MiniTaur (more info)

[EMwhite]

With NAMM winding down over the next day, videos are finally starting to show up online.

Some of them are very basic. And while Marc did a great job on the promotional video, here is one from SonicState with Steve Dunnington that gives some more info that you might not have known...

Such as:

- velocity sensitivity tied to Filter (controllable through midi)
- note sync (starts osc cycle at next note on)
- reverse envelopes
- the extreme fatness of Pulse/square wave (sounds really nice as demo'ed)

And I'm sure there is more. Have a look/listen...

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2012/01/ ... -minitaur/

[thealien666]

Thanks for the link. Interesting demo with high quality sound. Funny how the small Akai MIDI controller he uses looks a lot like Arturia's MiniBrute ...

[Brian G]

Thanks for the link

The Countryman E6 always sounds great..... so does the Minitaur , good to see they used the headphone out to feed the video rig.

I think it's goign to be very popular, looking forward to trying one out.

[Mr Shave]

I want that note sync thing on the little phatty

[Elhardt]

- the extreme fatness of Pulse/square wave (sounds really nice as demo'ed)

The Minitaur doesn't do pulse waves, and that's one of its big drawbacks. It would be nice to have a bass synth capable of more than synthetic buzzy sounding sawtooths, and something that could get more of a bass guitar type sound when needed, but without pulse waves, that's out. And the square wave bass sound in his demo sounds annoying and cheap, as square waves don't make good bass sounds, nor can square waves be referred to as fat.

[MC]

Elhardt, you own(ed) modular synths. Have you LOOKED at the rear panel? It has a FILTER IN jack. You can use any external VCO into the Minitaur.

OK they didn't include variable pulse width on the unit. They wanted to keep it under a price target to musicians who couldn't afford the T3. Chop off the pedal controller, the patch storage, arppeggiator of the T3, add MIDI CC control of all parameters and a panel full of knobs and it's not a bad unit. PW would had raised the cost with additional circuitry, pots, and knobs. They had to compromise. Be bloody thankful they kept the Taurus voicing circuitry, which is a strong selling point.

In despite your claim on AH, no amount of EQ or subfrequency generator will duplicate the Taurus effect.

[soundxplorer]

nor can square waves be referred to as fat.

"Square waves are fat."

That just happened!

[dan thacker]

I know this is nothing to do with the debate,but can anyone tell my newbie *ss why a moog lp can't be used to control the Minituar,or can it?
o.k. I'm not that new,but i don't know much.

[EMwhite]

It certainly can. How the onboard Little Phatty Pots map to Minitaur values remains to be seen.

Most unfortunately, the Phatty does not have a hard-key (dedicated hardware button) to enable/disable "Local Mode" so anything that you tweak on the panel will change the current sound. You can disable / enable but it's a few menus deep and that's a drag.

But ideally, you would want a controller that had dedicated functions and knobs, etc. for tweaking while playing. Of course, the Minitaur was designed to be a [very] hands on synth module so best to have it right in front of you.

I the best of all cases, I would want a key split function within Minitaur that way you can play freely with your left and playl your local keyboard (Phatty in this case) with your right. Phatty has no key-split option and I'm not quite sure that Minitaur will have a 'learn' based split (though I've suggested it).

Due to the fact that the only DIN connection on Minitaur is an "IN", you'll need the USB connection and a computer (presumably) in order to do any Midi manipulation even if the software functions were implemented.

But clearly, Phatty is a perfectly suitable controller. Minitaur will only obey Velocity (which Phatty sends) and not Aftertouch. So right out of the box you can turn "Output OFF" with the button between the volume and headphone jack and play away.

For me, having the booming bass will be most enjoyable along with a split function; I pre-ordered so with any luck, I'll demonstrate this with some host software, Minitaur on the left hand and Phatty on my right.

[dan thacker]

Thank you,EMwhite,that's good to know.How about another eye-roller? Would the Minituar process poly,or just mono?
O.k.,since I'm on a genius roll here,are there any midi keyboards that don't feel like they came from a cereal box?
Thanks again,I really do appreciate your time.

[EMwhite]

The manual hasn't been published yet so no sure if it will obey high/low/last key. More than likely it's going to work on the 'last key' concept.

Since the sound engine is Monophonic, it really can only 'voice' one sound at a time however there is nothing stopping you from tuning the 2nd Osc to 1 octave below the first and lowering the volume just a bit as demonstrated by Marc Doty for a bit of Sub Osc action. Of course you can also tune fifths, thirds or whatever to offset one OSC from the other but ultimately only one key may be pressed at a time.

My comment above (no manual published) also makes the option of round-robin-poly an open one. To be honest, I don't think this is in the cards but I'm just guessing.

As for keyboards, I've tried a bunch of the years. I tend to favor Fatar keybeds and the StudioLogic (the same company for the most part) do use them, as does Novation on the SL line. Studiologic tend to have whacky designs however, they sometimes put form over function when it comes to layout of controls, etc. This topic has been discussed elsewhere on this and other forums.

Personally, I do like this: http://store.apple.com/us/product/TA097LL/A (I had one and moved it out because I bought another synth and need the rack space). The nice thing about it is that it has a good feel and really good touch sensitivity and is fairly basic. Also, it's not very deep so you can build a row of modules for yourself like the Minitaur, a CP, a low-cost Sequencer, Foogers, Drum machine, maybe a Tetra, a laptop or whatever. I wouldn't buy it from Apple though, you can usually find it cheaper elsewhere.

If you have other sound modules already, you should, look for a master keyboard that has a built in split functionality and more than one DIN out that way you don't have to mess with thru boxes; keep your rig simple if you can. If you already have a Phatty (wasn't sure if you said you did), you should investigate using some mapping software or a routing config on your DAW, but Phatty's 3 octave keyboard becomes limiting, even more so with a split in place.