Little question:
Does the little phatty have the ability to make low bit sounds…that are very “digital” sounding…almost glitchy…like old arcade games etc?
Sounds like you need a Sidstation! It complements the Phatty very well!! Sorry, I haven’t gotten mine to sound 8 bit lofi yet.
Yes. You can make better 8 bit sounds than any plug-in. I have a voyager but I know the LP can do it also. Try a sawtooth wave with a short decay, then adjust the filter to taste. Using the filter overload could also produce some cool, lo-fi sounds too.
Josh
Awesome…I have no clue what a sidstation is…so I’m checking that out now…I heard a few samples that got close to low bit but didn’t stay there for long.
I’ve only had my LP for a month & can already hear retro-arcade sounds in it! I wonder what companies actually used Moog synths to create their game samples?
I checked out the sidstation online and was impressed by some of the sound samples…but running at $1050…that’s pretty steep…although it does look pretty badass…
The LP seems pretty versitile…is it?
Don’t get an LP thinking it’s gonna sound like a sidstation. I think the LP is versatile in the sense that it will fit in a variety of styles of music, but the palette is limited. The thing is that it sounds fantastic within that palette!
You can get some old school arcade-y sounds out of the LP, but you might consider something like this free plugin, if you really want to sound like a game:
-craig
For bit crushing, I use the Alesis BitRman. I picked it up new for about $25 a few years ago. It’s been discontinued, but for lowfi, it is simply amazing. It’s a stompbox that will output in stereo.
it can with some clever programming. some liberal use of the overdrive, resonance cranking, and modulating the waveshape with the lfo at audio rate speeds can get pretty cool harmonic emulations to the aliasing/bit-reduction effect.
try sending the LP a bunch of MIDI-CC (controller change) messages REALLY quickly and then sample the result. Lo-bit heaven! You can get some really glitchy gronky stuff by sending stepped/quantized CCs, to get gnarly digital control of the analog parameters. You could send packet-bursts of Filter Overload for example… or randomly slam VCO2->Pitch FM modulation from zero to full and back in an instant. Get mad-scientist about it… 
Of course if you send smooth CCs, the Phatty can handle them nicely… but it is fun to push the limits and see how non-traditional you can go with it, too.
The Alesis sounds like it’d be awesome, but I can’t find one on ebay so that sucks. That seems like it’d be better fit for what I want as I’d prefer to run my bass or possible LP through a stomp box rather than garage ands bit crusher or or other fully computer based stuff.
I have an MF102 and a Murf so that should expand the LP quite a bit and I can imagine the freqbox doing the same thing.
So is it a wise buy for someone who loves the moog sound and can’t fork out for a voyager and uses moogerfoogers?
If you love the Moog sound and understand what you’re getting (a nice sounding 2 OSC monosynth) then yes…go for it. Just my opinion though…
The BitRMan has become difficult to find. People don’t want to give them up. They are absolutely digital insanity.
Part of me thinks I need to get to guitar center once they have the LP and fiddle with it next to other synths. Compared to other keyboards like the MicroKorg or it’s replacement the R3 is the LP in another league? Those two are analog modeling correct? Although they still talk about oscillators and analog signal paths.
The Korgs are totally different. You could make this kind of comparison: The Korgs are like Chinese made Fender Strat copies. The LP is like an entry level American made Jazz guitar. It’s about tone, craftsmanship, playability and customer support.
The Korgs will give you a variety of sounds and features. None of them will be terrific, but useable. With a smaller pallette of sounds and features, the Little Phatty will produce terrific sounds that will rival other top-notch synths.
Most synths are digital these days. All synths from Korg, Yamaha, Roland, Novation, Waldorf, and Clavia (Nord) are analog modeling. That means they use wavetable snapshots of the common waveforms (sine, saw, pulse, etc.) and possibly will have other shapes or samples. All Moog oscillators are analog, which means the wave shapes are generated from electrical components. This is inevitably going to be more expensive than a computer chip and is going to be monophonic, because you need a direct signal current from oscillator through any filter and to the output. However, the sound quality is much more rich and bodied with genuine analog.
I have several digital synths and my LP is my only analog. The first time I plugged it in at home, I could tell the difference right away. Playing the same waveshapes on my digital synths was no comparison. The LP blew them all away. Only smaller companies still bother to make real analog. If you compare similar offerings from Analogue Solutions, Analog Systems, Macbeth, Future Retro, Jomox, etc. you’ll find the Little Phatty to be very competitively priced, especially with the keyboard, and way over especially with it’s patch saving ability and direct analog control capability.
Definitely go to your music store and compare side by side with any digital synth. Not a single one will ever sound even close to a Moog.
that’s what I experianced with the moogerfoogers…I had some crappy zoom multifx bass pedals in highschool and sold one of them and kept the other cause no one would by it…now having the Murf and Ring mod I’m completely satisfied…If moog made a car I’d buy it 
I think I’m gonna go for the LP…even though I like the Tribute and it’d fit in better with the other moogstuff…I need to save that extra 100…plus I kinda like the sleek black of the new one.
I’d never considered reduced bit rate as an effect to apply
on an analogue synth. I’ll have to give that a try with my
EF-303 but I suspect that it will make the sound somewhat
digital - not what I wanted from an LP.
Had better expand on Robles definition of analogue modelling.
As far as I know wavetables are only used in a few virtual
analogue synths like my Roland SH32. Most analogue
modelling synths tend to calculate the waveforms using
algorithms, including the effect of filtering, multiple oscillators
etc. Analogue modelling can be very sophisticated - accounting
for the physical characteristics of every critical circuit component but by
doing this it becomes a very difficult task for even the best CPUs
to calculate the waveforms.
Don’t forget the Taurus!
Thanks for the the additional clarification there. Nevertheless, digital is always going to to have a certain tinny sound quality to it. Perhaps my smoothest sounding digital is my Novation KS Rack which I got specifically because of the particular Novation sound which I really like. But inevitably, they all end up as a stream of data which needs to get converted to analog at the output. An all analog signal path like all Moogs never gets converted into digital, and retains the warmth of a circuit generated, pure uninterupted sound wave.
On the other hand digital synths do have their pluses as well. It is far easier to get polyphony and multiple instruments playing at once out of a single synth. And you get all sorts of fun ways of manipulating the sound which are more difficult and certainly way more expensive on analog synths.
But I’m never letting my Phatty go. For what it does do, the sound is sublime.