I’m the sort of person who is far more comfortable in dark spaces than I am with bright, overhead lights. I also love how colourful lights look in pictures, so am always on the hunt for different ways to implement LEDs. They also go hand in hand with a sweeeeet looking music setup.

Anyway, I used to have a neon sign in the home studio which gave a real nice ambience, but unfortunately it blew up… so I had to hunt for a replacement. I trialled some 5v RB LED strips on the outside of the case, and it looked pretty cool – but it needed some tweaking.

I came across the Doepfer A-197-3 module which allows you to control LEDs with CV signals from the Eurorack, and it got me thinking. I didn’t want to spend the money or HP on the Doepfer without first figuring out if it would be worth it. It worked with 12v LED strips, so I picked up 5m of them off of eBay, complete with what claimed to be a ‘sound reactive controller’. In theory, it should play along nicely with the audio output from my rig, though to be honest, I wasn’t holding out much hope. These kinds of thing are infamously of questionable quality, and I fully expected to have to pick up the Doepfer module anyway.

However… it actually turned out alright. The modes and sensitivity controls work quite nicely, and despite a few hiccups, putting the strips together was easier than I expected. I ended up lighting the outside of the three main parts of my setup, and it looks pretty great. I put together a video below going into some more detail, and showing them in action. Take a look below if you’re interested.

This isn’t going to be the end of the lighting adventures though. I have a few ideas up my sleeve that I am going to try out over the next wee while, so watch this space (and maybe subscribe to the YouTube).