Hi everybody,
I am the proud new owner of a Voyager RME, and I am loving it, except for the fact that there is very clear stepping when using the pitch bend wheel on my MIDI controller keyboard. Someone suggested that my MIDI controller might have insufficient resolution, but it is working fine with my DSI PolyEvolver Rack. Any help would be much appreciated!
Cheers,
Jack
isnt there a parameter where you can change the resolution of the midi input on the rme? im sure theres one on the voyager…
Thanks for the tip, Goldphinga. I thought the MIDI resolution setting was only for MIDI sends, but I will try it as soon as I am back home.
Unfortunately, the Voyager RME has no mod wheel resolution setting. Any further suggestions? Thanks in advance,
Jack
How is the setting of the pitch wheel amount (+/- 1 Octave or more)?
The Voyager receives 14 bit pitch wheel resolution and you can’t change it in a menu. I guess your master keyboard only sends 7 bits.
Rudi
The pitch wheel amount is usually set to +/- 1 octave or less. I checked the pitch bend midi messages sent from my master keyboard (CME UF7) with Midipipe, and it appears to be 14 bit. Any further suggestions?
Is the software version 3.3 in your RME?
Yes, it is a brand new RME with software version 3.3
Found myself a relatively cheap store demo of a Fatar-Studiologic SL-760, and no more stepping artifacts in the pitch bend!! Too bad for the investment I made in my CME UF7…
Cheers,
Jack
I have precisely the same problem with my Novation x-station, which is my midi controller 
Someone on that forum says the x-station is 7-bit.
Can anyone recommend a midi controller or synth that’s compatible and has aftertouch and a joystick for pitch? Korg? Roland?
Is it fixable with a patch RL? It would be a really useful option to be able to switch to 7-bit for pitch and mod. 
The new Edirol series of midi controllers has aftertouch and a joystick for mod and pitch bend. I tried one in a store but did not like the keys: they are a bit shorter than “regular” keys, and this gives a weird sensation when depressing them.
I don’t think the stepping artifact is related to the resolution of the pitch bend wheel. My CME UF7 was 14 bit (checked it with a Midi message spy tool) and I doubt that the X-station would be only 7-bit. In my case it was not so much the resolution that gave the problem, but the low number of midi pitch bend messages sent out by the controller.
Thanks Funkasizer. I’ll look into the Edirols. The PCR-800 has aftertouch. The keys do look like normal size, so they must be pretty close.
I didn’t know pitch bend message rates varied among controllers. Midi can be such a pain! I wonder if there’s a way to adjust this on my x-station.
Novation contacted me - their tech support is very responsive.
The tech said the x-station is 14-bit, but that pitch bend has a resolution of only 128 steps, so that when you bend large intervals, you will hear stepping.
So if this is true, then why is it that some controllers don’t make the Voyager produce stepping artifacts? Or will all controllers produce stepping if the bend range is wide enough?
I’d like to be able to set the bend for a whammy-bar style pitch drop of an octave or more.
Maybe midi isn’t capable of this. Does anybody use a voltage controller for pitch?
Technically , they do not vary the bit depth at all. The just don’t use the full range of 2 by the power of 14 = 16384 different values.
They set the least significant bits of the two 7 bit words to a static value.
this way they can use less quality pots in the pitchbend and/or cheaper A/D converters to get the analog voltage of the pot measured and transformed into a digital value.
If a company uses average parts, it should be no problem to get better then 7 bit resolution for the pitchbend.
14 bit needs some well chosen electronics and sometimes a little software routine to smooth and/or “cleaning” the data stream.
If you have a 14 bit pitchbend assigned to a range of an octave, you have 16384/2 possible steps for this octave. This should give you 8192/1200 = about 6,8 steps per cent tuning. And this is not bad at all. Some synths with DCOs and some softsynths are using a frequency resolution that is not as good as this.
So blame the manufacture of the pitchbend sending device.
And talking about quality:
A good quality cost a bit more.
Just like Moog Voyager is not cheap. But it is worth every cent !
Funk, make sure the CME is only sending MIDI on one channel. It may be set to send on channels 1-4 simultaneously, for example. If that’s the case, then you might get bogged down when sending a bunch of MIDI data like pitch bend of mod. My Studiologic defaults to zones 1-4 on and I have to turn off 2, 3, 4 to keep from overloading stuff. (Could be the controller, MIDI interface, synth or combination of the three.)
Till: I think we are talking about two different things here. I was not talking about variations in bit depth, but variations in speed at which pitch bend data are sent. The CME, I and others found, sends 14 bit pitch bend data alright, but the amount of data sent in a given amount of time is so low, that the result is audible stepping.
Synthetic: thanks for the suggestion. I cannot try it anymore, cause I sold my CME. But I am positive that I was sending one channel only.
Thanks for the responses. I guess the Novation, though a very high quality keyboard, will never give me the pitch bend quality I need.
Someday, I’d like to get a Korg Triton Extreme or somesuch. To me pitch bend is important, but I prefer joysticks. I assume the Korg has a quality joystick, but do you think I can assume that it would give me smooth pitch bends if I set it to send an octave pitch up and an octave down from center?
Well, I tried controlling the RME with my Alesis QS8, which has a Fatar weighted keyboard, and I get the same artifacts.
I need something more to go on. Guess I’ll just have to take a day, go into the city, and try the RME with the Korg M3 some day. I was hoping someone with a synth action keyboard might be able to tell me their controller works with the RME.
Or, maybe somebody here uses a regular Voyager with a controller?
For the record, two people on KorgForums told me that their M3s can control Moog Voyager and Lil’ Phatty without pitch artifacts. However, neither of them specifically mentioned what they have tried, which doesn’t give me confidence until I try one myself.
I’m very glad that Funkasizer has been clear that his new Fatar-Studiologic SL-760 does indeed work without pitch-bend artifacts. So, we have ONE keyboard known to work with the Voyager!
I must say I am deeply disappointed that nobody on this forum can tell me a single synth-action keyboard that will work with the Voyager. Of course this is not meant as a slight to the users - who are very helpful and kind. It’s just that I am terribly disappointed with my new Moog, for reasons that are surprising to me.
This fact, coupled with the lack of a foot pedal jack or glide button on the RME all lead me to conclude that I cannot recommend the RME to other musicians with whom I speak.
Moog…you need to recognize the importance of the controller and address this issue…perhaps with a Moog controller that is special…but at the very least with a list of compatible keyboards. I think this is a reasonable request, from a user who has two incompatible keyboards.
I understand your disappointment! But clearly it is the controller keyboards that are the source of the disappointment. They are not designed to control analog oscillators without artifacts in the pitch bend, because they aren’t putting out good quality pitch bend data.
We do make a Moog controller that is special - either the Voyager or the Little Phatty keyboards! Both of them send 14-bit Pitch Bend data at a furiously high rate of speed, and both of them control the Voyager RME without artifacts. Any MIDI controller that actually puts out 14-bit pitch bend messages with good resolution could do the same. This isn’t a common complaint in my experience.
Either the tech was confused who insisted that the x-station is 14-bit, but pitch bend has a range of only 128 steps… or I am confused. If the x-station sends only 128 steps, that’s only 7 bits of data no matter what they claim is going on.
Here is some help for your other questions: You can program any MIDI controller to turn the Glide on and off - just map a button on your controller to send MIDI CC# 65. value 0-64 = off; 65-128 = on.
As for a pedal jack, you can find an abundance of them on the Voyager keyboard, but we were very limited in what jacks we could include on the RME. So, we put every control input jack from the keyboard model, plus several more, into the VX-352 input expander module for the RME. If your playing style calls for pedal control, I recommend this. Otherwise, virtually every Voyager parameter can be controlled via MIDI, so again you could use a programmable MIDI controller for this stuff. A lot of folks seem to like the FCB1010 for programmable foot-control of MIDI gear.