Manufacturer	Garagecube
Website	Garagecube Modul8 Review
Platform	OSX
Price	€ 299
Rating	Average: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

Modul8 offers ten fully adjustable and scalable layers to composite and position in a variety of different ways. The best thing about Modul8 is that its geared towards transparency and ease of use. It wants to be instrumental and based on playing, not thinking. I enjoy mixing with Modul8, not just the end result, I dig the process of getting there, too.

When Garagecube announced Modul8 on VJForums earlier this year, everyone was drooling over the slick-looking interface. I'm pleased to report that it measures up to expectations in offering a great balance of simplicity vs. control. It's clean and clear but doesn't feel 'dumbed down'. The nicest control function is being able to move the position of a layer by use of the 'previsualization panel'. It's a little multi-use view window/scratch pad area that lets you pick up a layer and move it anywhere as directly as pointing with your finger or drawing with a pencil.

Probably the area where the most development is needed is in effects. M8 doesn't really offer any filters other than color/contrast adjustment and a variety of scaling transformations. Though i think that M8 is a good enough tool without them and should never be dependent on filters, having a few effects (or integration with Freeframe plugins) would definitely open a slew of options for the user. Of course, with this you begin to sacrifice some of that clean interface design.

MIDI and keyboard programing is simple and robust, but it has some limitations. After working with some max/msp programs I'm admittedly a flexibility junkie, so I may ask for too much.

I've been testing the machine on both a Dual G5 tower and a 550 mhz powerbook G4, so both the high end and the bottom of the barrel. I was pleasantly surprised with the performance of the 16MB video card on the Powerbook. I designed a video piece for a theater show at home on the tower and was able to pull it off pretty well using the laptop. So even though the Garagecube recommends a 64MB video card, but my feeling is you can get away with less as long as you are not using all ten layers. You may get dropped frames here and there on the low end of the processor spectrum, but the point is that you CAN play. By the way, once you have ten layers to mess around with, you realize just how much that is. I don't think anything I've managed to do (so far) uses more than six layers. On either machine, the program is stable and responsive.

Modul8 may not suit everyone's playing style, but for those looking to move away from 'A-B mixing' into 'live-compositing' then this is a great tool to mix with.