I’ve got an Oberheim Matrix 6 and a Matrix 1000 and I like both. Along with the OB Cyclone arpeggiator, the combination is lethal; but there are no VCO’s here; they are DCOs and lots of “synths-on-chips”; not the discreet poly that I crave. For me, the OBX is the king, but I just don’t have the cash, haven’t been able to find a good one and more importantly, this is a Moog forum so I’ll get to the point.
So after many many many many threads on whether or not you can do Poly across the Little Phatty, Taurus III, Minitaur, etc. I finally got it working. You need to think outside the box and get into a different box!!
I’m not the first (in fact, another one of the regulars around here reported success with this) but I’d like to give a bit more background and make a strong recommendation for this product:
Mutable-Instruments MidiPal.
It’s a little box with a 9V battery, a single encoder knob, a simple 8 char backlit display and a midi in/midi out. it comes embedded with a number of “apps” any one of which may be active at any one time. Have a look at their web page and specifically, the ‘manual’ at the bottom of this page: http://www.mutable-instruments.net/midipal for details.
But jumping right to it, I defined a 3 channel ‘DISPATCH’ with the “POL” mode through which I play my Phatty plugged “IN” to the MidiPal; OUT of it comes notes which are staggered, one note per channel across midi channels 8, 9, 10 (in my case). With local control off on the Phatty, only one out of every three notes (give or take) comes back into the Phatty, whilst the others go to Taurus and Minitaur.
MidiPal has several modes to the Dispatch app. “CYC” will cyclically play each new note on the next channel in round robin fashion. “POL” which I like better uses a rudimentary note stealing algorithm that considers notes which you intend on holding while transitioning between chords (think of playing a major into a minor, you really want the 3rd to be played on the same voice, not to take from one of the other voices. It’s doesn’t have the intelligence that my Kurzweil has, so it’s not going to consider the complex harmonics of chorused notes or layered voices which have short envelopes, but based on my tests so far, it won’t drop a high or low note if it can handle it and it does seem to consider velocity in relation to other notes (at least that’s what I’m guessing it’s doing). And by the way, all of the code is open source so you can have at it to really get inside.
The fine print:
You want to have your synths re-trigger if at all possible, that way envelopes are fired when note stealing takes place. Unlike normal monophonic play where legato is often desired, on a Poly, you don’t want that.
Because these synths, while all Moog, are very different, you must (I had to) settle for the least common denominator, that being a Sawtooth wave, and I obviously had to play down on the lower half of the keyboard so that the taur did not run out of range.
And then you’ll want envelopes and filters to be set as closely as possible so that you will not be able to discern one voice from another. And Tuning is important but not as critical is you might expect. There is plenty of fatness to mask any noticeable microtonal differences between a 3rd and a 3rd + a smidge. Monosynths with two OSCs certainly need to be rather precise. You have a bit more leeway here.
And no, you can’t tweak while playing, or at least, it’s difficult to do for anything but the most basic control such as filter cutoff and even then, any fine tuning in voicing will be thrown away as each of your voices filters, though all 4-pole are calibrated differently, have different tracking characteristics, etc.
I’m an Opus 3 owner also, and if you know anything about the architecture, you’ll know that it isn’t an multi OSC Poly; it’s more like a string machine or an electronic organ in that there is a fold down/octave divider circuit that allows all of the keys to be played simultaneously, and since there is not a traditional VCO->Mix->Filt->VCA architecture per ‘voice’, there is only ONE filter at play. My point is that If you are only playing triads or du-phonic chords, you can certainly use one of the Voices (the Phatty in my case) control the VCF/VCA of the entire set of voices to allow for full tweaking of envelopes and filter controls. But in order to do, you need to ‘open up’ the filters on the subordinate voices, feed their outputs though a small mixer and into the Phatty (in my case) audio in (setting the envelopes of the other synths with no attack, high sustain etc.) accordingly. And then of course there is the pesky matter of needing to actuate a gate via CV on the Phatty with every keypress (even though local control is off); so the utility of the Multipedal comes into play here; and yes, this is getting very very expensive and complex;
Let’s see:
Phatty Tribute: ~$1,300; Taurus III: $1,995; MiniTaur: $595 = about $4k for a 3 voice. Not quite economical or full featured but heck, I have and love these synths already. And if I want, I can leverage the Multipedal’s Midi-> CV converter to add my Old School as a 4th voice; Oh, I’m nearing $7k now.
But seriously, MidiPal is great, and it’s cheap. I bought the ‘project’ version, which really just means that it doesn’t come with a case. It DOES come fully assembled (until just recently, you had to break out your magnifying glass and surface mount soldering skills), and they include an encoder knob and a 9V connection so it works right out of the box. I’ll be putting mine behind a 2 space panel for my modular and building in 8 analog Voltage → CC functions (the MidiPal board has 8 pads for 3.3V analog 1..8 along with a reference voltage and ground). And it’s only 79 Euro.
EDIT: I’ve also confirmed with Oliver from Mutable that it will run happily from the 5V rail of my DOTCOM format power supply so I’ll be crafting a simple daughter board with an MTA100 connector along some rudamentary voltage protection between the 1/4" jacks and the 8 MidiPal voltage inputs (see the “contrllr” / Controller app in the manual for details).
I live in America and MidiPal is shipped from France so that will cost you a bit more but delivered it cost me $115.92 (I caught the Euro on a bad day : ) have a look at the manual and their web site (link above), there is alot of utility in there; and it’s functionality which is not available elsewhere. It’s a bit perverse to pay 23 Euro shipping to buy something from France that is manufactured 2 states away (Mutable leverages a fabrication house based in Ohio) but what the heck. Think outside box !!
(I’ll post some pictures as my ‘panel’ project progresses)
