microbrute cv/gate out - minitaur in = out of tune

[ronshatzmill]

Mr. Amos, If I posted a video of the connection and calibration procedure and then the resultant wacky scale that comes out, would it 'help you help me?'

[LexTron6K]

Has anybody found a solution to this problem yet? I'm experiencing the exact same thing: when I use the Microbrute pitch CV to control my Minitaur it simply does not work. I can turn the volume down all the way on VCO 1 and then use the VCO 2 Freq knob to get the Minituar to be in tune with the Microbrute on any given note, but then literally if I hit the next note higher or lower the Minitaur is already significantly out of tune.

I updated my Minitaur to firmware 2.1, and it still does not work. I ran the CV calibration sysex commands, and that literally did nothing.

If it helps, I've noticed that when I do the procedure I mentioned above of isolating VCO 2 and then using the Freq knob to get it in tune with the Microbrute, the pitch of VCO 2 will jump. If I start all the way to the left and go all the way to the right on the VCA 2 Freq knob the pitch will actually jump twice, from max to min, and it definitely doesn't sound like the pitch is going all the way through a full octave even before jumping back to the minimum pitch again.

Also, if I play 16 notes in ascending sequence on the keyboard, the Minitaur pitch resets back to where I started; for some reason the Minitaur is spreading 12 notes of 16 keys? And then when I get to the end of the 16 note sequence, it's going back to the original note at the beginning of the sequence, not the same note an octave higher, but the exact same note in the exact same octave.

Even more interestingly, the keyboard tracking from the Microbrute is definitely effecting the filter on the Minitaur all the way up and down the keyboard despite the fact that the pitch CV is acting so abnormally, and more importantly, despite the fact that I do not have anything plugged into the filter CV input on the Minitaur.

Also of note, the Microbrute works flawlessly as a CV controller with all of my modular gear. This is definitely a problem that is exclusive to the Minitaur.

Help please!

I hope that this description is helpful to anybody (Amos!) that can offer some assistance with this issue.

[LexTron6K]

UPDATE:

So I was just demonstrating to my girlfriend how ridiculous and frustrating a dilemma this 12-note vs 16-note situation is, I realized two things:

1) The reason that the keyboard tracking was seemingly effecting the filter on the Minitaur is because I am running the Minitiaur in through the Microbrute audio in for this little couch experiment, and therefore I am actually running the Minitaur through the Microbrute's filter. So, yeah, I got stupid on that one.

2) The key on the keyboard at which the beginning/end of the 16-note cycle occurs is not in a stating location. If I located the key where the beginning/end of the cycle occurs and strike it repeatedly, before too long it will actually jump to the end of the cycle, and if I press it repeatedly some more it will jump back. I hope this makes sense, and again, I hope this is helpful in bringing a solution to this issue.

Please let me know if there's any other details or audio or video or anything else that I can share that will help fix this problem.

[LexTron6K]

UPDATE II:

So it turns out that last night I was calibrating the synth one octave too far, hence the very strange 16-note behavior. I pulled out my voltage meter per Moog's recommendation via customer service and made sure I was calibrating the synth to exactly 1 volt and 4 volts. I did this, and the tracking went back to an appropriate 12-note behavior. But, unfortunately, my Minitaur still was not playing a C when I fed it 1 volt or 4 volts; the minitaur was actually playing an A flat. I went ahead and recalibrated the synth to a pair of A flats instead of to a pair of C's, and low and behold, the synth now working properly via my Microbrute's pitch CV.

Unfortunately there is still some silly behavior coming out of the MInitaur. When I get past the upper range of the synth, I get one octave that repeats the previous octave, and from there on out the synth just plays the same note for the rest of the upper range. Also, once I up past it's upper range the VCO2 Freq knob once again does the thing where if I rotate from one end to the other it will skip from high back to low 3 times instead of offering a continuous range of pitch.

Any thoughts on this Moog?

[Lars]

Are there similar sysex files to adjust 1volt/octave cv for slim phatty?
The phattys have same problem with cv being less than 1v/octave as the Minitaur. Would be wonderful if that exist.

Best, Lars

"note calibration" only tunes the oscillators relative to MIDI notes.

"pitch cv reset" actually does the opposite of "calibrating" the Pitch CV input - rather, it resets it to some default settings that are close but not exact. This function will be improved in an upcoming firmware release.

What you really want, however, is two additional sysex commands: "external pitch 1V cal" and "external pitch 4V cal". These two files actually calibrate the external pitch CV input... the idea is, you play octave 1 on your CV controller, record that as the "1V" calibration point.. then play octave 4 on your CV controller and record that as the "4V" calibration point.

In the case of your Brute, you would hook up the CV and play C1, then send the 1V calibration sysex to the Minitaur... then play C4 on the Brute and send the 4V calibration sysex to the Minitaur.

Here are the files:

http://www.moogconnect.net/downloads/mi ... 1V_Cal.syx
http://www.moogconnect.net/downloads/mi ... 4V_Cal.syx

[SoulFinger]

UPDATE II:

So it turns out that last night I was calibrating the synth one octave too far, hence the very strange 16-note behavior. I pulled out my voltage meter per Moog's recommendation via customer service and made sure I was calibrating the synth to exactly 1 volt and 4 volts. I did this, and the tracking went back to an appropriate 12-note behavior. But, unfortunately, my Minitaur still was not playing a C when I fed it 1 volt or 4 volts; the minitaur was actually playing an A flat. I went ahead and recalibrated the synth to a pair of A flats instead of to a pair of C's, and low and behold, the synth now working properly via my Microbrute's pitch CV.

Unfortunately there is still some silly behavior coming out of the MInitaur. When I get past the upper range of the synth, I get one octave that repeats the previous octave, and from there on out the synth just plays the same note for the rest of the upper range. Also, once I up past it's upper range the VCO2 Freq knob once again does the thing where if I rotate from one end to the other it will skip from high back to low 3 times instead of offering a continuous range of pitch.

Any thoughts on this Moog?

I just tried to calibrate the 'brute's pitch CV using an Arturia Beatstep and the sysex messages from this thread and I also ended up with A flats instead of C's. I'll go ahead and calibrate it to A flats as LexTron6K did above. I just thought I'd share that in case anyone else is tinkering around with this.

[chefmenteur]

This thread seemed the most relevant, so I am posting my findings here...

I've heard from a couple of my semi-pro musician friends that the CV inputs on the Minitaur have issues, and seeing that there was a new firmware out for it, I decided to run some tests on my Minitaur and see if it had the problems they were talking about that prevented them from using the Minitaur in their analog-controlled setups. Up till now, I've used my Minitaur, which I've had for a few years, from MIDI only and had no real issues, and always gotten a great sound.

I set my MacBook Pro, Minitaur, Keith McMillen QuNexus keyboard (http://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/qunexus/), and electronic tuner up — and I thought you’d be interested to see what I found out:

First, I downloaded the Editor (see previous email) and latest firmware, connected the Minitaur via MIDI, and used the SysEx Librarian to load the latest firmware onto the Minitaur. I ran the tuning calibration tool from the Editor’s settings page.

Then I played every note from MIDI, and tested the Minitaur’s notes to make sure it was in tune. It was, perfectly. Every note was right on the money.

Then I connected the QuNexus keyboard's analog CV outs (gate and pitch) to the Minitaur. The notes were definitely NOT tracking right at either 1V/octave OR 1.2V/octave (the QuNexus' Editor gives control over the voltage), even after I reset the Minitaur to "default CV settings."

So I used the CV calibration tool in the Minitaur Editor, playing C1 and C4 from the QuNexus which sends +1 and +4V into the Minitaur's CV inputs, and that worked — sort of…. with the following caveats:

1) The notes didn’t track 100% perfectly. The C at the lowest octave was a little flat, as were some other notes. If I tuned the middle C ( using the manual tuner on the front panel) in the range, I got the best overall tracking, but it wasn't anywhere near as precise as the MIDI notes. However, it sounded fine to my less-than-pitch-perfect ears played against each other.... The notes were off by 10-15 cents at most, and tracking was generally the same from octave to octave, it was within the octave that the notes were off. This might be an issue with either the Minitaur and/or the QuNexus.

2) For some reason the gate signal that was being sent triggered a note on the Minitaur on BOTH note in and note off. So it plays a second, unwanted note when you release the key. and sending gate to “S-trigger” from the QuNexus didn’t help. I’m not sure what’s up there... anyone have ideas? Maybe it's the 0-5V versus -5 to 5 V problem?

3) It wouldn’t let me play notes as low as I can play with MIDI. The calibration asks you to press C1 for +1V and C4 for +4V, but you can’t seem to get a note below C2 to play on the Minitaur — only 2 octaves seem possible. Sometimes even playing the lowest C, it jumps up an extra octave or 2 which doesn’t make sense.

4) The calibration seems to drift over time, too.

5) The CV input stops working sometimes when you unplug the USB-MIDI connection to the computer (which I only had in for access to the Editor), which makes no sense at all — although I have since read in another thread that this was an acknowledged issue with CV control.

Summary: It might be usable for a recording where you’re playing one octave or so, but trying to get this working in a live context would probably be a nightmare... and for a studio context the inexactness of the tuning could be frustrating, although it sounds close enough to my ear, the tuner says differently.

For now, I am going to stick with trying to control this thing with MIDI only, which is unfortunate, since has all those CV inputs on the back.

I'd love to hear what others' experiences with this are, or any tips. And of course if Amos would like to chime in, that would be awesome, too.

Alec

[chefmenteur]

Update to my QuNexus CV attempts: it turns out that turning off the Minitaur and turning it back on changes the pitches all over again — something closer to the A-flat thing that was being talked about above, but it's not consistent over octaves.

The good news is that you can get the lower notes again, instead of being restricted to one and a half octaves, but it doesn't even come close to tracking consistently.

Frustrating!

[esotericmetal]

I recently tried getting my minitaur cv inputs to work with my qunexus and a brand new mother-32. Having exactly the same issues chefmenteur described (thanks for documenting it! saved me a bunch of time trying to figure what I was doing wrong).

So I guess the CV inputs are somewhat unusable then? That would be a real shame. Part of the reason I picked up the mother-32 was because it was supposed to be an excellent companion to the minitaur. If anyone knows of any work arounds I would love to hear them. I'd ultimately like to be able to send gate/pitch messages to both the minitaur and mother-32 without having to use a computer. I hope this eventually gets sorted out.

[HookedOnSonics]

""So I guess the CV inputs are somewhat unusable then? That would be a real shame. Part of the reason I picked up the mother-32 was because it was supposed to be an excellent companion to the minitaur. If anyone knows of any work arounds I would love to hear them. I'd ultimately like to be able to send gate/pitch messages to both the minitaur and mother-32 without having to use a computer. I hope this eventually gets sorted out.""

Howdy esotericmetal, is this something you're running into if you have the KM QuNexus as part of the chaining? Or do you also see the issue if you bypass the KM Q and just connect cv/gate directly from Minitaur to Mother-32

I have three moms up and was just getting ready to order a Minitaur. How does the Minitaur and Mom sound via Midi?

Thanks in advance for all and any FEEDBACK!!!

[esotericmetal]

is this something you're running into if you have the KM QuNexus as part of the chaining? Or do you also see the issue if you bypass the KM Q and just connect cv/gate directly from Minitaur to Mother-32

The minitaur is only designed to accept 0 to +5v, where as the mother puts out -5 to +5. So only the gate (and the other cv outs that only put out +5) would work correctly even if the minitaur didn't have the tuning issues.

The qunexus is supposed to put out 0 to +5 so it should be able to work fine with the minitaur if these tuning issues are fixed.

[jdkee]

I too am stymied trying to use my Minitaur with CV. Anyone out there managed to get it calibrated and tuned for use with CV?

[0_glow]

I signed up to this forum purely to reply to this thread.... dedication

YES you can totally calibarate the minitaurs pitch CV ins with those 2 sysex's Amos shared BUT

YOU HAVE TO SEND G#1 FOR C1 AND G#4 FOR C4 (or A flat )

I used MIDI OX and it worked a treat, first time using the program and it was done with 5 minutes
The tracking isnt 100.0000% but VERY close, close enough for me anyway

[Puredrums]

I've been fighting a similar battle except with my Korg SQ-1, using a mixture of the techniques in this thread I can get ~3 octaves of decent tracking from the 1V/O linear scale output, after calibrating 1V/4V reference with the built in feature of editor 3.1. I haven't been able to reliably achieve played notes played over CV, any lower than C2, despite setting 1V reference via C1 or G1#.

[chefmenteur]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one on the forum with these findings. I also have 2 local friends, both of whom are electronic artists of some reknown, who have also tried with no success to get their Minitaurs to accurately track pitches using the CV inputs. One of them even brought his to Switched On Sound in Austin, and they couldn't solve it either. I am guessing that fixing this is either impossible due to a hardware issue, or Moog simply don't have the staff or the time to allocate to this issue, but they may not realize how many people are being affected by this.