I am starting to think about the possibility of purchasing a Voyager, or possibly a dotcom modular.
I went to a local store today to mess about a bit with a Voyager.
The Voyager seemed to be out of calibration or something. When I played the low C note, all of the oscillators would be in tune for the presets, but when I moved up the keyboard, oscillators 2 and 3 were tracking at different rates than oscillator one, so the patch quickly went out of pitch by the time you got to F and it was WAY out of pitch by the time you reached an octave. There was also some background noise on many of the patches.
I played with changing the settings, but nothing worked. I am not Voyager experienced, but know my way well around a Mini D and an LP, so I am not a complete dunderhead. I could not figure anything out. The store manager was no help as it is more of a guitar store.
Does a Voyager need calibration? What else could this be that I missed? It was software version 3.2 if I remember correctly.
It’s definitely possible that the unit in the store was out of whack. Instruments in music stores are like the toys in a pediatricians office - everyone drools on them and puts them in their mouth and steps on them. Try not to let this influence your decision - you would be missing out on an incredible instrument.
Yes, there is tuning and calibration that is required but this is done at the factory before they ship and (although I don’t know for sure) is something that might need to be done every so often (years) but also something you can do yourself - unless the instrument is really out of whack.
You might consider telling the manager of the store to get the unit serviced so you can check it out when it is in better condition. I would guess s/he would jump at the chance having the opportunity to sell a $3K instrument!
I wasn’t sure if there was a factory reset in the master mode (I couldn’t find one). or some sort of reset code when turning the unit on, ala my Andromeda or my EMU modules.
I mentioned the problem to the manager, but I hesitated recommending that he ship the unit back, since there is a bit of time and expense involved and I really didn’t know what I was talking about in regards to a Voyager.
As to selling me that one, if I went Voyager, I would buy one of the new Select series, so he would have to order me a new one anyway, unless he made me a heck of a deal on that one.
Gotta say that, glitch or not, I really didn’t bond with the Voyager like I have with my LP (which was immediate). I did perk up when I found some of the Rick Wakeman Henry VIII presets, though. Much easier to bond with it at home however, rather than tweaking around fighting screaming guitars in the background (although the manager did come over and offer me headphones)…
Try not to let this influence your decision - you would be missing out on an incredible instrument.