Tiptop Audio ART

Veteran Eurorackers Tiptop Audio take on the age‑old problem of polyphonic modular synthesis...

To the layperson, any modular system looks futuristic. I don’t think I’ve ever shown even a modest system to one without one or all of the terms ‘spaceship’, ‘cockpit’, ‘telephone exchange’ or ‘complicated’ cropping up in the conversation somewhere. Often it’s followed by a question along the lines of ‘How do you know what all those cables are doing?’.

It’s not often, though, that I myself am faced with a system that strikes me as futuristic; even less so that, at least in the first instance, no, I’m not entirely sure what all those cables are doing. But such was my reaction upon sitting down with Tiptop Audio’s ART range of Eurorack modules for the first time. The ART series is the company’s most stridently bold product range yet, and that’s saying something: it’s no mean feat to confidently reissue a line of celebrated Buchla 200 series modules for Eurorack, nor is it to step out with a novel, now ubiquitous type of stackable patch cable. Many a newcomer — including me, many moons ago — will have Tiptop Audio to thank for their first rack and power supply in the Happy Ending Kit, a uniquely affordable bare‑bones power supply and rack set.

So, what exactly is ART? Well, in short it’s a signal. In fact, it’s two types of signal. No, wait, it’s just one. OK, I’ll come to that. The name is an adaptation of UART (likely a familiar acronym to those versed in electronics), which stands for Universal Asynchronous Receiver‑Transmitter — but that’s by far the least interesting way of introducing the standard. Tiptop Audio’s spiel, if poetic, hardly helps to clarify things: “ART is a new set of ideas, a paradigm,” they say. “At the heart of it is the new ART control signal. Building upon the potential of the new ART signal, a new generation of modules that had never existed before are now coming to life and give breath to possibilities we could only dream of prior to that.”

In short, that means polyphony. Tiptop Audio have come up with a very nifty design — or two — to make it possible to send polyphonic signals around a modular system. It is mightily impressive, but there’s even more to it than that. Tuning and temperature regulation for ART oscillators is a cinch — standardised, even — while signal flow is reconfigured and streamlined in choice areas. Tiptop insist they have put a lot of thought into keeping power consumption as efficient as possible and I can believe it.

The Octopus USB/MIDI to ART interface and voice manager.So, I have in front of me a selection of ART modules. I will say right off the bat that the system looks simply beautiful with Tiptop’s signature white and gold graphics on black faceplates with white‑ringed jacks — only this time there are sliders, screens and little gold octopodes that remind me of the Spectre symbol in James Bond. The aesthetic is impeccable, with build quality to match. I’ll also take a moment to commend Tiptop on their Mantis case, which I had not used up to now and which is so very flexible, sturdy and ergonomic.

The first thing to notice are the innocent‑looking jacks labelled ART In and ART Out dotted around the system; innocent‑looking, perhaps, because their socket colours might been coloured a little more distinctively than light grey on the CV jacks’ white, but I digress. Here’s the nub: Just one digital ART signal, patched with a good old‑fashioned TS cable from an ART Out to ART In jack, sends polyphony and note event messages, along with a rock‑solid tuning standard and velocity information. Feel free to read that again.

The second thing to notice is the presence of what look like USB‑C sockets. In fact, materially this is exactly what they are; though here the connector is completely reappropriated, with the developer taking great pains to warn us not to confuse the two. These are for the other novel signal format at work in Tiptop’s system, though not its titular one: the fun‑to‑say ‘Polytip’. Polytip cables are analogue multi‑channel audio cables, capable of bussing an eight‑voice polyphonic signal wholesale from module to module (I’m informed it doesn’t stop at eight, but all signs and tentacles point to eight being the standard here). See where we’re going with this?

Getting Patching

The ART V/Oct Quantizer.It all begins with one of two key modules: the Octopus MIDI‑ART interface, or the ART V/Oct Quantizer. The former has a USB MIDI input (a USB‑B port, mind you, so as not to get confused with the aforementioned sockets) as well as a five‑pin DIN MIDI input, and eight separate ART Out jacks. Alongside are eight CV outs for velocity and eight drum trigger outs. Plug a DIN MIDI controller or computer into the Octopus and it’ll convert its messages into ART signals; each ART output can send monophonic or polyphonic signals, depending on the destination, and it can also voice‑manage polyphony across its different outputs. It can also run a clock from your DAW. Tiptop promise that the Octopus is only the first of many ART controllers in the pipeline, and I’ll be very interested to see what else they come out with. After all, this is the very point of entry into the ART world.

The ART V/Oct Quantizer, instead of interfacing the ART protocol with MIDI, interfaces with CV. Patch a CV sequencer or keyboard from elsewhere in your system into one of the four available channels of 1V/oct and gate inputs to meld them into an ART signal. It can also quantise that CV to one of a litany of scales in accordance with the ART tuning standard....