Moog Music Forum

Just purchased a Roland CSQ 100 sequencer for a great price. I hear it's basically the same thing as the SH101's step-sequencer, which I find extremely handy.

Question: Would this be compatible with my Voyager Old School? I don't see why not, but I don't know if this sequencer was built for just Roland products or if it can handle moogs, etc.

Thanks.

What are the voltage and gate outputs on the CSQ100?

latigid on wrote:What are the voltage and gate outputs on the CSQ100?

Great, so it's a CV/Gate sequencer. Now we need to find out the values of the gate and CV scaling in volts.

All I know is that it was made for american voltage. the card on the back will read 117v. I don't know if this is what you're referring to or not.

Hehe, okay.

You should download the manual from the Rolandus site and this will give you the specifications of the voltage _outputs_ (the mains voltage is not important).

The Old School should work with a +5V gate and 1 volt per octave scaling. The range for the pitch CV is also important but you can sometimes get around this by transposing.

latigid on wrote:The Old School should work with a +5V gate and 1 volt per octave scaling.

That is in theory. The reality is different. The gate is effectively +5v. But the scaling is not precisely 1 volt per octave (but close). The good news is that you might still be able to achieve acceptable results because on the CSQ100 you can calibrate the output with a simple procedure involving the "Push Cal" button and associated calibration knob. As per indicate on page 3 of the user manual available here:

http://dl.lojinx.com/analoghell/RolandC ... Manual.pdf

If I try and it doesn't work, will it mess up my minimoog? would it mess up the sequencer? i don't want to ruin anything, since I'm dealing with volts.

Perfectly safe. You might just need to calibrate the sequencer (as mentioned before with the Push Cal button) to get the Voyager to play perfectly in tune, that's all.

Just to be safe, you should hook up a voltmeter to the CSQ to see what it is actually putting out.

The manual states that the CV range is -2 to +6 and that's fine. But the Gate out is said to be +15V. That's on the edge of what would make me uncomfortable.

As for quantizing voltage, I think this occurs be default so provided that you are near the edge of tracking (but off by a small amount), you might see notes being recognized properly but then played back for a perfect 1V/oct synth.

Unsure of how the calibrate procedure effects matters, you'll have to play with it to see.

I used to own an MSQ-100 and it was a fun little box, very immediate and accessible; very much unlike using a sequencer app or other hardware. Hope you get it working. If you end up having problems, you should definitely consider having your Old School modded so that it tracks 100% (I did to mine).

On the subject of Midi to CV converters (which you may need to do), the MP-201 is the best I've seen. Very fine grain control over voltage, nice built in slew, etc.

EMwhite wrote:The manual states that the CV range is -2 to +6 and that's fine.

The PDF sais "CV OUTPUT (1V/oct -2V to +8V)"!