So, for the first time in far too long, I sat down to noodle with my dot com modular. I was totally dissatisfied with the sound.
It dawned on me that the Minimoog has really ruined my ability to appreciate other synthesizers. Since it sounds precisely as I want my analog synthesizers to sound, I find that other synthesizers aren’t used as much, and often suffer by comparison. (this is not to say that it is the best synthesizer, merely saying that it always does what I want it to do)
So, I started noodling with the modular and was just stricken with how sort of dull the oscillators sound. I mean, they are filled with functionality, but the sound is just sort of uninteresting and flat. Certainly used with all of the other modules I have, I can create fantastic sounds… but those oscillators really suffer by comparison for me.
For the first time, I considered selling it for something else. Perhaps a 2600 or a VCS3. I considered it VERY hard. (and still might be swayed, maybe, if someone bought it or traded it WHOLE for a VCS3 or perhaps a 2600 [disclaimer: both of those synthesizers are VASTLY less functional than this device is… you can see mine on my MySpace page… but both of those devices are vintage and visually and aurally aesthetically exciting to me, so… it’s a tradeoff])
Luckily, though… I came up with a solution. My trusty MoogerFooger low pass, set all the way open, does its magic with those oscillators… it gives them that Moog Sound that is so desireable. Even just running the oscs through the Moogerfooger with resonance off and the filter all the way open… immediately, there is a desireable difference and I am much more happy with the patches I create. It’s amazing. Perhaps a new Moog product would be Moogerfoogers in module form for dot com and MOTM, etc. modulars. : )
No, I would say that they do not, and that is primarily the issue for me.
Of course, I do not have the ability to hear the Minimoog oscillators without having them going through the Moog filter, so it may be that my portrayal of the weakness of .com oscillators may be in some ways a portrayal of a lack of the Moog filter, which is why I ran them through the Moogerfooger.
.com oscillators going through the Moogerfooger filter sound different from Minimoog oscillators going through the Minimoog filter… and I mean different in a timbral sense, and not just the sense of what the filter is doing to the timbre, too. (I know that there are likely differences between the Moogerfooger filter and the Minimoog filter)
Running the .com oscillators through the .com transistor ladder filter does not make them sound Moog-like at all, in comparison to running them through the Moogerfooger, or in comparison to the Minimoog oscillators going through the Minimoog filter.
I suppose the experiment I SHOULD do is to connect the .com oscillators to the audio input of the Minimoog, and see what happens then.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into your question, but do you suppose that there is very little difference between the Minimoog oscillators and the .com oscillators?
Perhaps I’m reading too much into your question, but do you suppose that there is very little difference between the Minimoog oscillators and the .com oscillators?
No, I believe the Minis oscillators are fairly unique compared to many other synths.
I was just curious if the differences you noted were due to the oscs or the filters.
Fwiw, if the filter is turned fully up on a mini (resonance down), it’s pretty much the sound of the raw vcos. (Add an env with sustain if needed to open fully)
In that case, there is a world of difference between the .com oscillators and the Minimoog oscillators!
With that configuration, the .com oscillators (through a .com transistor-ladder filter) sound much thinner and with more upper-frequency content. Even through the Moogerfooger, with filter all the way open and resonance off, the .com sounds thinner.
Incidentally, I am not bashing .com oscillators. While I would say they lack a defineable or perhaps specifically desireable character, they’re very useful and seem as good as many non-Moog vintage oscillators I’ve used.
And also, I tend to want the buzzy, noisy, “imperfect” sounds of early 70s synths… so, the more precise and clean sound of the .coms might be slightly less desireable to me than perhaps some of the synths I have considered trading this modular for. I’m stricken with the irony of it, and actually am sometimes incredulous at myself… “okay, so you’d give up the immense functionality your .com synth possesses for characteristics in older synths that most people consider flaws???”
Slightly at a tangent, perhaps, but related to the subject of oscillator character, and `impefection’:
I’ve been listening a lot to TONTO’s Zero Time album lately. That, and a conversation with a Moog modular owner about instability in the early Moog oscillators (well, a 901 joke, to be honest) seems to have made me aware of the way oscillator drift can contribute to the overall character of the sound, so long as it’s slight enough.
I found myself setting up a slow oscillator pitch change from the Voyager LFO and controlling it from the mod wheel. With only a very slight raising of the Amount pot it’s interesting to put just a little drift into the oscillator pitch. When you hardly know there’s any change at all, but there’s still a change happening, the effect is a subtle richness that some of us may find effective.
I believe some synth makers have built this kind of thing into VA instruments, but I don’t know if many of us have tried it with Moog oscillators, or with the .com oscillators for that matter? It may help with that early 70s character - without the serious pitch wandering that made life hell at the time.
Hey, Sweep! Very good point!
In the patching session that had me not entirely certain I wanted to give up the .com, I did precisely that… at first I set a very slow LFO to the linear input of one oscillator, and mixed it just at the point where it seemed to become somewhat imperceptible… it did give body to the oscillator’s mixed sound. Later, I ran a Sample and Hold signal through the slew limiter to generate a random yet not quantized signal which I also used in a very tiny amount to generate slight pitch imperfection!
This is why I don’t mind tuning my Minimoog oscillators as often as I do. : )
I suppose what it comes down to is that natural sounds do not possess pitch perfection. While it is irritating to have to tune a Moog modular (so I’ve heard), one of the contributing factors to its organic sound is its “flawed” intonation, and I’m sure it’s true (to a lesser degree) for the Minimoog.
Not to go off moog topic, but DSI’s evolver has a drift functionality for it’s VCOs. I really wish moog could put this into place as an editable global parameter. It’d be awesome; I love it on my evolver, and think it’d be insanely cool on my LP, let alone on the voyager!
This idea can also produce some rich and unusual tones (Again, I don’t know how widely used this may be, but it isn’t something I recall ever seeing built into a synth):
Take a sine wave. Feed it into a pitch shifter. Take the output and slightly distort it, with some filtering. Feed the result back into the pitch shifter alongside the original sine tone. Control the feedback loop carefully!
Or something like that. I set this up quite a while ago and sampled quite a few unusual rich tones from it, using different settings and carefully controlling the loop back into the pitch shifter. I can check the notes I made at the time if the above doesn’t work.
This is an idea Delia Derbyshire used on the original Dr Who music.
Yes, I suppose that’s probably how the ring mod developed. Maybe when I said I haven’t seen this set-up on a synth I was showing my lack of technical knowledge. The tones I got differed from the ring mod tones I’ve got with other gear enough to be useful as something distinct in themselves, though, so I’d definitey recommend trying that set-up in any case.
No slam to anyone, but please don’t confuse drift with other possibile qualities.
Drift is an overall change of frequency over time, either up or down.
The static tone of an osc has nothing to do with drift.
If you could hear drift in just a few seconds, you’d never have an in-tune synth.
I’ve previously documented jitter in Moog 901 vcos.
Additionally, Minimoogs have a small amount of AC that bleeds into the vcos and the vcos affect each other. This is all tone quality, not drift.
(note also that later Minis added more PSU filtering and have very slightly less of this quality.)
I could make a CEM3340 drift slowly, but it wouldn’t sound like a Moog VCO.
Here’s something you might find interesting.
A Moog 901B makes it’s entire waveform from just one transistor.
It’s a special type of transistor though. (unijunction)
But what’s funny is that one other VCO is extremely close to the 901B in this regard.
The Paia 4720!
Thanks, Kevin. I’ve tended to think of this slightly audible quality as `drift’ since the person who taught me how to play synth called it that. (I had access to a studio with a Mark II VCS3 back in 1978). From what you’ve said it sounds like there’s a need to be more consistent with terminology.
Would the change over a few seconds be the `jitter’ you referred to, rather than drift?
What I’ve been programming with the Voyager does sound musically interesting in the right context, but I’d like to call it by the right term.
I too use a mf-101 to make my oscillators sound much more like that desirable moog sound. My main setup is a CV’d multi and micro. I love my multi more than anything, but the filter is just absolutely horrible in my eyes. it only starts to open up about halfway on the dial and it just makes my VCOs sound cold. Dont get me wrong, theyre a lot warmer and richer than some other VCOs ive heard but that filter is just god awful. I use my i use my mooger filter as the main filter for that synth now and everything just sounds so much better.
I can also testify about the sonic magic that an MF-101 can do to the sound of a synth. I modified my Clavia Nord Modular G2X digital synth to use the MF-101 for mono synth patches. The G2X/MF-101 combo sounds great! If you have not seen this already, check it out:
museslave, you did not mention how hard you were driving the MF-101. As you probably know, the amount of MF-101 drive level will also change the character of the sound. Are you driving the MF-101 Level LED mostly in the green, yellow, or red for the sound that you like the most?
Sweep… I haven’t a clue what to call it. Jitter seemed best because that’s what it looked like on a scope.
Solar, if your multimoog filter isn’t opening as it should, it might be miscalibrated.
It should be almost exactly like your Micromoog.
They use the same boards (at least the ones with the filters anyways.)
One thing you might notice though- VCO A (pan to left) may have a bit more buzz or jitter than VCO B.
The B VCO in Multi’s tends to be a bit purer.
I did not mention that! I messed with it, a bit. The standard output level of the .com oscillators has the input in the red. In the red, with the drive all the way down, resonance all the way down, and the filter all the way open is where I was pleased with the warmth. I then experimented with lessening the output so it was in the yellow or the green, and still experienced the warmth I desired, but such settings possessed less.. um… buzz? crunch? But were still pleasing. The character afforded by drive was less important to me than the character merely provided by the filter.
A LOT of people complain about the Multimoog sounding thin. If Multimoogs and Micromoogs have the same filter, then I find that very surprising. My Micromoog, while not sounding like Mini, was still extremely broad, fat and warm. I have tons of proof, beginning with my YouTube Micromoog video… if anyone has any doubt. : )
Thanks for the info kevin, i just assumed it was how the filter was since my micro does the same thing, guess i need to get both worked on!
And yes VCO A is jittery as heck, I actually need it calibrated because its starting to actually drift these days. I need to do some research where to get them worked on, I didnt like the service I got last time (deltronics in chicago).
muselave, hopefully I will be able to agree with you very soon if my filter does start acting like mr. lighter said it should, because with my moogerfooger it sounds very nice, hopefully even better when I get to use my micro and multi’s actual filters.
The Micromoog was designed to intentionally overdrive the filter a bit.
It’s explained in the service manual as the designers not caring much about increased harmonic distortion since it was a one oscillator instrument.
But it was intentional.
The Multimoog added a second and third board that contained an additional VCO (and aftertouch, etc.)
They routed both VCOs in a different way and with less distortion.
Had they run both VCOs hot, they would have increased intermodulation distortion, which wouldn’t have sounded very pleasing.
So they’re the same basic VCOs, same filter, but different drive levels.
Multimoogs suffer from two chronic VCO problems. (tech stuff coming)
One problem is that Moog riveted a ground terminal in the back that contains AC filtering caps.
This rivet can come loose and create noise and little pops through out the system.
Tapping around the AC inlet jack can identify when the unit’s closed, but I usually solder a wire to ground when I’m inside.
VCO A is often buzzy because that oscillator is broken up over two boards.
Wires connect between them and to the rest of the synth.
Because the Multimoog uses a 50khz signal to generate aftertouch signals on one of the same boards, bleedthru can occur.
Moog themselves cut a trace and added a shielded wire, but it’s not enough.
To eliminate the buzz, I’ve done this to the lower added board…
Lift shielded traces (cut) from C12 to R45, R46 & CR6 (RG-174 single Gnd shield)
Lift shielded traces (cut) from A2 pin3 to connector P2-4 (RG-174 single Gnd shield)
Float Q2, P3-2 (usually shielded already) & R5 (2.2K)
Add a direct Gnd from P1-2 to IC1 pin 14.
It’s also recommended the boards be very clean and if possible, the IC sockets eliminated.
The trimmers and aftertouch often need lots of attention too.
Maybe this info will help some techs.
