Moog Music Forum

Demokid wrote:I will keep my Model D SN: 1737 for one type of sounds I haven’t been able to reproduce on my Voyager, fat hard basses.

Agreed. I bought the voyager originally because I wanted an updated model d. I'd been looking for one for years but I never found one in good condition or at a reasonable price. And the reason why I wanted a model d was solely because of those hard, tight basses (in my experience, no other synth does them as well as the d does). Unfortunately (because of where I live) I couldn't check the voyager out first and so I was pretty gutted when I found it it couldn't do them. For all its other virtues I find the voyager a little flabby* and I don't think age will ever change this. Been thinking of trying to find a compressor that can really, really smack a sound and use this to toughen the voyager up a bit

* I agree with your point about the clickiness of the envelopes - the shape of the voyager's envelopes are quite different to the d's - but I also think it's got to do with the fact that the oscillators are waveshaped...

heheheheh. Typical. I make a negative post and then last night the cool sounds just flow out of the voyager. None of which the d would be capable of. And I'm using an envelope (with an exponential decay) from my modular now to control the filter: much better. As with any instrument, you have to play to its strengths and the voyager has plenty of those. But if you really want a d, get a d.

I guess nobody really listened to my samples and gave me a comparison... That's ok, from (almost) ALL the posts and EVERYONE I've talked it just seems we're talking about 2 different synths here and if that's the case, I'll try and blindly answer my own question: You (me) couldn't get those exact sounds out of the voyager in the first place. (right)

P.S. posting your gear list is almost like me posting: (haha, don't hate me just don't take yourself so seriously... besides I'm lying)

Tool: 10", thick

"couldn't get those exact sounds out of the voyager" I meant Model - D (duh)

mlanson wrote:I guess nobody really listened to my samples and gave me a comparison...

Well, I don't have a d so I can't help you out, but certainly some of them sound beyond the d's abilities anyway. Not in terms of thickness, but rather in terms off the options offered: the d is not exactly modulation heavy.

p.s. those samples sound very free of hiss - are they recorded directly from your voyager? Or have you treated them in some way?

You don’t buy a Model D for modulation you buy one for the sound it produces.

Once again, is it possible to apply the Voyager in a modular capacity through some sort of "virtual patching" system, like the Oberheim Matrix 6?

Quote by Cruel Hoax:
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I think people waste too much time worrying about whether or not the Voyager sounds like a Model D.
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Totally agree. I think people worry to much about having the EXACT same sound they hear on a cover tune, or a classic rock song. If you play in a classic rock band, sure, you want to get something close, but I won't spend hours upon hours programming something that doesn't really need to be indentical in the first place.


Mike T.

Demokid wrote:You don’t buy a Model D for modulation you buy one for the sound it produces.

True. But I have been thinking about this a lot recently so I spent the weekend gathering model d samples from various sources. It's been years since I actually heard one and I wanted to differentiate between the actual sound of a d and the sound I have been referencing on recordings (and whihc were the source of my initial disappointment with the voyager).

And you know what? I could pretty much replicate all of the samples with the voyager. There were the occasional differences: the d does punch more (but I could get around this by bringing my modular into the picture - it's definitely the voyager's envelope shape that is largely to blame here), and it definitely has a bit more high end and drift, but the vast majority of d sounds were well within the voyager's range. And, in fact, I generally preferred the tightness of the voyager to the d's width: the sounds seem to sit better whereas with the d I'd definitely be reaching for eq and/or compression. I also realised that I am not terribly interested in the stock moog sounds anymore - the vast majority of the presets I have created on the voyager don't sound like a d at all