Pura Ruina by Noise Engineering
Pura Ruina comprises a three-stage CV-controlled fully-hyphenated full-wave rectifier/distortion created for audio. Each stage has an individual level control with corresponding CV and individual out, as well as feeding to the universal Sum output. PR’s rectification creates a unique flavor of distortion, unlike standard wave folding or clipping. Even simple waveforms sound amazing through PR.
From the design notes of Noise Engineering:
“Full-wave rectification (FWR) transforms a bipolar AC signal so that the negative amplitude portions of the signal become positive. It does cool and interesting things to harmonics. For example, an FWR sine waveform loses its fundamental and has a new fundamental at twice the frequency. This forms the basis for the module: 1 is the dry signal. 2 FWRs the incoming signal. 4 FWRs the signal resulting from 2, and so on.
Most modules in the NE lineup start as one of our conceptions and we champion it. This one was one of Stephen’s. He has been interested in full-wave rectification distortions for a long time: he built his first one in high school! It was only a matter of time before he convinced the rest of team NE that we needed to make one in Eurorack.
Pura Ruina started as a simple full-wave rectification module long before we dreamed up the Distortion-of the-Month series. We initially conceived of it as more of a simple 4hp “anti-filter” that would do really cool things. Then we prototyped it and it did not do really cool things. It did not even do vaguely cool things. We tweaked and tweaked and at least Stephen remained convinced that there was a kernel of…something there. The rest of us were skeptical but believe it might have merit. We sat on it for a few months. And then there was the fateful day when we decided to do a series of distortions. Although the concept for the series was based on other circuits and modules, Pura Ruina quickly slotted in. “
