Moog Music Forum

I am thinking of buying a macbeth micromac, I was hoping it would be compatible with my voyager XL's CV/gate and visa versa.

The Micromac CV/gate specs are:

"The CV/Gate is 1V/Octave log law and the gate is +5V~+15V – any positive going gate signal will fire the envelopes"

Am I going to be able to plug and play or not?

Cheers

The Moog Voyager is notorious for not conforming to strict 1v/Oct scaling. On my Old School, it was around 1.030 volts per octave (actually measured at the pitch CV output).

Even Moog Music itself acknowledges this fact in its MP-201 spec:

"CV SCALE: This is where you adjust the CV output so that the thing you're controlling will track pitch correctly. Not everything is scaled to exactly 1V per octave (example: Moog MF102 Ring Mod tends to be around 0.7 V/Octave) - you can choose any scale in the range 0.667 V/Octave to 1.333 V/Octave."

So, any device that is locked into sending 1 V/Octave probably won't pitch track properly on the XL.

The Voyager tracks internally at 0.935V/oct. If you add the VX-351, there is a part to add inside the Voyager so you can get 1V/oct at the 351 CV outputs.

It's a weird scale because of the resolution of the DAC on the analog board.

Thanks for replies, in regards to the vx-351, I essentially have one of these built into the XL along with the CP-251 module, do you know if I can get the XL to spit out and except 1v/oct? anything I can tweak?

And as far as playing my XL with the micromac, I will not hurt any thing on the voyager or micromac patching wise with these differences?

Is there a workaround for getting the two synths to play nicely together?

I am also considering the dektop module, which I will be able to play with midi so scaling might be to much for a problem, though I was hoping to use my XL as a modulation source and vice versa.

Thanks again

Not sure if it helps anybody (there is discussion here about sending V/Oct as well as calibrating the Analog board for V/Octave coming into a Voyager or Old School) but I had my Old School mod'ed last year and Moog Support essentially pulled R47 (which is a 100K resistor from the factory) and replaced it with a 90K resistor and a pot/trimmer, then calibrated it to precisely 1V per octave.

This is to address the incoming pitch CV jack and is required if driven by a CV keyboard such as a Minibrute, or a sequencer, etc.

Since the Voyager and Old School have the same Analog board in common, I would assume the same would apply and that the Voyager does not have any software controls to adjust the voltage.

I have a Little Phatty Tribute also and I've been told that these original synths had a pot for the incoming Pitch CV, while the Stage and Stage II do not. I have not confirmed this, however; but if you find the point on the board, there certainly is a work-around.

BHC303 wrote:I am also considering the dektop module, which I will be able to play with midi so scaling might be to much for a problem, though I was hoping to use my XL as a modulation source and vice versa.

Not sure why you would need to use the XL as modulation source.... In the Micromac D you will already have 3 analog LFOs and 2 (I think) in the Kenton MIDI unit.

Just seen that today...

My 101 tracks @ 1v/oct I have found out too

Btw, i understand the R version could also have the 2 extra analog LFOs as an add on unit that Ken is planning. But then of course you will not get the Kenton module with the MIDI and other extra goodies.

I think you get the kenton (lfo etc) + 2 analog lfo's if I read it right

Do you think patching between the two synths & foogers is going to hurt anything?

BHC303 wrote:Do you think patching between the two synths & foogers is going to hurt anything?

Shouldn't hurt anything.

BHC303, did you ever try using your XL Pitch ins and outs with any other oscillators? I'm interested in using mine with some modules, either eurorack types or dotcom, and am wondering how successful I will be with the tracking. . .

I have tried feeding the pitch and gate from my Minibute to my VoyagerXL and I can't get it to track accurately. I blamed the Minibrute at first but after reading through this thread I am not so sure.

Does anyone know of a good way to test the cv tracking with a voltage meter? I would really like to figure out which synth needs to be tweaked, if not both.

Those two instrument both having MIDI capabilities, you should use that in order for them to track each other precisely. Because, as you may know or not, using the CV out and CV in of any two analog synths is extremely difficult to have them both track each other exactly. Especially when you consider that for every additional volt of the Control Voltage the pitch goes up one full octave !

That is precisely why MIDI was created by Dave Smith. Because prior to that, it was very difficult, even impossible sometimes, to control analog synths so they would play in tune with each other.

To answer your question: does the Voyager track 1V/Oct, the answer is...maybe. Depending on your particular unit. My Old School did NOT track at 1V/Oct. But my EB did. But my friend's Select doesn't...

BTW, the standard 1V/Oct is exactly that: a standard. All machines should have their oscillators track the CV precisely, resulting in an increase of exactly one octave higher in pitch with each additional volt. However, it is rather difficult to have analog circuits behave precisely like that. So, compromises are often made with internal stretch tuning to offer a decent amount of range before oscillators go out of tune.

BTW, you do NOT want to start tweaking the internal tuning of either of those machines. Unless they're really not tracking well on their own.
You can measure the dc voltage at the CV out of both machines. It should result in an increase of 1 volt for each higher octave played on their keyboard.

According to Moog, my XL should track @ 1V/Oct from the factory, there is support to calibrate this if it it is not tracking correctly via moog support.

Not sure exactly what is carried out here...

I cannot speak for regular voyagers as mine is an XL (and believe it has the VX-351 trim calibration built into it as mentioned by MC)

I cant test it now as my studio is in bits as I am selling gear...

But yes midi will be the best bet, silent way and volta can also calibrate and do this job if you are using your modular and don't have a midi to CV converter.

A friend of mine had there minibrute delivered not calibrated correctly... I believe sonic state have video on how to calibrate it if my memory serves me well... its like the first minibrute vid they did I think. got it sorted pretty quick.

cheers