Future Sound Systems’ debut desktop is very much in a class of its own.
Just when I thought Bristol’s Future Sound Systems were getting ‘serious’ with the Cric, they put a cartoon frog in its manual with a speech bubble saying, “Hi there! My name’s Francis and I’ll be popping up here and there to guide you towards certain things to look out for when using Cric.”
Francis Crick was, of course, one of the great British scientists, and such in‑jokes would be incredibly annoying if they didn’t somehow align perfectly with Future Sound Systems’ design ethos. From their filters to their oscillators to their modular guitar preamps, the company’s philosophy combines solid pragmatism, labcoat‑worthy experimentalism and a certain light‑hearted — surreal, even — creativity. I say all of this because, in many ways, the Cric is the ultimate expression of this philosophy, which is the key to understanding it.
An all‑analogue, patchable desktop synth, the Cric is quite a beast. At least, it’s more beastly than anything Future Sound Systems have produced to date, but make no mistake, this is a premium synthesizer: patiently designed, impeccably built and, to be honest, with little precedent in its field. Aside from a few diminutive standalone offerings, the company are of course best known for their Eurorack acumen, from which I’m happy to report the Cric draws more than a little. Despite this, however, it’s telling that at this year’s Machina Bristronica exhibition, the Future Sound Systems crew didn’t bother bringing any modular goods with them at all, instead focusing solely on showcasing the Cric.
Complex Oscillations
That modular mindset is certainly still traceable here, however, in that the Cric’s circuits can be patched any which way. Three oscillators and a white noise source constitute its sound generators, but it doesn’t take long to realise that these coalesce to create something far more than the sum of their parts. The first is the Scissor oscillator, which is the most traditional of the three, though in fact it’s also not very traditional at all. It has four wave shapes — sine, triangle, sawtooth and pulse — each with its own attenuator and output. So, right from the off, with these all sounding together in different combinations, there’s already decent scope for sculpting composite sounds with different waveforms. The Scissor oscillator doesn’t stop there, though: beyond its knob for variable FM, switchable between linear or exponential, it has a shape control which of course varies the pulse width of the pulse wave, but also shifts the harmonic content of the sine and triangle waves. This functionality is dependent on a switch which, when on Clean, maintains a ‘purer’ version of those waveforms, and when on Shape imbues those triangle and sine waves with a type of notch at their peaks, resulting in a grittier texture reminiscent of older, characterful analogue synths, as well as FSS’s own Cyclical Engine module.
Next are a pair of ‘DNA’ oscillators. These are curious things, delineated as +DNA and ‑DNA. The +DNA oscillator only outputs positively‑rectified sine, triangle or saw waveforms (that is to say, with the negative‑going half of the wave form flipped to positive‑going) while ‑DNA outputs the inverse. These only have one output apiece of their respective DNA Mixes, but the VCA levels of those constituent discrete waveforms can be individually attenuated and modulated thanks to individual pin inputs.
Pin Drop
This, tangentially, brings us to a conspicuous point of departure from the cabled world of modular: the Cric’s pin matrix. The Cric is one of only a handful of synths of its size to sport one, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a pin matrix‑to‑synth size ratio quite like the Cric’s. If you’re unused to pin matrixes, they can look dense and difficult, even a turn‑off, but be not afraid. Even the most intimidating‑looking pin matrix (the Cric’s is 24x32) actually makes for quick work once you’re used to it. The Cric ships with 25 coloured banana pins, which doesn’t sound like many, but I rarely found myself needing more. Plus you can buy extras on the FSS site.
Measuring 550 x 310 x 80 mm and weighing 5.3kg, the Cric is also the vehicle for a particularly nice shade of blue.
Pins also have more than a few advantages over patch cables, not least the fact that they are much tidier. Some synths’ cabled patchbays are concentrated over to one side of their panels in the name of leaving the panel controls free of clutter, but to me, this can often end up feeling cramped and counterintuitive to patch. A pin matrix avoids this issue, since by definition its I/O must be concentrated into two simple axes. Dotted and solid lines are used here to differentiate sections and the patch points within them, and while it’s not always very quick to trace an input or output up to the patch point, the included banana pins come in different colours which helps. This also makes unpatching and recreating patches much, much quicker, and to this end a notebook makes an ideal Cric companion.
If you are of the 3.5mm cable persuasion, the Cric has a handful of jacks above the pin matrix: four inputs and outputs, a global gate and volt‑per‑octave input, discrete Frequency CV inputs for the three oscillators and a trigger input for each of the Cyclical Function Generators.
The Cric’s rear panel is where we find the power switch, four quarter‑inch audio outputs, four quarter‑inch audio inputs, a headphone port with level control, and an XLR input with gain control.
Complex Oscillations... Cubed!
Which brings us neatly back to the other side of the panel and the Cric’s core signal path. Considering there are discrete outputs for each of the Scissor oscillator’s waveforms and discrete inputs for the DNA oscillators’ frequencies — complete with FM attenuators on the panel — the you’d be forgiven for instinctively patching one oscillator into the frequency input of another when it comes to FM. This you can of course do, and with great results. But here is where the Cric really flexes its muscles, offering a number of handy switches for instantly adjusting the oscillators’ interrelationship. In this respect, there’s no signal normalling in the conventional sense, but there are interactions under the hood that can be instantiated natively. Generally speaking, analogue synths with more than one oscillator commonly place them all on equal footing — notwithstanding one usually having more waveform options or the like — but the Cric handles things differently, using its switches to render the Scissor a kind of ‘master oscillator’ and the DNA oscillators its subordinates.
The first switch is Expo Lock, which forces the DNA oscillators to track the frequency of the Scissor oscillator by sending them the exponential frequency bus of the Scissor oscillator. Next is Sync Lock, which can either hard‑sync or soft‑sync the DNA oscillators to the Scissor oscillators. Then there’s a switch simply labelled Scissor, which harks back to the FSS Recombination Engine Eurorack Module by sending pulse waves to modulate the amplitude of the DNA oscillators — essentially splicing them with on‑off signals. This can be attenuated with the individual waveform VCAs of the DNA oscillators, either manually or via the pin matrix: no change at full, no signal at zero and even wave splicing in the middle. Lastly is PW Skew, which assigns the Shape modulation bus of the Scissor oscillator to the frequency of the positive and negative DNA oscillators, with that going to the negative one inverted. This combined with the fact that the DNA VCOs are inversely rectified means, in short, that (particularly when used with the aforementioned Sync Lock or Scissor) the two will truly grind against one another to create some excellently guttural sounds, as throaty as a 303 and bursting with growling, formant‑like timbral detail. It sounds absolutely fantastic.
The short version is that each switch does something, and each of those somethings is a lot of fun. This is as good a time as any to say that the Cric really does reward blind exploration magnificently. I felt nudged one way or the other at times, but only gently. Or, you might say, I felt a little lost at points, but never so much that I couldn’t easily backtrack a couple of steps to get my bearings. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and one I’d imagine took a fair amount of time in the R&D phase.
Form & Function
The four Buchla‑inspired Cyclical Function Generators, or CFGs, each present a variable attack and decay stage with linear, exponential or logarithmic responses for both and variable‑pulse outputs to boot. CFG 1 and 2 offer independent slope time modulation on the pin matrix, while 2 and 3 offer one input for global modulation of the two. As the name suggests, these can be set to cycle or be used as more conventional envelopes with either AD or ASD topographies. To say their times are wide‑ranging is a gross understatement. At maximum rates they go well into audio rate (approximately 3.6kHz, we’re told) and at minimum they can take over a quarter of an hour to complete a single cycle. Generative ambient musicians rejoice! These do insist on resetting to the master Gate input even while set to cycle, so if you’re wanting slower or asynchronous LFOs at play alongside the global gate, you’ll have to plug a dummy cable into the 3.5mm input for any one of the CFGs.
Unfiltered Filtering
It’s hard to believe, with all that going on in just the oscillator section, that we haven’t even reached the filter. The one in question here is a driveable 18dB/octave state‑variable design based on the FSS FIL4 Timbral Sculptor Eurorack module. I should know about the FIL4 Timbral Sculptor, since I reviewed it myself a while back over in the Modular column. To quote that review: “at its mildest end the FIL4 very much does what it says on the tin: it sculpts timbre. At its most extreme end it creates new timbres entirely, mangling, morphing, ripping and pitch‑shifting sounds into sonic creatures unknown.” And that’s about right for what goes on here.
Into the filter resonance chain can be inserted a Lockhart wavefolder for some very tasty distortion, full‑wave or half‑wave rectification and then a second (that’s right), more complex wavefolder can be placed before or after the filter processing. As with the oscillators, various combinations of these switches are where the magic happens, and to this end I can only say that hands‑on exploration is the way to go. This filter does feel a touch tamer than the FIL4, which is no bad thing since that module — part of its charm — can quite easily bulldoze any sound if you’re not careful, and in the context of a larger instrument, it’s wholly appropriate that this one is a little more willing to play ball.
There’s no other way to say it: the scope of the Cric’s raw sound‑sculpting capability is just massive.
Risk & Reward
With this fundamental combination of an attitude‑to‑the‑power‑of‑ten filter and various combinations of the aforementioned oscillator configurations, there’s no other way to say it: the scope of the Cric’s raw sound‑sculpting capability is just massive. As for other circuits to augment that sculpting, there’s a standalone DC‑coupled VCA, in addition to the various VCAs within the filter and oscillator sections, there’s a sample & hold which can draw on the noise as its source or an external input, and whose Hold input can be the pulse of CFG4 or come via the global gate input. There’s an XLR input with a low‑noise THAT mic preamp capable of 60dB of gain, whose potential goes without saying considering the amount of distortion and filtering options on offer. When I say all‑analogue, I really mean it: there is no MIDI, which may be a turn‑off for some, but then again I also respect this, considering how MIDI‑CV conversion can easily be handled externally.
I don’t know much about what went on behind the scenes during the making of the Cric, but I do know that it represents a risk of such proportion that most companies of Future Sound Systems’ size would never dare take it beyond the breadboard. “This instrument is the culmination of over a decade’s worth of tinkering, testing, exploration of and curiosity in all aspects of analogue sound synthesis,” says the manual’s foreword, and I don’t doubt it. Suffice to say, that risk has paid off. The Cric is an outstanding synth. Powerful, flexible, characterful and usable, it might take you a day to get used to its workflow, and its price might give you pause for thought before taking the plunge, but once initiated into its world I can say with some confidence that you are unlikely to regret it.
Pros
- Mammoth‑sounding, with oodles of distortion, wave folding and filtering to explore.
- Hugely original and creative workflow.
- Excellent build quality.
- Plays very well alone or with other analogue gear.
Cons
- Lack of MIDI may disappoint some.
- It’s expensive!
Summary
Future Sound Systems have outdone themselves with a stunning synth. The Cric is as solid and reliable as it is explorative and creative.
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