Voyager and Minitaur?

Tips and techniques for Minimoog Analog Synthesizers
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Analog Prophet
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Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by Analog Prophet » Sat Jan 07, 2012 9:05 am

Are there any tricks or benefits that can be made with the Voyager in conjunction to the new Minitaur?
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EricK
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by EricK » Sat Jan 07, 2012 3:39 pm

This will be a good question for Moog to answer.

I purchased the Taurus 3 hoping that I would be able to get polyphony thru midi, and it really hasn't worked out that way yet.
Note: I haven't seen how the new Taurus Firmware adresses this question, I believe it should but my Taurus is several counties away at this time.
Supposedly you could set the Voyager to high note priority and the Taurus to Low Note and drone basses while leading with the Voyager.

Im sure that the MiniTaur will be different as it has no dedicated controller, but with the Voyager/T3 combo, you have to transpose the Voyager's keyboard value down so low, that the Voyager's oscs are virtually useless (unless local control is off and you control the Voyager another way) but you get the maximum controllable range out of the Taurus 3 from the Voyager's keyboard.

When you hook the Voyager to the Taurus via the VX-351's pitch and gate CV outputs, the Taurus will track at a certain interval to the Voyager. It will track perfectly, but I haven't been able to get them to sync to the same pitch, without detuning the Voyager's fine tune pot all the way ccw and that isn't very practical when playing with standard tuned instruments.



Another potential issue between the Voyager and Minitaur is that the Voyager puts out less than 1v/oct whereas the Minitaur accepts 1v/oct.


So, needless to say, the question you pose is a very good one.


Eric
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LivePsy
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by LivePsy » Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:01 pm

EricK wrote: Voyager puts out less than 1v/oct whereas the Minitaur accepts 1v/oct.
My Voyager is exactly 1V/Oct and I track a Dark Energy from it perfectly. Your Voyager needs a calibration...
I've stopped talking now.

EricK
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by EricK » Sat Jan 07, 2012 10:09 pm

LivePsy wrote:
EricK wrote: Voyager puts out less than 1v/oct whereas the Minitaur accepts 1v/oct.
My Voyager is exactly 1V/Oct and I track a Dark Energy from it perfectly. Your Voyager needs a calibration...
Excuse me!

I was thinking about the Voyager's pitch voltage being 0.935. I remember reading where someone had their Voyager factory modified to spit out 1v/oct. But to be sure I dug this quote up and alas, I was wrong. Thank you for pointing out my mistake, I will surely be careful in the future.

This is from 2006. My first Voyager was from 2004 and my second was from 2008.
GregAE wrote:
notinachos wrote: in the voyager manual, it says the V/Oct jack is actually like 1.3 something volts per octave.
Actually, my manual (from a 2003 Voyager Performer) says the VX-351's Kybd Pitch jack provides 0.935 V/Oct. In fact, Moog later changed the VX-351 to provide 1 V/oct at this jack, which is what I observe on my '351 using a Multimeter. The 0.935 V/oct spec is the Voyager's internal pitch CV.
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by LivePsy » Sat Jan 07, 2012 10:45 pm

In that case *I* am wrong :) Sounds like the Voyager works with less than 1V/Oct, but the VX output is 1V/Oct. So thank you for pointing that out.

Cheers,
B
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EricK
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by EricK » Sun Jan 08, 2012 2:30 am

hahaha You were actually right though.
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by theglyph » Fri Jan 13, 2012 11:11 pm

Analog Prophet wrote:Are there any tricks or benefits that can be made with the Voyager in conjunction to the new Minitaur?

The Minitaur is built from the Taurus 3 design which is different from the Voyager's synth engine. The Taurus 3 pedal was too big for my setup but I loved it's sound so the Minitaur is the perfect solution. I can't wait to get my hands on one. Big kudos to the engineering crew at Moog! :D

As far as tricks go you should be able to send the Pitch CV out from the VX-351 into the Minitaur's Pitch CV input and then return the Minitaurs output into the Voyager's Audio in and... there are many other combinations of CV in's and outs between the two units. Good Times!!

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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by EricK » Sun Jan 15, 2012 8:34 am

theglyph wrote: As far as tricks go you should be able to send the Pitch CV out from the VX-351 into the Minitaur's Pitch CV input
In my experience the Taurus 3 will detune by an interval when a pitch cv is applied to it. I tried to create a huge 5 osc unison sound and it was not happening without detuning the Fine tune knob on the Voyager almost fully counter clockwise.


I am anxious to see how the Midi/CV interplay will work when we see experiments of the two out in the public

Eric
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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by theglyph » Sun Jan 15, 2012 8:07 pm

EricK wrote:
theglyph wrote: As far as tricks go you should be able to send the Pitch CV out from the VX-351 into the Minitaur's Pitch CV input
In my experience the Taurus 3 will detune by an interval when a pitch cv is applied to it. I tried to create a huge 5 osc unison sound and it was not happening without detuning the Fine tune knob on the Voyager almost fully counter clockwise.


I am anxious to see how the Midi/CV interplay will work when we see experiments of the two out in the public

Eric

Eric, which CV did you apply to the T3's CV input (i.e. was it the Voyager, Synth.com, ect.)? Also, with the detuning were you able to get decent tracking? I'm a bit curious as to how well the Minitaur will track against my Voyager's 1v/oct output and perhaps alongside my Eurorack oscillators! :mrgreen:

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Re: Voyager and Minitaur?

Post by EricK » Mon Jan 16, 2012 1:06 pm

I bought the Taurus specifically so I could get polyphony. I wanted to drone bass notes while leading with the Voyager via Midi.

I used the Voyager's Pitch Output via the 351 and immediately what I got was like a third interval or something close. It did sound great and tracked well, but the only way that I could get the Voyager to play the same pitch was to detune the voyager via the fine tune knob.

My Taurus is in a box in another county or I would try again to eliminate the possiblity of operator malfunction, but I seem to remember that nothing that I did beides detuning the Voyager worked. I also tried attenuation, and I remember considering that the keyboard voltages might be summing and tried to account for that.

I remember trying to hit a low C on the Taurus and have that coincide with a C on the Voyager and it wasn't happening.

Im also digging for an email that I got from Moog Tech Support about this but I think it was in this pm box that has long since been cleaned out.



And then of corse as stated elsewhere, Midi wouldn't work because in order to get the Taurus to play it's widest range on the Voyager's keyboard you had to transpose the Voyager's keyboard down so low that you couldn't control the Voyager's oscs beyond a few clicks (similar to when the keyscan board failed).

I believe that this was corrected in the latest Taurus OS update but I can't test it out.


I wish that MC or someone with both units would do this test. Like I said It could very well be operator malfunction, but I remember not being able to get all of the oscs stacked.

Eric
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