apple's design language during the first half of the 2000s. This is a 2009 Mac mini sitting on a G4 PowerBook.

A Brief History of the Mac mini

And I do mean brief. The mini lowercase-m mini was launched in 2005, during the twilight of Apple's PowerPC era. The original model had a G4 processor, with a 1gb memory ceiling and two USB ports. At around £400 it was good value as an ultra-small-form-factor PC albeit that it was very limited. The GPU was no use for games and 1gb of memory was stingy. Two USB ports was no fun. The nearest PC equivalent was this horrible thing from AOpen that was slightly more powerful but a lot more expensive. Would you have been better off with a G4 iBook? Probably, but it was three times the price.

Apple switched the mini to Intel Core Solo and Core Duo processors in 2006, and upgraded the range to 64-bit Core II Duo processors in 2007. All of the aforementioned are cheaply available on the used market but they're only really useful as novelties, or perhaps as more elaborate alternatives to a Raspberry Pi.

The PowerPC models no longer have an internet browser, because development of the excellent TenFourFox has been discontinued. The early Intel models are also obsolete, partially because the 32-bit minis can only run up to OS X 10.9 Snow Leopard, which was discontinued in 2011, and partially because even if they could be patched to run modern versions of OS X their unimpressive built-in GPUs and lack of multi-monitor support are out of step with the modern age.

The 2009 models were the last with the original case design, pictured above. They introduced multi-monitor support and will run OS X 10.11 El Capitan, which was discontinued in 2018. El Capitan was supported by Google Chrome until August 2022, so you surf the internet at your own risk.

For 2010 Apple introduced a new unibody design that complemented the contemporary MacBook. The 2010 Core 2 Duo models had an optical drive, so they had a slot in the front. In 2011 the range switched to i5 and i7 processors and the optical drive was removed. In 2012 the processors were given a significant boost, with the top-of-the-range models moving from dual-core i7s to quad-core processors. The quad-core i7 2012 minis were, for a while, pocket rockets, especially if they were maxed out with dual hard drives and 16gb of memory.

The 2012 i7s still fetch a decent price on the used market. The 2014 models that replaced them had soldered, non-upgradeable memory, and for whatever reason Apple dropped the quad-core processors, which meant that the 2014 models were in some cases less powerful than their predecessors.

The 2014 models remained on sale unchanged for four years, a very long time in Apple terms. The mini had originally been intended to drive people into Apple's arms, but the staggeringly successful iPhone and iPad did that job far more effectively. There were rumours that the 2014 mini would be the end of the line. There were even rumours that Apple would give up on desktop computers entirely, especially given the company's seeming lack of interest in the 2013 Mac Pro.

But some of the mojo returned with the 2018 models, which were a solid upgrade. The most powerful 2018 mini had a six-core CPU with support for up to 64gb of user-upgradeable memory, which wasn't bad at all.

That was the last generation of Intel-powered Mac mini. A a single, mid-range Intel-powered mini remained on sale through 2022, perhaps for server farms, or educational markets who absolutely had to replace their machines like-for-like. But as of this writing the core product is the Apple Silicon-powered mini, which uses a ARM-based CPU of Apple's own design. Physically the Silicon mini uses the same case as the later Intel models, but the CPU is simultaneously more frugal and more powerful. On the downside nothing is user-replaceable, but on the upside the performance of the Silicon models is excellent, and they're back to being good value again.

And that is the story of the Mac mini. For a brief period in 2005, 2006 it had the stage to itself, but then it was overshadowed by the iPhone, the iPad, the MacBook, the MacBook Air, the Apple TV, and the Mac Pro, but it was too cute to die. Have you ever seen a mini in real life? They're more attractive than they look in pictures. Bigger, too.

I briefly considered buying an M1, but I would have to buy a bunch of adapter cables as well, perhaps a new audio interface, and why not buy an M1 MacBook Air instead? I could carry it around. But the Air only has two ports, so I would still have to buy a bunch of cables, and I don't want to spend literally all of my money. And the MacBook Air only supports one external monitor. But it has a nice built-in monitor. But I want a monitor at head-height. Such is the horror and pain of living in the First World.

Let's have a look at my second-hand 2012 Mac mini. It's a 2.5gb late-2012 dual-core i5 model, with 16gb of memory. Technically very similar to a 13" MacBook Pro of the same year. Let's check out the ports:

The unibody models have a bigger footprint than the pre-unibody models, but on the other hand they have an internal power supply. The pre-unibody models have a big external brick, so the overall system footprint of the modern mini is smaller, or at least less awkward:

The 2012 unibody model has Ethernet, FireWire 800 so that you can transfer needle drops of Talib Kweli's Quality and Norah Jones' Come Away With Me to your iPod, a HDMI port that also transmits audio, a Thunderbolt-in-the-shape-of-Mini-DVI port, four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and audio in and out. My 2009 Mac mini's built-in audio was hissy, to a point where I wondered if it was broken, but the 2012 model has no such problem. Compared to the 2009 Mini the 2012 model drops a USB port in favour of an SD card slot. I would prefer an extra USB port.

The 2012 models predate Apple's retina displays and the 4K craze, so the video output can only go up to 2K, and only on the Thunderbolt port. The oldest version of OS X they will run is 10.8 Mountain Lion. Mine came with 10.13 High Sierra, but I downgraded to 10.11 using Apple's very own instructions. Surprisingly it worked without a hitch.

I am only a fellow traveller of Apple, not a disciple, not a priest, not a devotee. My understanding is that the good versions of OS X were 10.4 Tiger, because they finally got it right; 10.6 Snow Leopard, because they finally got it right with Intel; 10.11 El Capitan, because they continued to get it right; and 10.14 Mojave, but only compared to 10.15 Catalina, which controversially dropped support for 32-bit applications entirely. This included pretty much every game from before 2018 or so, not that Mac people play games, but the option would be nice.

I picked 10.11 because Logic Express 9 isn't compatible with 10.12. At some point I'll bite the bullet and buy Logic Pro X, but my wallet is still recovering from Christmas. Modern versions of OS X / MacOS apparently still include FireWire drivers, even though the last FireWire Macintoshes are a decade old at this point.

Upgrade-wise the 2012 model is easier to open than the 2009 model. The 2009 model requires a sharp knife and a cold heart:

The unibody models, on the other hand, have a baseplate that twists off:

Upgrading the memory to the maximum 16gb is a doddle. As with the 2009 model there's space inside for two hard drives, although getting at the second drive is a lot harder, and involves unplugging the motherboard and sliding it out from the back of the case. Mine still has the 5400rpm, 500gb Seagate Momentus that came with the machine, so at some point I'll probably stick in an SSD.

What's it like to use a Mac mini? As with the 2009 model the first thing that strikes me is the lack of noise. My tower PC isn't particularly loud, but the fan noise is obvious; the 2012 mini is essentially silent, with the fans only getting into gear when the temperature reaches 70c or so. As I type these words the machine is idling at 41c. Power consumption is in the 10-20w range, albeit that I haven't pushed the machine. My PC uses 50w at idle, up to 150w or so when taxed.

The low power consumption is one of the things that makes minis appealing on the used market. My old Power Macintosh G5 is great during winter months, because it warms the room, but the power consumption is such that I can't leave it running in the background as a file server or music player because I would go bankrupt. The mini on the other hand isn't burdensome.

The 2009 model coped poorly with 1080p video. The Intel HD 4000 graphics chip in the 2012 model is still rubbish for games, but it has no problem with YouTube at 1080p. Do you remember how PC World used to fill space by reviewing the latest trivial iteration of OS/2 Warp, or whatever, and they would illustrate it with a screenshot of the desktop with a selection of windows just randomly strewn around, including the chess application?

Those were the days. My 2009 Mac mini doesn't feel particularly slow with general internet browsing and writing etc, despite the fact that we live in an age when the typical internet browser is a 300mb download that takes up half a gigabyte of memory with just a few tabs. The 2012 model is more or less exactly the same; it feels no slower than my desktop PC, which is almost three times faster in CPU terms and probably much much much faster when the GPU is factored in.

Games? I downloaded Steam and tried out Eidolon, but then I remembered that the developers warn against running it on the Mac. On my 2012 mini it struggles to maintain 15fps and it's unplayable. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast ran at around 25-30fps, although something about the mouse aiming felt off. I'm not sure if that's an OS X thing.

I concluded based on this limited selection that a 2012 mini isn't a great idea if you want to play games. As a home office tool it doesn't have a built-in camera. It will upgrade natively to the last Intel-era version of OS X, which was MacOS 10.15 Catalina.

System Shock runs poorly, which is nostalgic, because it ran poorly in 1994 as well. There was a contemporary Macintosh version of the game, with upgraded graphics and music, but the Mac version of Steam only has the DOS CD edition, which is played through DOSBox. Alas, Mira Stackhouse didn't make it. The email portraits are scanned images of the game's developers. The internet doesn't say who modelled Stackhouse.

What else can you use a Macintosh for? Writing and stuff, I guess. Did you know that David Bowie used an Apple Macintosh to help write the lyrics for 1. Outside? On a more serious note the i7 iterations of the 2012 mini are more powerful, but they're in an awkward position; for all its lack of expandability a brand-new M1 mini is convincingly faster than even the most powerful 2012 i7 mini, and at £699 for the cheapest brand-new mini it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay £400 or so for a used 2012 i7 model.

Is there any reason to buy an Intel-powered Macintosh in 2023, given that the ARM-powered M1 Macintoshes aren't all that expensive and are much more futureproof? My attitude is that the 2012 mini is old-fashioned anyway, and I'm only ever going to use it as an internet terminal stroke music machine. As an internet terminal the crucial factor is the browser, and both Chrome and FireFox are likely to support the later Intel-compatible versions of OSX / MacOS for years to come. You would however be mad to buy an Intel-powered Mac Pro at this point unless you really do need high-speed video editing right now, but perhaps you do.

Officially the 2012 mini can't run macOS Big Sur, but it can be patched to do so. This involves following a long but simple list of instructions prepared by a chap called DosDude another chap at GitHub. The 2012 mini's graphics chip is modern enough  - just - to work with Apple's Metal graphics API.

Why did I bother? After writing the rest of the post I decided to buy Logic Pro X. The problem is that you can't buy it unless your system meets the minimum system requirements, which as of 2022 included Big Sur. If you already own it you can download an older version, but you can only buy it if you have Big Sur.

After doing this I downgraded to 10.15 Catalina, because Big Sur ran really badly.

And that's the 2012 Mac mini. A silent internet browser that can't play games but can edit video with iMovie and make music with Logic. It can run versions of OS X that were compatible with 32-bit applications, and can also be upgraded to 10.15 Catalina, which still has widespread application support albeit that it was last updated in mid-2022.

Brand-new the i5 model sold for around £500 here in the UK, which was steep, especially a time when tablets seemed poised to make desktop machines obsolete. The quad-core 2.3ghz i7 model was only £150 more expensive but was almost twice as powerful. As of 2022 however the i5 models fetch around £125-150 or so, which is much better value.

It feels odd to think of a Macintosh as a budget computer, but there you go.