ZOIA Euroburo is an open canvas to paint your sonic ideas. FM synthesis, CV tools, MIDI tools, audio effects, interface options – all at your fingertips. The Euroburo transforms the rigmarole of interfacing a studio full of music gear and condenses it into one handy little box, which you can then interface with your own studio full of music gear. For those unfamiliar with the original, ZOIA hosts a collection of virtual modules ranging from oscillators, filters and effects to simple utilities, envelope generators and logic that can be patched internally in countless ways to create synthesizers, effects processors, sequencers, and so on. This made the original ZOIA a dream for pedal users: with a little bit of learning, it can be virtually any sort of pedal you wanted and more.

Of course, that sort of approach proved to be hugely attractive to synthesizer users: and because of its thorough options for internal control and even external MIDI control, many people use ZOIA as a full synthesizer as well as an effect processor. Naturally, we wondered from the start what a modular iteration of the ZOIA might look like…and now it seems that it is on the way. Euroburo sports four CV inputs, and an equivalent amount of control voltage outputs (that alone is a significant upgrade from the pedal). There is also a pair of stereo audio I/O, and a dedicated headphone output. To top it off, the module is equipped with MIDI input and output.

With such an amount of connectivity across different formats, the power of ZOIA Euroburo is immediately apparent. It is easy to imagine this module in a variety of setups, though there is still more to be said about the richness, depth, and expandability of its own inner world. Though already hugely impressive, the collection of virtual modules that ZOIA and Euroburo come with is far from complete. There are plans for new modules to be added. There is a sampler module on the way, and who knows what else is in development already. Actually, Empress Effects use a voting system on their website to determine which modules or features will be added to the pedal/module next—so as a user, you get to participate in shaping the evolution of the product. Euroburo has two additional assignable buttons that can change in functionality depending on user preferences, ensuring that some controls will always be there even when you jump to the next patch.

Speaking of which, the module can host up to 64 patches simultaneously, and switching between them is super easy and fast. It only takes a button-press to transform Euroburo from synth to drum machine to effects processor. This makes it an uncommonly powerful performance tool—as pointed out in the video chat, presets in the Zoia are much more than just presets on a synthesizer: presets in the Zoia can make it an entirely different type of instrument or processor altogether. So you can imagine just how powerful a cleverly-programmed Euroburo or two could be: especially since the stereo I/O can be treated completely independently, you could wrench an awful lot of functionality out of a very small setup.