Getting my Voyager Old School to play nice with MIDI...

[toddak]

Hey team,

So I've looked at all the posts here about the Old School and MIDI tracking, and I know that it has it's issues. And I also know the idea that using MIDI to control it is kind of backward with it's ethos, but I really want to use this and not my Sub 37 for a new project that needs MIDI

I think what I'm missing here is process, so if someone could help show me the process it would be great. I have the VX-351 and I know the signal needs to be attenuated in order to get it track better, but.... here's where I get a little lost.

So, with everything set up, and no attenuation, I press 'C' on my Old School to make sure it's relatively tuned. I then press 'C' on my midi controller, and notice that the two are different by looking at tuner.

My instincts (which are often wrong here...) tell me to use the fine tune on the Old School to get

[Markyboard]

This may still be a bit confusing but I'll give it my best shot. Whether you "attenuate" or amplify the VX-351 signal or adjust the fine tuning on your OS it's doing the same thing; shifting the voltage of each note by the same amount.. What you need is to rescale the voltage so that the voltage between any 2 notes is a slight bit more or less than it currently is and that the voltage between octaves is exactly 1 Volt. That's where the 1V/Octave spec comes from that you may have run across.

You can do this by recalibrating the OS but the tuning will only be correct for midi or when playing the OS directly, not both. The best solution is to have a midi to CV device that allows you to change the Volts per Octave to something slightly higher or lower than 1 Volt (.994V octave for example). And yes that very slight difference could be what you need. The Moog MP-101 pedal allows this (no longer made) and there are some Kenton midi to CV interfaces that have this feature. Maybe others as well that I can't think of right now.

Hope that helps.

[toddak]

That really helps, and makes a lot of sense. My brain was thinking it feels like more of a re-scaling issue than an attentuation issue.

Shall check out the Kenton boxes, seems like the most economic solution!