The Minitaur seemed perfect specification wise, all the knobs you can wish for, genuine Moog sound engine, cv driven with the standard cv inputs. No midi mess. Nothing could go wrong I thought in a CV rig.
The connection between the Akai Max 49 is the simplest that can be : one patch cable for gate and one for pitch CV (the Max 49 has standard 1v/oct cv output). One possible issue is the root note, easily remedied if that happens.
Power On… there’s music as I press the controller’s keys. That’s good. So let’s get to the knobs part and make sounds… cutoff.. resonance.. looks good too.
So it works.. well no… the mixer section goes wild or full on or full off. Same thing with the mod section, where the mod amount will freeze, most often at zero, but sometimes at full amount. Sometimes the glide section will freeze too.
There is a little something in the manual about the power on knob settings of the modulation section if the unit is to be used with cv’s only. It’s a bit vague.
After countless power on and off tests, with the knobs either zero, or full, or else, over the span of many days now, the symptoms still persists.
And the symptoms are : the Minitaur will power on good most of the time (but not always) with everything functioning as it should. But when you start turning knobs, the three things that happens most often are, in order :
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the mod section locks to zero (no amount) and is unusable
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Sustain amount of the VCA freezes full on, and Decay full off.
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the mixer jumps and locks in full amount for both OSC (knobs won’t work anymore)
And these things will happen very shortly after starting operating the unit. But again, mixer can also freeze to zero , or mod section to max, or other values as well. Glide can go freeze too, and the VCA EG goes foul all the time, with sustain fully bad.
More power on and offs, testing, something wrong again, it’s been a week, I give up.
The Minitaur is such a nice little machine. One thing I did not expect is I found very comfortable manipulating knobs in such a tiny space, maybe more so than moving an arm to change a setting on a large OS panel.
I so wished it would have worked but I am afraid it’s a failing grade with CV’s only. And I have no choice to shelve it until the next firmware revision. It just does not work.
;
