Ohmforce is a French brand that first made a name for itself in the early-mid 00s with a series of now-legendary VST plugins like Ohmicide and Ohmboyz that left a big impact on the sound of electronic music during the 2000s and early 2010s.
In more recent years, they have also begun designing hardware, beginning with the Ohmicide ER module first unveiled at SuperBooth2024. Their most recent product is the Bohm kick module, an entirely new design that comes with two expanders (Performer and Groove) to form the "Bohm Kick System", a comprehensive kick and lowend solution for the Eurorack format.
In this interview with Ohmforce's Raphaël Dingé, Raphaël goes into how Ohmforce got into the hardware Eurorack space, the inspiration behind the new Bohm modules, their unique artist-feedback led development process, plans for a potential new percussion module, as well as what's it like to come full circle after twenty five years in the music technology business.
Stromkult: When and how did you decide to get into making Eurorack modules?
Raphaël Dingé: We already wanted to do hardware versions of our software plug-ins around twenty years ago! Back in the day, Marc from Eowave contacted us to make a MIDI rack controller for the OhmBoyz plugin, much like the controllers Soundforce is building today.
It didn't happen at that time, because producing digital audio hardware was quite a big financial risk, everything was very expensive during the product development, we just couldn't afford it – Ohmforce was poor, but sexy (laughs)! But since then we’ve always been on the lookout for solutions that could make it happen.
Then around eight years ago, we worked with Ableton to integrate some of our technologies in products that ultimately became Ableton Push 3, Ableton Move and Ableton Note. It felt like more than half of the company [Ableton] are professional musicians. It's quite amazing to casually come across some of your favorite artists in the company's corridors or on a break, and I met artists like Dean Rodell (Machine Code with Current Value) or Mads Lindgren (Monolog) that made me feel like they are really making the music of five or ten years from now.
I then realized that all of them are integrating sound design into their music-making process, using hardware and field recordings as the raw materials on which they build further – a major shift from the image of a “bedroom-producer” I had in my mind in the past.
We also discovered that Eurorack was already a rich eco system of "affordable" modules – at least compared to 19" rack gear or the kinds of Moog modular synthesizers you would only find in expensive studios – and on the personal side, I had my friends Miquel and Maxime that were working at SchneidersLaden. I was making jams with Maxime at least once a week for more than a year, and I became convinced that what the modular paradigm brought to the process is decisive for electronic music making. From there it didn't take long to persuade the rest of the company to get on board (laughs).
Around the time we started to experiment more with hardware, Electro-Smith came out with the Daisy embedded DSP platform in 2020, which combines a powerful, low-power CPU, good audio codec, and memory. The company was founded by the same people behind Qu-Bit Electronix, so we knew it was going to be a quality platform well suited for Eurorack. There’s a real community around the platform, and that was what we ultimately needed to finally get started with making hardware after all those years – so we jumped on the wagon, and here we are! In the process, we also developed the rapid prototyping platform Eurorack-Blocks for the Daisy DSP that allows for fast iterations between different hardware versions that can then be field tested. We still use it today.
What made you pick the Ohmicide distortion for your first hardware module?
Originally, we actually started working on a port of our frequency shifter plug-in Hematohm. At that time, we met some artists that were making their snare drums in the modular, then recorded them into the computer and processed them with the Hematohm plugin, only to bounce everything and re-integrate it back in their [hardware] chain with a sampler. We never knew they went through such a painful process!
Hematohm was also the simplest port in terms of evaluating the DSP platform’s end-to-end capabilities. We then found out that the latency of digital Eurorack modules needs to be incredibly small – typically, a DAW would run with a latency of around 3ms, while the Ohmicide hardware module has a latency of 250µs, so more than ten times less! It was unclear if we would be able to run any of our software on it [the DSP platform], given that musicians expect to be able to modulate CV at audio rate, and that implies completely different DSP designs that tend to be more CPU-intensive.
But many artists told us that having Ohmicide in the Eurorack format would be a "dream come true" for them, so we decided to fully commit to making that possible – it was hard work, but we managed to do it! At the end of the prototyping stage, we had both Ohmicide and Hematohm as module prototypes. But as I said earlier, making hardware involves quite a bit of [financial] risk, and when showing the Ohmicide module to musicians, they immediately saw that we had a very solid product with a huge range of sound design possibilities within the realm of distortion – so seeing their eyes light up when testing the Ohmicide module made the choice for our first module quite simple!
What was the inspiration behind your new Bohm kick system?
I think there were two main inspirations. The first was that we didn't want to give the impression that we would just be recycling our old plug-in catalog into a different format – porting a software plug-in to a digital hardware module actually requires a complete rewrite of the algorithms, but we can't expect to convince people of that. So we decided to come up with a completely new design.
Around that time, I was also listening to my friend Maxime's vinyl collection in between two of our modular jams, trying to decipher the work of artists like SNTS – and I was just completely mesmerized by the intense emotions that the kick drums and low-end sounds in general could trigger in me. I think I then made the first prototype around three to four years ago, which already had the possibility to change the transient of the kick sound, which is probably the key concept of the main Bohm module.
In the process of trying to promote our Eurorack-Blocks prototyping platform, I also met with my friend Marc Résibois [Marc Nostromo, software developer at Ableton], who had a kick synthesis design that he wanted to realize in Eurorack. We made a prototype together, and that eventually became the successful Battering Ram module from Shakmat Modular! While the final designs of the Battering Ram and the Bohm are completely different, early on in the process, it was very motivating for me to share our knowledge of kick drums and how to conceptualise them.
I was then encouraged to make a prototype version of the Bohm that we could show off at the SuperBooth24, which was also the year we released the Ohmicide module. At that time, the Bohm was basically a wavetable sub oscillator with sample transient layering, but it was already integrating the ducking and DJ filter of the Performer expander. The Groove expander was initially conceived of as a separate module called the "Rohmble". Our SuperBooth prototypes then caught the attention of artists like Krista Bourgeois and Blush Response that are performing or composing live with modular. We got in closer contact after the event, and I think their expertise and advice was really decisive for what the Bohm is today.
What makes the Bohm unique to you?
I think what makes the Bohm unique is really a product of its creation process, more than anything else. With this product, we decided to show our work very early on – like, very, very early on (laughs). The feedback that came from that was that we needed to be able to make a lot of adjustments in real time, and that programming the usual way was not going to make it. So we went back to the drawing board, made tiny software modules out of our DSP, and using a Expert Sleepers ES-8 interface, we could have VCV Rack running on a laptop, but the whole thing could be integrated into a modular system using the ES-8.
With this setup, we went to all the artists we knew and also presented it to the team of specialists at SchneidersLaden. The response was promising and positive, but we also learned that people wanted to have multiple drum machines inside Bohm. And having as many different firmwares as drum machines just didn't seem viable, since artists want to be able to go from one machine to another without an interruption in sound. So that is where the idea for having different models came from.
At some point, we also “secretly” put a Bohm prototype in the basement of the SchneidersLaden showfloor – we had the intuition that the right people would end up reaching out to us, and that it would be good for the product. That's how we then got in touch with Sarah Sommers for example, who had a lot of important feedback on the performance aspect of the Bohm system. So I think we can now say that our intuition was right (laughs)!
How did the randomization feature on the Bohm come about?
As I’ve said, we were working with a variety of different artists when developing the prototype. The randomization feature came about when I went to see Stephane Lefrancois’ studio at the Berlin Gaswerk and showed him the prototype. And he came to like the sound of the Bohm very quickly, but what he then started to do was to patch the Bohm with a Malekko Voltage Block, which is a CV sequencer with a random function. So he was turning knobs on the Bohm, getting a feel for the parameters, patched in the CV, and then just pressed “randomize” on the Voltage Block a bunch of times.
It was totally insane and sounded incredible – I should have really recorded these test sessions (laughs). So in the end, he asked me if we could put a dedicated randomization function into the module, and we did! When doing a Bohm workshop at SchneidersLaden, I also got some requests for the randomization to be triggerable – so now you can also trigger the randomization with external triggers, and you can do all sorts of fun generative things. And the Bohm has a huge sweetspot, it almost always sounds good, so the randomization actually can work really well on a musical level.
Can you say a bit about the different kick models in the Bohm?
The beginning of our journey was really the idea of using transients to shape the timbre of a kick, which was popularized by [musique concrète pioneer] Pierre Schaeffer a long time ago! And from that starting point, there are many, many ways in which you can go. For example, you could use layered samples, but you could also use FM synthesis to create a transient. We also found out that wavetables are another interesting way to generate transients, and that we can even create entire “transient synthesizers” by employing FM operators with square waves, which was also how early analog drum machines synthesized hi-hats.
We now currently have nine models, and they are all unique machines with their own circuits to explore and get lost in. The models are stored on a SD card, so we can add more in the future, and have plans to do so already – one of the models, the PX3 model, really opened up how we think about the sub-oscillator. We also already have some artists that would like to collaborate with us on new models, and we already have ideas on how to achieve what they have in mind.
The Bohm can be expanded with several modules to create a complete package. Could you explain the function of the individual modules in more detail?
The entire Bohm system is a stereo dual-voice kick with performance effects. The main Bohm module is the first kick voice and probably the closest to what people think of as a traditional kick module.
The Groove expander module evolved out of the realization that kick sounds can also be recycled into percussive textures that get the track moving and evolving over time. Techno “rumble basses” are one example in the low-end, kick tops are another for the higher frequencies. So we integrated that “recycling” philosophy into Groove – you can reuse the kicks for delays, washed reverb effects, and all sorts of other noises and effects.
The Performer expander module really came from the understanding that typical live performance effects actually tend to be quite kick-centric. For example, you might need to make some space for the kick by ducking the rest of the track with sidechain compression, and common live performance effects like high-pass filters are typically synchronised to the beat of the kick.
Are there any modules you like to pair with the Bohm when making music yourself?
Firstly, I wish I would have more time to use our products outside of working on them! But the first idea that came to mind was trying it with the Forge TME VHIKK X Drone Voice. I actually have a little story about this – like I said earlier, we secretly left a Bohm prototype in the basement of SchneidersLaden, and Sarah Sommers found it. Then she contacted us and we made a special version for her with her signature pink front panel. She wanted to make a special instrument out of it that she calls Stardust, and she came up with the exact same idea of using the VHIKK X! It sounds lovely in my opinion.
Do you have any plans for further drum and percussion modules?
Yes! At SuperBooth a lot of people actually asked us if we were planning on making a snare module. But when I hear the excellent WMD Kraken or Shakmat Lancer's Lash [snare] modules, I'm not sure what we could add to the table at that point. But I do think we want to focus on the higher frequencies [for a future module]. I've already got a quite precise idea of what I would like to achieve, but it will remain a secret at least for now – just make sure to visit SchneidersLaden and to check for any “secrets” from time to time (laughs)!
Ohmforce started out as a plugin company, and obviously the plugin landscape has changed a lot since then – what was it like back then compared to how things are now?
There was not nearly as much competition. There were a few big names like Waves already, but it was all really more oriented towards the pro audio and engineering side, EQ and compressors and so on. There weren’t many companies making more creative plugins for musicians and producers, and that’s where we came in.
One of our first plugins was the original Ohmboyz, a dual delay with cross-feedback and high/low-pass filters and distortion in the feedback loop. That was pretty much it – I think people today would say „that sounds quite simple“ (laughs) – but for the time it really was something new and it became quite iconic, just like our resonant filter plugin Frohmage. I think it also helped that our GUIs were very eye-catching – you know, that was a big thing back in the early 2000s, it was still all very new back in those early days of the plugin industry (laughs).
It really was an exciting time to be developing software plugins back then. Going to events like the [Musik] Messe, there was a real sense of community between developers, even if we technically were competitors in the market. It seems to us that maybe that feeling has gotten lost a bit over the years in the plugin space – although maybe we’re just old now and the younger developers don’t want to talk to us (laughs). But now that we are also a part of the Eurorack space, going to the SuperBooth for the first time really gave us a sense of excitement and community that felt similar to what it was like to be developing plugins back in the early 2000s. We’ve met so many fantastic artists and great people from other manufacturers, like François from Shakmat, who has been very helpful and generous to us.
So in a way, getting into hardware has been a bit of a full-circle moment for us. It's crazy to think that we’ve been doing Ohmforce for twenty five years now. Certainly, there were a lot of ups and downs along the way. Running any company is hard, and in audio especially, there’s probably ten failures for every one success. But in the end, there’s nothing that beats seeing the joy on the face of a musician that is trying out one of your products for the first time; and that’s why we’ll never be able to let go of this (laughs).
You can find out more about Ohmforce over at their website and shop their modules over at SchneidersLaden.