Moog DFAM

I am a keyboard player with a background in metal, experimental and drone music. Sound quality and personality is the thing I care the most about. I have no previous experience with modular.

The DFAM will not allow you to create complex and nuanced beats: the eight step sequencer means that you'll get two bars worth of drum rhythm, so bear that in mind. However, in my experience, once I find a nice sound (which is all the time, both by accident and by design) those 8 percussion hits end up being be so full of character, versatility, punch, and delicious moog-y fatness that I find myself jamming for several minutes before I ever consider twisting a knob in search for a new beat.

Plug this thing to a delay pedal or VST (warning, you must have a Control Voltage converter) and you'll find yourself swimming in an ocean of infinite drum kicks and polyrhythmic white noise.

If you, like me, enjoy sound design and have an aversion to navigating menus (finding some sort of visceral pleasure in the tactile act of tweaking frequencies by twisting knobs): this thing is for you.

The DFAM is truly an amazing piece of of gear and I use it in two main ways.

Number 1:
The onboard sequencer allows the user to create drum tracks that sound really gritty and brutal, as well as creating killer baselines. Using the sequencers to generate sounds often produces lots of happy accidents as it has mind of its own! Often the accidents take form in different grooves and rhythms that I wouldn't normally come up with of think off.

Number 2
I use the DFAM to create one shot drums all the time, I find that I am able to produce huge kicks with precision, create snares and claps by layering different sounds.

Its these two use cases that has earnt this machine a permanent place in my studio. I have had this product for about 3 years now.

Only down side is that there is no Midi but If you have a CV/Gate source this shouldn't matter too much.

I guess you all heard from the countless youtube videos but the DFAM is not really a drum machine. Its a lot more. Yes, it can make some big kick drums and wicked bleepy percussions but there is so much more it can add to your setup. I love the weird melodic sequences and beefy bass sounds it can make. Got clean loud audio signal with practically zero noise and it really shines when connected up to other euroack modules. It sure is a great machine to play and tweak. I love that while a sequence is playing, if you listen carefully its not hard to tell that every repetition of the sequence is slightly different, this is a character you cant get from any digital or software sequencer.
However, the one downside to the DFAM is lack of MIDI.
Overall, the synth is a beast, so much punch and character.

Looks beautiful, sounds fantastic - that's a classy one beast, in a pure moogish fashion with a broad timbre spectre spreading from earth-shaking basses to psychodelic percussions.

Not really a drum machine but a lot more - even without patching you can get pretty interesting results with a synth structure like that - that's not a set of envelopes and oscillators you're used to, but it has very intuitive and hands-on interface though.

The one thing is missing for me is LFO but that can be easily patched into from some other module. Also the lack of MIDI synchronisation is the other con - CV sync is quite tricky in non-modular setup.

All in all it's a great little synth with it's own character and perfect build quality.

Negative thing first - no sequencer start reset.

Other than that its a very good combination of controllable parameters via cv inputs, normalized connections, soundquality and true analog sequencer.
Best thing is that the DFAM is very versatile and can be used as a dual oscillator synth and not just a drum generator. You can make creative patches without external modules, but with another sequencer and utility modules like a quantizer, it is a super sweet addition to any system.
Value is very high, especially if you have the rack space.
Oscillator range is very wide but don't expect LFO frequencies. The tuning knobs are very sensitive so it is a bit challenging if you are using this for melodic content at a live show - however they are extremely stable.