Three New Noise Engineering Modules

US Kith Ruina distortion module and two large-format oscillator modules released 15/05/19

Noise Engineering has announced the availability of three new products: Kith Ruina, the newest addition to their Ruina line of distortion modules; and Cursus Iteritas Magnus and Ataraxic Iteritas Magnus, two contrasting oscillators for the 5U format. Here's their press release with the full details...

KR brings the utility of a guitar tonestack—complete with distortion and pristine EQ—to a Eurorack module, shipping May 17.

CIM and AIM bring 5U into new territory. Based on their similarly named Eurorack counterparts, CIM is a melodically oriented dynamic wavetable oscillator while AIM is an industrial and experimental bit-table oscillator. Both will be available May 24th.

Noise Engineering announced earlier this year that they would be releasing a distortion module each month for part of 2019. Following Terci Ruina’s release in April, Kith Ruina has been announced as the next module in the series. KR is based on the concept of a classic guitar tonestack: a single-knob distortion circuit followed by a simple EQ. Warm saturation all the way up to complete overdrive is possible with the Drive circuit for endless tone-shaping possibilities. The Tone section’s EQ is clean and transparent, complementing the aggressive Drive section perfectly. The High and Low bands can both boost and cut, and has a switchable midpoint, offering much more versatility than your standard two-band shelving EQ.

Like Terci Ruina, Kith Ruina is 100% analog. The drive section is normalled to the tone so you can use both sections seamlessly. Prefer to use each section separately? KR also features separate ins and outs for the Drive and Tone circuits, so the analog EQ section can be used for mixing and tone-shaping utilities while its drive circuit simultaneously distorts other sounds, offering a surprising amount of utility in a 4 hp module.

With its wealth of features, low price point, and small size, Kith Ruina is sure to find a home in any system and any patch.

Noise Engineering’s first product, Ataraxic Translatron, was a smash hit, bringing them to the forefront of digital sounds in Eurorack. Followed by its bigger brother, Ataraxic Iteritas, Noise Engineering went into unexplored territory for what hardcore oscillators could sound like. Now, Ataraxic Iteritas Magnus brings the same sound engine to large-format synths. By popular request, Noise Engineering brings more experimental sounds to 5U with AIM.

AIM’s sound creation starts with one of three sets of bit tables. Waveforms from these tables are then morphed, folded, comb filtered, noise modulated, and annihilated into what is by far one of the most aggressive and unrefined oscillators on the market. AIM encodes waveforms into tables for each of three modes. In LFSR, the linear-feedback shift-register-based mode, the table is based on the same waveforms as the original Ataraxic Translatron, but get octave shifted differently. SQR is a square wave that is amplitude modulated by the harmonic series so turning the waveform knob will blend between harmonics. SQR2 is the same except the modulating pitch goes up an octave every waveform. With these diverse ways of generating sound, AIM can be used for anything from simple 8-bit-like sounds to beautifully shaped pieces.

Cursus Iteritas Magnus is Noise Engineering’s most melodic oscillator to date. Ported to 5U, Cursus Iteritas Magnus is sure to appeal to the more gently inclined sound designer as well.

Cursus Iteritas Magnus’s tones are created from a dynamically generated wavetable. Spectral-like controls function similarly to a bandpass filter; center, width, and tilt allow the filter to be asymmetric. CIM has three different modes based on different conceptualizations of frequency: Fourier, which uses sine waves; Daubechies, using wavelets, and Walsh mode, using the Walsh transform. The controls Cursus Iteritas Magnus parametrizes a wide variety of sounds, but because the sounds are all based off of orthogonal functions, it has a musical tone structure and can produce an extremely wide variety of harmonic sounds. Oversampling of the wavetable depends on pitch: Oversampling of the wavetable depends on pitch: lower octaves have higher oversampling since the sample rate only varies by a factor of two. The Edge control interpolates the oversampling from point sampling to a cubic-spline interpolation (NURBS). As the period of the full length of the wavetable always evenly divides the sample rate, the additional aliasing is largely harmonic in nature.

In many places in the signal path, there are analog-style soft clipping stages to give more warmth and complexity to the sounds generated. CIM’s tonal control leads to incredible flexibility, and it can be a lead, a bassline, or even percussive.

About Noise Engineering
Noise Engineering started when co-founder Stephen made a prototype Ataraxic Translatron on a dare one weekend. One module led to another and Noise Engineering is now known for digital oscillators, quirky sounds, and their “Latin-ish” naming scheme. NE currently makes hardware products in Eurorack and in 5U, and Rack Extensions for the Reason platform. Based in sunny Los Angeles, all products are designed in-house by husband-and-wife team Stephen and Kris, with copious input from tester/modular extraordinaire Markus, and are manufactured in Southern California.

Pricing and Availability:

Kith Ruina is $133. Preorders are now open, and it ships on May 17th

Ataraxic / Cursus Iteritas Magnus have an introductory price of $355 through June 24, ($444 regular pricing). Preorders are now open, and orders ship on May 24th.

More information: