I’ve been playing with a Voyager and a Little Phatty at the local music store. Great synths, fantastic UI & sounds, and they generally behave as I’d expect them to. The exception is the dual filter setup on the Voyager.
The stereo routing of the filters in LPLP mode is incredibly irritating with headphones on. So many presets are just screaming into one ear. Is there a way to just sum the filters to mono, put them in series (much more useful) or simply disable one of the filters? Judging from the manual, putting the spacing knob at the center position should do it, but even after putting it at an LCD-confirmed dead zero I can hear some panning. There are also channel differences when fiddling with cutoff and resonance. Is that expected behavior or just a certain analog imprecision or is that particular Voyager decalibrated or something? It’s certainly not my ears or headphones, as the HPLP is dead center and perfectly mono.
In HPLP mode there are thankfully no channel differences, but I’m still a bit confused by the filter control. I’m very comfortable with a presumably similar control method for a LP/HP/BP filter from the Elektron machines, but I’m always a bit puzzled by the sonic results on the Voyager. Just to confirm, to get a pure LP filter in HPLP mode I’d put spacing all the way left and sweep down with cutoff right to left? And for pure HP I’d place the cutoff all the way to the right and sweep down with spacing right to left? Any video etc. showing how this is supposed to work would be helpful for me.
That’s really the one aspect of the Voyager that puzzles me. If somebody could answer my questions about the two filter modes I would love to go back to the store and see if I can make some more sense of it with additional guidance.
They do not center in my experience in lplp. If, however, each one is set to a different pole in the menus, they are really out. Im certain it is on purpose to give a more spatial feel to the sound. I don’t find it a problem in most instances and when I do, I just run it mono to the board.
I don’t find it a problem in most instances and when I do, I just run it mono to the board.
yes, and when playing live, who’s going to run 2 separate outs anyway? take your headphones off and plug it in an amp- problem solved- For a phaser-esque sound, go duo, for a more vintage Moog sound, go highpass/lowpass- I prefer the duo for its “bigger” sound, but that’s just me
I really love the stereo aspect of the voyager (i do run stereo live lol) with the spacing knob centered it sounds mostly mono, you have to make sure there is nothing else modulating the spacing knob or panning though…touch pad, keyboard, lfo, envelopes etc.
Or, yeah like the others said, just use the mono out when you don’t want stereo
The filters on my Voyager aren’t calibrated properly. I have to set Filter spacing to -1 to have them in tune/ both mono.
Sounds like the Voyager you’ve tried in the store has a similar issue.
I’m a bit confused as to why you’d want to put the filter into lp/hp mode and then try and get a pure LP from it.
To get a pure Low pass set the switch to dual LP.
In LP/HP mode it’s like having a bandpass filter where filter spacing controls the width of the band.
Aren’t your two descriptions actually identical? Well, more or less anyway.
In LP/HP mode, the two filters are in series. In this mode, the spacing does control the cutoff of the HP filter (it’s in The Fine Manual). So, J C is right.
But an LP and HP filter in series acts as a bandpass filter. And adjusting any of the two filter’s cut off frequencies will change the width of that bandpass filter. The cut off of the LP filter will adjust the width from “above” and the cut off of the HP filter (in this case, controlled by the spacing control) from “underneath”. So in effect, Acid Mitch is right too. Nice, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, there’s no way to put the filter’s in series when in LP/LP mode. Having a 48 dB filter could be very cool at times. Maybe possible in a future OS upgrade?
However, I really, really like the stereo effect you get by offsetting the two LP filters with the spacing knob. Especially with one filter in 4-pole and another in 1-pole mode. Very flexible. When I don’t want the stereo effect, I simply pan both channels equally in my DAW. The ability to offset the two filters is very useful in mono too. In a mix, I tend to pan the channels sort of in between, so that I narrow the stereo effect the filter’s introduce in LP/LP mode, but don’t get rid of it altogether.
There are slight “channel differences”, as you put it, in my Voyager too. Mine’s an early model though and it’s currently not perfectly calibrated in other respects either. Maybe it’s possible to calibrate this particular feature perfectly, but to be honest, I don’t find it to be a problem at all. If I wanted 100% predictability, I would use a digital synth. Just my 2 cents of course.
More or less. You’ve got the principle right, but at least with my Voyager, the HP filter doesn’t pass through all low frequencies, even with the spacing control turned fully to the left. Again, this may be down to calibration issues with my old unit. But analogue is analogue and you shouldn’t expect absolute precision.
You mention Elektron and I suppose you mean the Analogue Four? Because that’s their only analogue synth. I happen to have one too and I do love it to bits. But it’s very precise and personally, I regard that as a flaw, a flaw shared with many other modern day analogues.
All the old classic analogues have lots of idiosyncrasies and that’s what I and many others love about them.
This is of course a matter of taste and nothing else!
But me, I wouldn’t have gotten a Voyager if I wanted precision. In fact, a lot of the (fairly widespread) criticism against the Voyager is about it being too ‘sterile’ (as compared to the original Minimoog) - as in too precise.
