"Come, family. Sit in the snow with Daddy and let us all bask in television's warm, glowing, warming glow." - The Simpsons, Season 6, Episode 6: "Treehouse of Horror V"
It's funny, right? It's funny the impact memories of early consumer-grade media technology have on so many. The warbly family VHS, the busted cassette tape player, the dusty, old video game console. We've already got you reminiscing, haven't we?
It's also funny how, from these undeniably antiquated forms of tech, we have a whole sub-genre of musical effects: glitch. What would your mom and dad say if they knew, in the 1980s dropping hundreds of bucks on LaserDisc, that someday you'd be scavenging eBay looking for a secondhand one – forgoing the ease and convenience of a Roku player they once only dreamed of – well, we probably don't have to hypothesize what they'd think. You probably already know.
The lo-fi and glitch music communities owe their livelihood to the cheap, faulty designs of early consumer-grade tech. Circumventing the understandable frustration and accusations of hipsterdom, there is something beautiful about the revitalization and reappraisal of such obsolete forms of tech. The fact that they were not only given a second lease on life, but now get an honest-to-goodness red carpet treatment from a big name like Meris is nothing to scoff at. Let's talk about that.
This is the Meris Ottobit X Modular '80s Texture Engine.
How Soon Is Now?
Introducing the Meris Ottobit X Modular '80s Texture Engine
The Meris Ottobit X is a lot of things. It's an evolution on their popular series of Ottobit glitch effect units, most recently covered by their Ottobit Jr.. It's another entry to their celebrated "X" series of effect modules à la their Mercury X, LVX, and Enzo X. It's a library of glitch, lo-fi, and synth effects supersized to alien motherboard proportions. Above all though, the Ottobit X is a celebration.
Let's start at lo-fi, the term "lo-fi," the philosophy of lo-fi. What is lo-fi? Well, when it comes to pedals, that usually refers to a cloudy modulator or a spotty delay – an effect with imperfections baked into its DNA, intentionally rejecting the high fidelity the twenty-first century is accustomed to. If you could have the best quality for your musicmaking, why not have it?
"Lo-fi" does cover those terms, but Meris undeniably opens the umbrella when it comes to celebrating lo-fi. What does lo-fi mean? Well, lo-fi means cloudy modulators and spotty delays. To Meris, it also means distorted '80s synth pads, it means VHS static, it means '90s hip-hop sampler grain, it means rudimentary video game console sound chips. It's David Cronenberg movies, it's Bootsy Collins bass processing. It's a frame of mind where man, getting this to work is so labor intensive and there's such a capacity for failure that you might have to scrap it all and start all over, but there's no way else to do it and nothing else like it.
It's a love of the game. It's loving your gear because of its imperfections, not in spite of them. The Ottobit X is a celebration of that.
Ghost In the Machine
Meris Ottobit X Modular '80s Texture Engine Design and Controls
At the jump, the Ottobit X lays out familiarly to other Meris X Series modules. A sleek, sturdy casing with four footswitches and a handful of front-facing dials greets you at the pass. From here, we can start at square one and show off how quickly we're off to the races with the Ottobit X.
Meris Ottobit X Control and Workflow
Centrally, the Ottobit X follows in the example left by its brand's most recent X Series model, the Enzo X. The Ottobit X contains thirty-three banks of three preset effect slots each. Use the three leftmost footswitches to navigate the banks – press footswitches one and two to bank down, press footswitches two and three to bank up. Once in the bank, the three left footswitches select a corresponding preset within that bank. Easy, right? From there, we have some unifying philosophies that permeate throughout the whole experience.
Around the WorldThe Ottobit X features a few front-facing control dials that shape certain parameters globally across every bank and every preset. Controls for Sample Rate, Bits, Filter, and Level perform the same tasks on each effect. Owing to its origins as a glitch pedal in the Ottobit Jr., the Ottobit X puts its best glitching foot forward with global controls for sample rate and bit rate. These two controls to work somewhat in tandem to break down each preset effect to grainier, blockier, fuzzier, and more distorted ends – which doesn't even hint at hitting the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the vast sonic spectrum under the Ottobit's hood. Sample and bit rate reduction on a more traditional synth pad? Makes enough sense. On a spiral staircase harmonizer, climbing and falling? Buckle up.
Things are furthered by the pedal's Filter control, a pretty essential component in any synth-style pedal, smoothing or spiking tones as needed to fit into a mix or cause a stir. The Ottobit X's two "Ambience" dials underneath its LED display screen swap to parameters unique to each preset. With global and individual parameters to shape on each preset slot, the Ottobit X offers the close customization of powerful digital modules and the hands-on interactivity of more streamlined pedals. Its prominent, clean and clear LED display assists further with parameter changes and navigation utterly headache-less. What this adds up to is a synth module and pedal with quick tools for tone shaping and a vast expanse of tones to shape. Speaking of...
Don't You (Forget About Me)
Meris Ottobit X Modular '80s Texture Engine Tones and Playability
As we mentioned, the Meris Ottobit X is chock full of the lo-fi and glitch tones you'd expect to see – your cloudy vibratos, your grainy delays, your fuzzy reverbs. However, as we alluded to, it is also strikingly surprising in its wide, wide palette of inspirations. You'd expect chiptune bleeps and bloops. You might not expect everything else this pedal is packing.
The Ottobit X really throws you for a loop in terms of the places it can go throughout its factory preset bank. Navigating its presets truly charms you with the variety of musical tones it creates and the variety of media sources from which it pulls inspiration. Like we said up top, the Ottobit X is a celebration of lo-fi – but more broadly, it's a celebration of physical media and the nostalgic feelings so intwined. For just a taste of the kind of tonal palette the Ottobit X is working with and how it's sure to put a big, dumb grin on your face, let's talk about just some of our favorite factory presets.
#47: Water LevelIf you were putting together a pedal that fully absorbed the kind of dreamy, nostalgic, slightly off-kilter tones of physical media, where would you start? Donkey Kong Country is as good a spot as any, we'd say. Starting off with one of the "square one" textures of lo-fi and glitch, the Ottobit X's "Water Level" preset hearkens to the bright, cool, haziness you'd always get hitting the part of your favorite game when you took to the briny deep. Inspired by the rudimentary sound design of early video game consoles, Ottobit X offers brilliant means of diving into the deep end.
#30: Otto ScratchSomething truly striking about the Ottobit X is not only that it covers your classic bit-crushed beeps and boops, your sci-fi synth pads, and your melancholic, warbling tape textures, but covers areas you might not even immediately associate with lo-fi. How about hip-hop? A genre so ingrained with lo-fi gear and dusty vinyl grain has more than earned its seat at this table. "Otto Scratch" throws it over to classic hip-hop rhythms through clever delay and glitch techniques to create record scratch-style rhythm textures. The grainy warmth of lo-fi hip-hop beats are found elsewhere in the Ottobit X with presets inspired by the lo-fi samplers of underground rap records, as an example. Chicka-chicka.
#36: Stuck On RepeatShowing off its real glitching power, the Ottobit X's "Stuck on Repeat" preset shows glitching at its most expressive. This preset functions as a pseudo-phrase sampler, where played phrases get delayed and caught in an auto-looping cycle. Perfect for creating rhythmic sequences on-the-fly, this preset also reintroduces the Ottobit X as a deeply expressive textural engine. Strum a chord, kick off your phrase loop, put down your guitar, and get to work on the pedal's knobs as you crush and filter the phrase in real time.
Throughout the Ottobit X's factory preset library, Meris brings you on a veritable journey through the glitchy, the faulty, and the nostalgic with mind-bending synthetic textures at every turn. Just when you think you've heard it all, the pedal whips out another out-of-left-field reference, glitch style, or sound effect texture. Step sequencers, infinite sustainers, harmonizers that sing their song all by themselves, the Ottobit truly leaves no stone unturned when it comes to retro musical tones and styles.
She Blinded Me with Science
Meris Ottobit X Modular '80s Texture Engine Further Functions
As we start to round out this trip down memory lane, let's cover just a few of the features that make the Ottobit X a fluid and robust piece of equipment.
- Analog Signal Path – It's no secret that the Ottobit X is a powerful digital device. Luckily for us, this does not come at the expense of signal fidelity. The pedal's analog signal flow design with an analog JFET input retains the body and warmth of incoming signals alongside high-fidelity 24-bit AD/DA conversion.
- Line and Instrument Level – In tandem, the Ottobit X offers opportunities to meld to instrument or line level inputs with onboard configuration of such levels. Whether you're looking to plug your guitar, synthesizer, drum machine, or whatever else you got into the pedal, you have the freedom to get it sounding just right.
- Full Stereo Routing – Motherboard rigs rejoice, the Ottobit X is fully stereo enabled. Individual ¼" input and output connections mean the Meris creation is ready to get hooked up to even your most complicated and cluttered desktop rigs.
- MIDI Implementation – Those really in the weeds with the digital design and control can rest easy knowing the Ottobit X is implemented with five-pin MIDI connections for clock sync and parameter control. Paired with a dedicated expression control jack, the remote control capabilities over the Ottobit X are endless.
- Standard Power – Though massively powerful and expressive, the Ottobit X operates on standard nine-volt, center negative power supplies with a 300mA output. Fairly standard fare for power supplies, these days, and considering the depth of function of the pedal, the Ottobit X is ready and raring to go.
Meris Ottobit X Modular '80s Texture Engine Final Thoughts
Alright, so what have we got? The Meris Ottobit X is a pedal that must be experienced if you're a fan of lo-fi beats, chiptune, VHS tapes, '80s sci-fi fantasy, underground hip-hop, all that stuff. It is a seemingly endless parade of everyone's favorite textures from nostalgic preamp fuzz and grain, to tape reel wow and flutter, to vintage filtering and processing, Blade Runner, Scanners, TRON, Donuts, DOOM – listen, we could go on.
The Ottobit X is an exceptional gallery of retro musical styles, though it's also a smorgasbord of effects to use just about anywhere. Anyone could use a finely-tuned vibrato or an unconventional delay. The Ottobit X delivers in droves for an expansive, one-and-done module to accomplish so many melodic, textural, rhythmic, and sound designing tasks. Anyone in the business of getting across an auditory idea is sure to find something in the Ottobit X to connect with. Meris lets their list of beloved, retro musical modes run long. The Ottobit X is a masterful document of times bygone and a love letter in the realest sense.
