New Matriarch Velocity Curves incorrectly described

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dangerous
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2016 6:45 am

New Matriarch Velocity Curves incorrectly described

Post by dangerous » Tue Mar 14, 2023 6:17 pm

The patch notes say:
HIGHLIGHTS
With new global setting 5.3 you can switch between four different velocity curves. If you tend to play keys with a harder
touch, try switching to LINEAR or STRETCHED to more easily produce softer velocity values. Alternatively, switching to
COMPRESSED will make it so that higher velocity values are produced with less physical effort.
My issue has always been that the velocity curve is too sensitive in that I can't play anything soft unless it's literally "Velocity 0" - play a bit harder and it jumps to almost full. So it sounds from the above that LINEAR or STRETCHED would help me. However, actually it's COMPRESSED (F4) that has made it easier for me to produce the full range of velocities, by making it more physical effort to produce high velocity values.

To test the different curves, I patched velocity to the pitch of osc 1 via an attenuator. By holding a note with full velocity and then adjusting the attenuator to pitch the note up exactly 1 octave, it's easy to test out the different curves by e.g. trying to play a scale just by varying velocity. Until I tried the COMPRESSED setting I had given up on the firmware update actually helping things.

Hope this helps someone, also if anyone can shed more light on this would be interested to hear.

milton
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2023 7:39 pm

Re: New Matriarch Velocity Curves incorrectly described

Post by milton » Tue Mar 14, 2023 7:42 pm

Agreed... same behavior here. COMPRESSED makes it easiest to get the widest range of velocities.

LINEAR and STRETCHED seem to be somehow *worse* than the default... which shouldn't be possible. :lol:

At least it's more useable now...

emborg
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:16 pm

Re: New Matriarch Velocity Curves incorrectly described

Post by emborg » Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:23 pm

Also tried and found no big difference between Linear and Streatched, and Compressed curve more appropriate for my playing. May be Moog Engineers could describe these new modes in more details.
Also I was hoping this firmware changes how velocity is sent to midi to play different software instruments in DAW, but it seems it still sends 127 value via MIDI on any force on Matriarch's key

sdwillingham
Posts: 56
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2022 1:42 pm

Re: New Matriarch Velocity Curves incorrectly described

Post by sdwillingham » Tue Apr 25, 2023 6:45 pm

I took a look at this yesterday with an oscilloscope (Korg NTS-2 is very handy). There are different curves, but I didn’t find them very helpful because the overall range is weird.

For instance, in linear mode, it is very hard to get a velocity voltage below half of full scale. It is possible, but fiddly. The very slow velocities required are too slow to accurately play any real rhythm!

So tweaking the curves has a noticeable effect, but doesn’t satisfactorily fix the problem. You can only get about a 2:1 voltage range out of the velocity CV. When applied to the linear VCAs (I shift the voltage down first), the amplitude changes are just not very expressive.

[Tip: to offset the voltage downward, plug the keyboard velocity into one of the attenuator’s *CV* ports (not “in”). Then turn the knob between 8 and 9 PM (CCW from noon). This amplifies the voltage by about 1.6x and shifts it downward so that +5V at CV maps to about 0V at the output.]

The curious thing is that I love the velocity response on the Model D. It just works and feels expressive without much fiddling. So Moog has experts that could tailor a nice CV response. I wonder if the microcontroller in the Matriarch is underpowered, in general, making it hard to get good results.

Citionabous
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Apr 26, 2023 4:02 am

Re: New Matriarch Velocity Curves incorrectly described

Post by Citionabous » Wed Jun 07, 2023 3:56 am

emborg wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:23 pm Also tried and found no big difference between Linear and Streatched, and Compressed curve more appropriate for my playing. May be Moog Engineers could describe these new modes in more details.tiny fishing
Also I was hoping this firmware changes how velocity is sent to midi to play different software instruments in DAW, but it seems it still sends 127 value via MIDI on any force on Matriarch's key
Yebb, I also couldn't find the difference between Linear and Streatched.

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