Oneiroi from Befaco is a mythical variety chocolate box where every flavor is delicious. It’s an experimental slash drone slash sound design treasure box. And now it’s in VCV Rack.
You need an atmosphere. Or you need some unique sound design. Or you crave some experimental drones. Oneiroi is kind of ridiculously ready for you.
The basic idea is to cram a bunch of this stuff into a 30HP module in a way that doesn’t feel crowded. Make it accessible so it’s intuitive to tweak or patch with CV. And then make it easily useful as a standalone instrument or as part of a larger patch.
What’s inside:
- 5-second stereo looper (which can also resample the module)
- Sine, supersaw, and wavetable oscillators
- Multimode filter (including comb)
- 3-band resonator
- 2-tap echo
- Spacey algorithmic reverb
- Tons of self-modulation
- External sync
There’s also a randomizer with configurable targets, so you get a one-button instant random patch (or variations, depending on how high you set the amount / which element you target).
As hardware, this sets you back €484 including tax. (It’ll be a bit of a chore as a kit, but there is a slightly more affordable kit version available – though the kit is currently out of stock.)
And that’s possibly well worth the investment. But it’s also a natural for VCV Rack at $35.
Rack is a perfect fit. Shift and Mod access color-coded overlays for the knobs (the hardware makes that work with takeup on knob position, but we’re in software). There’s also a recreation of the random mode, meaning you can add Oneiroi as an “instant inspiration” voice for any patch.
Here’s accessing modulation parameters:
And here’s shift:
And you get all the CV. Plus it sounds great.
This is not an illustration of everything it can do, but just listen to the gorgeous sounds that come out of it with minimal tweaking even before you connect a single patch cord (ignore the input, it’s not in use here):
I’m sold. Oh, yeah, and I’m kind of enjoying just picking up the Rack versions of these and doing a rapid-fire review. But that’s in the spirit of using Rack, isn’t it? Minimal effort, instant access to modules wherever you go, save money, and patch with your laptop while on a plane or lounging on a couch or in bed. I am 100% okay with this lifestyle choice, even though I do love the hardware.
Befaco Oneiroi for VCV Rack [proprietary license, $36]
