So lastnight I was designing some sounds on my AE. I started with my usual default sawtooth patch. First Osc. only set to 100 with filter open, no Res, etc.
The patch sounded distorted. I mean it just didn’t sound the same, or like a sawtooth. I tweaked the Waveform selector but it didn’t sound right. The signal was definitely being altered somehow.
After a couple of minutes of switching between my default starter patch and others I got it back to how it originally sounded when I created the patch. Mind you I had already had my Voyager on for a good 5hrs so I don’t know what the hell went wrong. Must be something digitally screwing with the signal.
Using OS 2.5. This is the first time this has ever happened.
I’ve noticed a strange thing where if i have all three oscs set at freq 0 and there is no beating between them that there is still some phase cancellation and loss of bass at certain points when holding down a note. is this normal? never noticed it on my source or mini. it really screws with 3 osc bass sounds as there is a point in the osc cycle where the bass frequencies really drop out. ???
That’s why a Model D sounds fatter (more bass) then a Voyager. The Voyager’s oscillator is to perfect in pitch, they lock together when set to “zero”. Something that is almost impossible to do with a Model D, they never lock together like that. I can make a fatter bass sound with two Model D VCO’s then with three Voyager
If that is the reason for the difference, then can’t you just detune the Voyager oscillators by a tiny amount, to achieve the same effect?
I have tried tuning my Voyager using an oscilloscope, and it was virtually impossible to get the oscillators in perfect phase, even when they were perfectly on pitch. The only way to get close was to detune just enough for the phases to change, then try to lock back to the correct pitch when the two oscillators came into phase… not easy to do by hand. Someone told me it wasn’t even necessarily desirable to have all the oscillators in phase exactly, so I quit that experiment.
Phase cancellation is normal between closely tuned oscillators if all the mix levels are the same. To minimize it, don’t use equal mix levels. Drop the volume of one VCO, at some point you’ll still get the sweeping of harmonics from detuned VCOs while reducing the phase cancellation.
Demokid, my Voyager VCOs do not lock when set to unison. Lockup is very obvious, you’ll hear a “grating” as the VCOs attempt to lock on to each other. It’s unmusical and I don’t know of any vintage synth that did this, designers go out of their way to avoid it. The Voyager does not do this. I have a Polymoog that had a button to “lock” the VCOs - it used a PLL circuit to lock them in perfectly, but it wasn’t terribly useful.
Your model D sounds fatter because of the tolerances of the filter between different minimoogs. Of the five transistor pairs in the ladder filter, only the top and bottom pairs are matched - the middle three pairs are not matched. Transistor matching was a labor intensive process; the original batch of minimoogs had all pairs matched, later ones only matched the top and bottom pairs to save labor. The result is that many minimoog filters sound different.
I had an early RAM minimoog serial #1053 with all the ladder pairs matched. I’ve also played #1001 and #1009. All three had matched pairs in the ladders, but different VCO boards (original discrete, 3046, ua726). They all sounded the same.
By contrast, every later minimoog I’ve heard sounded vastly different. They all sounded different. The early batches all sounded the same, later ones varied quite a bit. It’s not the VCO cards, it’s the filter.
My Voyager sounds like my RAM minimoog. Its filters use the CA3086 transistor array ICs which are matched pairs by design - so both machines have all matched pairs in the ladder filter. That means the sound between different Voyagers will be consistent, rather important for a programmable synth.
Your model D sounds fatter to you because that is the sound you have grown used to. A good 80% of the model D minimoogs out there will sound different from the Voyager - due to the filter tolerances in the model D.
Ok. My Model D has serial number 1737 and is in great shape. If I create a 3 VCO Bass/Lead sound on the Voyager it sounds just great, full of warmth and bass.
Then I try to set up the exact same patch on my D and it just kicks the Voyagers a**… So much more bass, punch and warmer.
I’m not saying that the Voyager sounds bad, it sounds like Moog but not as a Model D. (I don’t mind, I love my Voyager) I haven’t heard a new analogue sizer that can beat the sound of an old classic analogue sizer.
What kind of osccilloscope did you use and how did you connect the voyager to it (what kind of jacks/connectors)? I’d like to get an oscilloscope.
I use a “BK Precision” model 2160A Dual Trace Oscilloscope. I have two probes coming from it, one per channel. I use single-conductor test leads (not unlike alligator clips) to connect the probe tips to different signals, then in dual channel mode I can compare the two waveforms with each other in realtime. I don’t remember right now exactly where I hooked into to get the different oscillator signals, but it all made sense at the time. If you just want to view the output, you can unscrew the metal sleeve of a 1/4" patch cable (plugged into the Voyager main output) and connect the tip of the 'scope probe to the wire coming from the tip of the jack; and the grounding lug of the probe to the sleeve of the jack. This is nice for watching your sounds as you create them. Even in this mode you can see if two oscillators are in phase or not; the combined wave will ripple up and down at the beat-frequency between the oscillators, and settle into a stable pattern if they are in phase.
I think there should be an “oscilloscope mode” display on VA synths with large display screens; the only problem is the DSP power required for this would eat up a lot of performance that could be used for audio. Maybe a hardware real-analog synth with a tube-powered, real oscilloscope built into the control panel! That would be pricey but sweet.
hello,
I made the same experience when I compare my model D(T2369E) with my AE.
It´s much easier to get a precise bass sound with the old mini, while I think the AE sounds rather blurred in comparison. But on the other hand I realized that I tried to program the AE like I´m used to do from the model D and that is not working, the AE is just more complex. With this in mind I get better results from the AE .In the end it´s just another “sizer” (I like that).
The ae sounds every bit as good as the mini and better.add midi and patch storage and you’ve got the ultimate monosynth.the mini had its time but its place in modern music is limited compared to the voyager which integrates perfectly with computers and other midi technology.i’m sick of hearing the mini/voyager debate.just make some music and stop worrying about the mini being fatter than the voyager-it just isnt true,the voyager is just more complex so it takes a little longer to reach the same sound.
what I had the other day, while using the Voyager Editor(Demo) with my AE, was that the envelope selector switch went back an forth (in the editor of course) and affected the sound too.!?
I think analog digital controled, is the reason for things like this. Its just a program, and there will always be bugs, like with all programs.
Fat is not necessarily beautiful. I have heard lots of users (famous or not) that don’t use 3 VCOs because it is just TOO fat and difficult to mix. Vince Clarke, for instance, used a SCI Pro 1 for bass in “Don’t Go”. This is just an example of what can be done with 2 VCOs.
Other than that, I think that one of the most important things to consider (if not the most important) is envelopes. The Minimoog’s oscillators aren’t the snappiest on the planet - there are other synthesizers that are so amazingly snappy I’d say they have an acoustic quality to them.
The D model has a passive mixer which allows for some intermodulations between the VCOs. This is another aspect that you might want to consider when emulating the D. As MC suggestes, OSC levels shouldn’t be the same - that cancels out some of the bass.
Also the Q is different. On the Voyager is linear - on the D no. Another thing is the key-tracking - again this is not the same. On the Andromeda for instance you can use the Tracking Generator to make custom-curves for filters or volumes and it takes a lot of time but the results are just wonderful. You need to program that in the Voyager.
And feedback of course - just a tiny amount to give some grit. Remember that filtered signals are 180 phase-shifted with regard to the original signals so if you want to generate resonance externally you have to invert this signal again. Use a CP-251 for that. It will generate a peak at the cutoff freqeuncy. To keep it well behaved you need some sort of gain compensation for it. Possibly an external envelope or some other means for that, like an LFO (sawtooth works fine) with the same duration as the duration as that of the actual bass sound applied to feedback.
Fat is not necessarily beautiful. I have heard lots of users (famous or not) that don’t use 3 VCOs because it is just TOO fat and difficult to mix. Vince Clarke, for instance, used a SCI Pro 1 for bass in “Don’t Go”. This is just an example of what can be done with 2 VCOs.
Other than that, I think that one of the most important things to consider (if not the most important) is envelopes. The Minimoog’s oscillators aren’t the snappiest on the planet - there are other synthesizers that are so amazingly snappy I’d say they have an acoustic quality to them.
The D model has a passive mixer which allows for some intermodulations between the VCOs. This is another aspect that you might want to consider when emulating the D. As MC suggestes, OSC levels shouldn’t be the same - that cancels out some of the bass.
Also the Q is different. On the Voyager is linear - on the D no. Another thing is the key-tracking - again this is not the same. On the Andromeda for instance you can use the Tracking Generator to make custom-curves for filters or volumes and it takes a lot of time but the results are just wonderful. You need to program that in the Voyager.
And feedback of course - just a tiny amount to give some grit. Remember that filtered signals are 180 phase-shifted with regard to the original signals so if you want to generate resonance externally you have to invert this signal again. Use a CP-251 for that. It will generate a peak at the cutoff freqeuncy. To keep it well behaved you need some sort of gain compensation for it. Possibly an external envelope or some other means for that, like an LFO (sawtooth works fine) with the same duration as the duration as that of the actual bass sound applied to feedback.
Fat is not necessarily beautiful. I have heard lots of users (famous or not) that don’t use 3 VCOs because it is just TOO fat and difficult to mix. Vince Clarke, for instance, used a SCI Pro 1 for bass in “Don’t Go”. This is just an example of what can be done with 2 VCOs.
Other than that, I think that one of the most important things to consider (if not the most important) is envelopes. The Minimoog’s oscillators aren’t the snappiest on the planet - there are other synthesizers that are so amazingly snappy I’d say they have an acoustic quality to them.
The D model has a passive mixer which allows for some intermodulations between the VCOs. This is another aspect that you might want to consider when emulating the D. As MC suggestes, OSC levels shouldn’t be the same - that cancels out some of the bass.
Also the Q is different. On the Voyager is linear - on the D no. Another thing is the key-tracking - again this is not the same. On the Andromeda for instance you can use the Tracking Generator to make custom-curves for filters or volumes and it takes a lot of time but the results are just wonderful. You need to program that in the Voyager.
And feedback of course - just a tiny amount to give some grit. Remember that filtered signals are 180 phase-shifted with regard to the original signals so if you want to generate resonance externally you have to invert this signal again. Use a CP-251 for that. It will generate a peak at the cutoff freqeuncy. To keep it well behaved you need some sort of gain compensation for it. Possibly an external envelope or some other means for that, like an LFO (sawtooth works fine) with the same duration as the duration as that of the actual bass sound applied to feedback.
SOmetimes I notice that when i switch presets, i don’t get a sound or for a second theres a different sound. THen it will not make a sound when i hit a key and then it will fix itself.
Who knows?
