Moog Music Forum

I own a Voyager which I love deeply, but I was thinking about getting a Minitaur for playing basicbass sounds with my left hand and bass response, pads or simple leads with my right. So I just borrowed a Minitaur for a week or two to check it out. Had a few minutes with it tonight beside the Voyager and tried to compare the two with a simple one- and two-oscillator saw sound. Very similar, but there seems to some extra meatiness with the Minitaur. Or am I just hearing what I want to justify the purchase?

So, my question is, since I find a lot of posts about malfuctioning Minitaurs, what do you like about it? Its sound, simpleness or maybe the lack of tweakiness so instead of spending half an hour setting a bass sound you end up actually playing? The first and the latter is what I thought the Minitaur could do for me.

I've never done a Voyager to Minitaur side by side (modeled same patch to determine which has more heft) but I did extensive side-by-side between Taurus III pedals and Minitaur to the point where I was trying to dial in precise 14 bit values in order to mimic the beating precisely.

I'm biased but to me, nothing has as much low-end punch as Minitaur. You can try new fangled Bass Station 2, or one of the *Brute synths, etc. But nothing is going to be it. I'm not going to tout one feature and the science behind the OSC design, etc because I'd just be posing as knowledgable; I might know just a little bit more than the next guy and this is only because I spend way too much money and time on gear : )

But get some mojo going with a keyboard split and see where it takes you. I have an VOS, not a full Voyager so not sure if there is any advanced Midi split capabilities built in (I don't think so) but you should get you hands on some DAW setups or stand alone software which will split for you and do as you said; bottom 15 keys as Minitaur, rest of keyboard routed to Voyager. It's a nice one-two punch.

I've got a bunch of favorite patches loaded into mine; Just select from the panel, but if you want to go nuts with the Minitaur software, it's there for you.

There other thing worth mentioning is that you'll find many synths on the open market so find somebody on Muffs selling one and get a decent deal if it's important to you (saving $100-$200 is never bad). Everybody I dealt with over there is reputable.

But yeah, despite being a Bass player, owning a set of Taurus III pedals that I bought new, I have a lot of love for my Minitaur. If nothing else, it's analog analog in a tiny box for reasonable cost. Problems? I've had LFO problems in the past, never had any CV in problems and did all sorts of step sequencer fiddling. It's a nice synth. (not sure if you checked out any of the patches built into the software but if you still have access to it you should so that you can see how varied it can be).

as far as I can tell, since there is a bit of a learning curve with every instrument~ the only problems I have had with the Minitaur itself have been my own self-induced minor "user error" problems~ however, I'm eagerly testing every beta release and definitely there can often be _software_ related problems with unreleased 'test version' betas~ which is usually what you "hear about" here in this forum.
I posted recently that I use it (for Bass!) more than anything else ~ despite having a set of Taurus 3 two Voyagers and many more choices. Minitaur is way easier real-estate wise in my studio, it has a kick ass Editor/Librarian, and mappable CVs but even without those benefits the T3, except for it's obvious advantage of foot pedals freeing you to play other instruments, T3 doesn't have nearly as many options for live sound tweaking because of the interface design ~ Taurus 3 is closer to the Little/Slim Phatty approach while the Minitaur interface is closer to the Sub Phatty and Voyager which gives you more of a one knob per function though all of them have quite a lot going on "Under The Hood" as well

MBlom wrote:I own a Voyager which I love deeply, but I was thinking about getting a Minitaur for playing basicbass sounds with my left hand and bass response, pads or simple leads with my right. So I just borrowed a Minitaur for a week or two to check it out. Had a few minutes with it tonight beside the Voyager and tried to compare the two with a simple one- and two-oscillator saw sound. Very similar, but there seems to some extra meatiness with the Minitaur. Or am I just hearing what I want to justify the purchase?

So, my question is, since I find a lot of posts about malfuctioning Minitaurs, what do you like about it? Its sound, simpleness or maybe the lack of tweakiness so instead of spending half an hour setting a bass sound you end up actually playing? The first and the latter is what I thought the Minitaur could do for me.

I heart my Minitaur. I've gone on at length on the topic so I'll give you the short version. I've got the Sub and had the Slim and to my taste, the Minitaur plays will with my electronic (mostly digital) project by offering round, beautiful, playable bass tones that play well with others. It also plays well with my live project by having a very musical filter resonance and one-hand tweak-ability so that you can poke out of the crowd when necessary.

The V2 stuff is icing but too complicated for me for live use. But the fact that Moog continue to develop against this platform is a testament to the company as well as to the versatility of the device. I set up a range of preset configurations in advance and can switch to them and tweak from there rather than trying to recall the assorted shift-keys. For me the presets are less about tone than configuration parameters.

The line-in is super useful in the studio since, again, I think it's the most musical of the filters of which I have experience. Plus, it's obvious Moog want to do battle with the modulars with the new CV features.

In terms of power to weight, it's the one I would keep in a crunch, even though you have to let it warm up. And sale prices right now are just ridiculous.

Don't we all ???

MBlom wrote:am I just hearing what I want to justify the purchase?

I've read that Kraftwerk made their first and arguably best LPs with a Minimoog, an ARP Oddysey and a Clavinet.
( I think it was in Wolfgang Flur' "I WAS ROBOT" bio) I'm sure there are many more examples of minimal gear producing Massive recordings though. "Warm Leatherette" on a modular, maybe?
So to be completely honest, as much as I DO love my Tauri ~ any current Voyager or SubPhatty are also both capable of playing seriously kickass bass. It's just marketing hyperbole to say that >any< one specific synth is mandatory, or that other instruments can't handle it; however, if you want or like any instrument for any reason whatsoever and can afford it then not why go for it?