Moog Music Forum

degas wrote:The SP is the buggiest analog synth ever.
It's almost useless on stage and in the studio.

Portamental wrote: Truth be told, I think you are right. But that's from the numerous report I have read about. Very worrying! So many users can't all be wrong. The SP seems even worse. It's not all that much of a concern to me, though, as my LP runs a pretty stable version 2.00. One would have a hard time convincing me to move up on firmware. Moog should keep an older and more stable Version available as a download. Currently, only the latest is.

Truth also is all that funky business kept me away from getting a couple of SP's to expand into polyphony.

thealien666 wrote:I'm sorry but, the way this thing is being handled seems "amateurish" to me, at best...
Not thoroughly tested, and non working updates on SP, unavailable on Mac, etc...

Maybe Moog Music should hire an external software company to do a proper, and cross-platform functionning firmware update ?

Because from a company that has a reputable name like Moog, frankly, this looks like botched up work.

Let's hope the upcoming Minitaur doesn't suffer from another badly implemented MIDI interface...?

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but I put myself in someone else's shoes, having spent close to $1K (including taxes) for a very buggy Slim Phatty (to the point of being unreliable in a live situation), from a company that is known for producing high priced, and usually high quality instruments. And even though this could be considered the "affordable" line of products from Moog, it's no excuse for producing "flawed" and untested models.

You would NEVER see this kind of thing from Roland, Korg, Clavia, or any other respectable company. Moreover, the MIDI standard has been around for close to 30 years now! You'd think (real) software engineers would know how it works, in every little details, by now ?

Again, I'm sorry to be so mad, but I really hate shoddy work... But I admire the work done by Rudi Linhardt on the MIDI interface and system software for the Voyager. No stuck notes, or non-working firmware updates there!

Maybe I'll get banned from this forum for this, and maybe I got off on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but I had to say it...

Voltor07 wrote:...Because Memorymoogs never catch on fire, and Polymoogs are extremely reliable, and never need repair, ESPECIALLY when touring.

thealien666 wrote: Of course it's not the first time Moog Music has produced unreliable and poorly designed instruments (although the products you've mentioned were designed and produced by a much different Moog Music company back then). It's also worth pointing out that each time that has happened, Bob Moog wasn't there to keep things straight. The first time around it was mainly the work of Dave Luce and others. This time, even though Bob had participated in the overall design of the Little Phatty shortly before his terrible illness, it was done mainly by other engineers.

thealien666 wrote: Does history necessarily have to repeat itself, in a bad way ?

But fortunately, this time it's not an unsolvable hardware issue, and can possibly be, eventually, corrected. /snip/

Voltor07 wrote: Bob designed the circuits of the LP. The SP has the same sound engine, but only the Moog engineers can say for certain that the digital aspects are the same. If my hunch is correct, the SP has an entirely different digital layout, otherwise operating systems would be switchable between the LP and SP. This is not the case.

Sir Nose wrote:The difference in firmware is need because of the difference in hardware. An octave button is not needed on the SP since there is no keyboard. The Mod section of the SP needs the ability to turn the amount knob into the mod wheel; so, modulation can be applied without a device sending midi mod wheel information.