Voyager Waveforms

[DavidC]

I have found a couple of posts in the Voyager Forum archives concerning oscillator waveforms that has been really helpful especially since I currently don't have access to an oscilloscope. These posts include oscilloscope tracings as well as guideline settings for obtaining pure sawtooth waveforms, square waveforms, etc.

There is also an excellent document on the Square Wave site that summarizes this info. It gives the following benchmarks or guidelines:

Triangle Wave 000
Tri-Saw Wave 030
Sawtooth Wave 088
Square Wave 178

I know that these values can deviate somewhat for individual synthesizers, but I was surprised to discover that 178 was also the same setting that I had determined by ear to be a pure square wave on my Voyager.

From the benchmark data above, it is obvious that when the waveform dial is set between 178 - 255, a pulse wave with a width between 50% and 99% is produced. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any specific benchmarks settings for pulse waves of specific widths (except for a square wave which has a width of 50%).

At a minimum, I would at least like to know where to situate the waveform control dial on my Voyager to approximate the broad and narrow pulse waves found on the Minimoog Model-D. (Also, does anybody know what the pulse width of the original Minimoog pulse waves were?)

Does anybody have any guideline settings for the waveform dial that they would wish to share for approximating pulse waves of various widths, such as a 60% pulse width, a 70% pulse width, an 80% pulse width, and a 90% pulse width?

Thanks,

[GregAE]

Hi Dave,

Glad you found the SquareWave article helpful.

Like you, I don't own an oscilloscope, nor have access to one. The oscilloscope figures in the article were created with a software program called AudioExplorer (Mac). You could do the same thing yourself, using a software oscilloscope program, audio capture program (Peak, Audacity, etc.) or sequencer (Logic, Cubase, Calkwalk, etc.) to view the waveforms.

I'm sure someone else here can give you the width of the Mini's wide and narrow pulse waves (none of my references lists this info). I can tell you that the one Minimoog wave you can't duplicate on the Voyager is the 'sharktooth' wave, which is the second selection on the Mini's waveform dial.


Greg

[MC]

Actually the Voyager DOES duplicate the "sharktooth" waveform - sounds the same as my Mini when you set waveshape to "015"

Minimoog model D pulse widths are 50%, 35%, and 15%. I don't know the Voyager waveshape settings that duplicate these, my scope is down.

[DavidC]

Is the "sharktooth waveform" another name for the "tri-saw hybrid waveform" found on the Minimoog Model D?

[GregAE]

Is the "sharktooth waveform" another name for the "tri-saw hybrid waveform" found on the Minimoog Model D?

Yep, that's the one. I read the term 'sharktooth' somewhere and it stuck with me, so I've always called it that. I don't know if Moog Music ever used the term, but I think it correctly describes the waveform shape.

Besides, it just sounds better than 'tri-saw hybrid'.


Greg