Moog Music Forum

This is a great forum. Thanks to the community here for providing so much good information to all of us.

This is my first post, and sorry if this has been covered:

I was told at the local synth shop that while the Minitaur can technically be connected to another Minitaur, the problem lies in the fact that they cannot be assigned note priority and therefore the two units would not know which notes they are supposed to be playing. Therefore no Polychaining. Does this make sense? Anyone here know if this is correct?

Thanks in advance!

AYB

Technically speaking, I don't think this functionality exists but Amos would likely be the only one to tell us for sure.

But Polychaining and Note priority scheme are two very different things;

Polychaining typically involves note distribution across devices, sometimes as passed on from the prior device in the chain, sometimes as distributed from a 'master' directly to an endpoint.

Little Phatty's latest code has this functionality along with Slim Phatty but Taurus does not, Voyager does not, and minitaur does not (yet). There is no heads up display on Minitaur obviously (part of the charm) so implementing it would require a series of settings 'under the hood'.

However, Low, High, Last note priority is implemented CC#91 (though I personally have not tried it) so in theory, any devices that support this basic mechanism should work just fine with Minitaur. The application is that if you hold two keys on a midi keyboard and both devices are on the same channel, that Minitaur would only play the lower of the two for instance.

There are also 3rd party applications like Mutable instruments MidiPal which a few of the guys here have experience with. If you are in EMEA this is more easily gotten, otherwise International shipping is required. I ordered the 'bare' version and am going to put it behind a panel in my modular. But in essence, it supports a primative round robin Midi note distribution scheme which is exactly what the Dr. ordered.

I'd be interested in playing notes across a few devices through a common envelope structure and filter that way you have zero worry about varience between filters on each note; of course it's only useful for full on chords since the envelope would retriger each time. But if you have synths that are similar in design and tuned similarly like 4 x SEMs, you can easily play a low note and 3 high notes, etc.

More information than you asked for I'm sure, but i think I'm famous around here for that. Here is the link for the Mutable instruments product: http://mutable-instruments.net/midipal/ have a look at the manual also and the "Dispatcher" app. It's an amazing device and well worth the 69+ Euro.

Sorry, but the Voyager (except the Old School version) does have a polychain possibility.
These Voyager need to be chained serial or parallel the same MIDI stream. And then select which note of the received ones is played by which Voyager. In normal operation it is always note #1 a Voyager listens to. In a chain you have to spread each Voyager to a consecutive number starting from one to the number of Voyagers available in the chain.
But you need to control the stored sounds manually. So it isn't a full automatic mode like the one of the Waldorf WaveSlave.
A new OS and a user interface free Voyager expansion module would make a dream of a modern polyphonic Moog came true.

Thanks for the responses!