I’m thinking of building up a modular. I know that the VX-351 would be great to use between my Voyager and it. But one thing I don’t quite understand is how some of the cv routings will work.
For instance, If I send the cv from one of my envelopes to say the amp of my modular, will it still work in the same way – that is, will it still have the expected attack, decay, sustain etc as what the knobs on my Voyager currently read?
Another thing I don’t quite get is what will come out of the bus jacks. The manual says that I’ll get the cv of what is after the shaping and amount selections. So suppose I had a source as the LFO, the destination as the filter, shaping at the on/pgm selection. If I send this to say a filter, what might I expect as the result?
I mean, I can see what the source would do. For example, suppose I had LFO as a square wave in and send that to the filter, well, I know what to expect from that. But in this case (with the modular), it seems like it would have 2 destinations - the filter of the moog, and whatever I’m routing the cv from the expander to. Is it that the destination in the bus gets ignored when routing out of the 351, or is it summed somehow?
Thanks. BTW, the modular I’m thinking of is the dot com system.
Forget the destination selection. The bus output will be the sum of the source, shaping and amount functions, along with the setting of the associated performance controller. For the Mod Wheel Bus, this means that the MW will be the final amplitude control of the MW bus output. For the Pedal/On Bus, the pedal (if connected to Mod 1) will control the final CV amplitude of that bus output. If no pedal is used, then the Amount control will set the final CV value.
The Voyager’s modulation destination does not get ignored if you take a CV output from a 351 bus. The 351 busses simply provide additional CV outs that can be applied elsewhere - either to the Voyager back panel jacks or some other gear, such as a modular synth.
The VX-351 really is essential for interfacing the Voyager to other CV gear. The CP-251 is also a nice enhancement.
Thanks, that clears up everything. So the vx-351 essentially gives you these additional modules: Noise, 2 LFO (with osc 3), Sample and hold, smoothed sample and hold, 2 evelopes, 2 oscillators… not to mention that you have the touch surface to work with as well!
Hi - these are not “additional” modules, they are merely outputs for the existing internal modules. Your Voyager comes with a whole load of CV inputs but no outs. The 351 simply provides you with these outputs.
But I agree with Greg: if you have any other CV gear in your studio, the 351 is an essential purchase. Even if you don’t, the 351 is handy for working with just the Voyager but its main benefits are definitely connecting to other gear. My MS20 sits on top of my Voyager and its almost that I now regard them as a single modular synth. Its quite rare that I have a patch that only uses the Voyager or MS20 - more often there is some connectivity, often Voyager → MS20 via the 351.
Yeah, I just mean it’s like having additional modules for the modular itself – which I have to say is really cool. If you look at the Voyager as a big controller, it kind of does provide extra modules to external hardware.
Before I started shopping for modulars I was pretty much using the Voyager by itself (well with a couple of sequencers and a frost wave fat controller), and that was great - hudge sound, lots of flexibility. But now I see this whole new level of functionality to it that’s just over the top.