Instruō Cnōc & Cruïnn

What is there not to like about Glaswegian developer Instruō? The company all but encapsulate everything I love about Eurorack. Their hand‑built modules are visually beautiful, with signature gold lettering on a black faceplate and generously sized black and white knobs; their modules’ names are replete with cultural heritage, each a Scottish Gaelic word pertaining to their function (indeed the name ‘Instruō’ loosely means ‘to teach’); they have a keen preoccupation with education and support, producing extensive video content and patch notes; and on top of all of this they’ve gone and made pretty much all their modules available in VCV for free. And did I mention the modules themselves tend to perform rather brilliantly, too?

Enough eulogising; let’s look at two of the company’s newest offerings: Cnōc and Cruïnn. Will they live up to the Instruō standard?

First up is Cnōc, a compact two‑stage function generator that promises utility and creativity in equal measure. Cnōc, if you’re interested, means ‘a natural elevation or raised landscape,’ apparently: poetic, as well as presumably the closest Scottish Gaelic can get to describing a function generator Eurorack module.

The panel presents two LED‑tipped sliders for the envelope attack and release, alongside CV inputs for each and a trigger input alongside a manual trigger button. Switches enable editing of the envelope shape and response, as well as cycling, while CV outputs are present for unipolar or bipolar voltage (brilliantly handy) alongside a gate and end‑of‑cycle output.

It’s an impressive amount of functionality packed into a very small space, but never quite strays into feeling cramped. This is partly because a good half of the Cnōc’s overall real estate is devoted to its two LED sliders,...