Eurorack maker Ghost In Translation announced Drone on August 16 — an 8HP module built around four fully independent drone voices, each running its own selection from 16 DSP algorithms on 32-bit float precision. Unlike a lot of drone modules that give you one flavor of texture, this one is closer to four small synth voices sharing a faceplate: sine-resonant noise, resonant noise, sine-phaser-ring, sine-FM, saw-comparator, and more, each voice able to run a different algorithm at once.
What’s actually in the box
Each of the four voices gets its own 1V/oct pitch input plus CV over mix, shape, and FM amount, so this isn’t a “turn one knob and drone” module — it’s patchable per-voice in a way that rewards actually plugging things into it. A single shape control changes meaning depending on which algorithm a voice is running, which keeps the front panel from turning into a wall of identical knobs.
The two features that stand out on the spec sheet: a built-in looper (up to a minute, or 32 bars synced to incoming MIDI clock) for capturing a drone pass without routing to a separate recorder, and auto-calibration for oscillator tuning — a detail that matters more than it sounds like it should on a four-voice analog-adjacent module, where manual tuning drift across voices is exactly the kind of thing that turns a promising drone into mush. MIDI TRS Type A in and out round out the connectivity, alongside stereo audio out at 48kHz/32-bit.
Open engine, standard pricing tiers
The digital engine itself is open source, hosted on Ghost In Translation’s GitHub alongside a user manual — consistent with how the studio has handled its earlier digital eurorack releases, and a detail worth noting for anyone who wants to understand what’s actually happening inside the DSP rather than treat it as a black box. Pricing follows the increasingly standard eurorack drop pattern: a “Very Early Bird” batch that’s already sold out, with the standard Early Bird batch (reported around €199, full retail €279) to follow.
For a genre — drone and ambient eurorack — that’s had a steady stream of one-voice modules this year, four independently patchable voices with a synced looper in 8HP is a genuinely differentiated pitch rather than another variation on the same idea.