So I’m sitting there minding my own business while Holy F**k is blowing my mind… and then…
Some massive low end rolls out and literally shakes the auditorium to its core. I start laughing out loud in pure joy and amazement when someone quietly leans over and lets me know what’s making those amazing sounds. Thanks Mr. Moog Factory Dude- now I’m hooked and went to the Moog store today and drooled over the Pedal Set there.
So… I have a Voyager. With the right aproach and maybe some ovedrive before my filter section, is it possible to get close to the Taurus? I see some of you have both for live set-ups.
Here’s the thing, even though you have one more oscillator than the Taurus, you can never quite get that sound - that’s why we bought them. You can emulate the basic sound fairly easily, but not the - what shall we call it? - Density? Weight? The oscillators work differently to classic VCO mono synths.
If you want to try and mimic the sounds you need to know some of the basics. There are two oscillators producing saw waves. That’s it, no other waveform options. They also switch to the same footages: 32’, 16’ and 8’ - no mixing of footages. You can mix these two at will. I think the classic Taurus I sound has slightly more osc A than osc B mixed in. An important factor of the Taurus is the Beat Freq and Beat controls. I suggest you download the T3 manual and read up on these. Anyway you’ll need to detune your oscillators a bit for a similar feel. However this is where the difference comes in as the Taurus’ oscillators as they are locked and don’t phase like a Minimoog (I assume the Voyager is the same as the D in this respect). This is possibly what produces the solid bass end that the Taurus is famous for.
Next to know is that the filter only has Attack and Decay parameters for its envelope. It has the usual Cuttof Freq, Resonance and Amount controls. The VCA has Attack, Sustain and Release (labelled Decay confusingly), so do not use any Decay in the VCA section.
You can also add glide to taste. Taurus 3’s add LFOs, so you can add those too, but be aware they’re not part of the classic Taurus sounds.
I seem to remember an SOS article which implied that the filter was compressing or overdriving in some way, which also contributes to the sound. I don’t know if this is the case and how you’d achieve that on the Voyager.
The contributor to that big solid Taurus bass is the AC coupling between VCF and VCA and the mild overdrive introduced by the 3080 OTAs used in the VCA and the differential recovery stage in the VCF. A little hotter signal in the VCF don’t hurt either. No other Moog product - minimoog, micromoog, memorymoog, rogue, T2, etc - had this architecture. When the T3 was being designed they duplicated this architecture (they used a 13700 configured as a 3080). I confirmed it when I visited the factory for the A/B comparision.
Afraid there isn’t any way to replicate that architecture in a Voyager or any other moog product. I’ve been trying for years. Nothing will get that big Taurus beef but a Taurus.
Have to disagree with Eric. The differentiator is actually je ne sai quoi. : )
I’ve read about the outstanding bugs in Taurus 3 or the wish list of new features, etc. I have to say (and I don’t even have the latest release but rather, a beta copy from some time ago), that Taurus is an amazing machine. It saddens me to see them pop up on eBay for $1,600 (sad for the original buyer) People just don’t know what they have on their hands and it’s merely hard times that is pressing people to part ways.
I attended the AES meeting in NYC two weeks back and actually took my coveted Taurus tee shirt out of the shrink wrap for the occasion. Long live Taurus!
I’m in love! Got everything hooked up in time for the gig and I was given some decent subs so I could rattle things nicely!
I ended up using the Voyager + Tuarus a bit like a keyboard split. Taurus arpegiator was synced to Octatrack. It was a certainly a compromise but worked well enough for one night. It was nice to have the filter and volume automatically mapped.