ARES

Overview

ARES is an inspired-by, enhanced recreation of the Moog DFAM — a semi-modular analog percussion synthesizer built around two oscillators and noise driven through a 4-pole Moog ladder filter, played from a hands-on pitch-and-velocity step sequencer. It keeps everything the DFAM is loved for — the punchy analog voice, the sequencer you play like an instrument, the patchbay — and deletes what it’s famous for lacking: it adds MIDI, preset and pattern memory, real swing, quantization and a character FX section. Unpatched, it sounds and behaves like a DFAM from the first click.

The red one. Second look of Collection I — Maison Modulaire.

Features

• Punchy percussion voice — Two VCOs (triangle/square) with hard sync and linear FM, into noise and a 4-pole ladder filter (LP self-oscillating, HP intentionally gentle), with three decay-only envelopes and per-step velocity scaling.
• A sequencer you play — 16 steps (hardware: 8), 8 storable patterns with chaining, per-step gate/rest, ratchets, probability, real swing and playback directions, plus an optional scale quantizer.
• Full MIDI & host sync — Sample-accurate tempo sync, MIDI note modes, MIDI clock and full automation — everything the hardware refuses to remember.
• Preset system — Total recall of knobs, cables and patterns, a factory bank recreating the manual’s patch sheets, and a curated, attributed community bank.
• Character FX — Bypassable drive → tempo-syncable delay → reverb, voiced for percussion and invisible when off.
• Fully patchable — Draggable virtual patch cables over the DFAM’s real jack map, normalled routing visible until broken by a cable.