CV / Gate connections

[tomf]

hi,

i have an arturia beatstep and it has CV and gate outputs on it. i'd like to connect it to my moog voyager.

what cables should i use?

the connections on the beatstep are mini jack.

im not sure if i should use a mini jack (3.5mm) to 1/4" mono jack or 1/4" trs jack??

bit confused.

thanks

[Cpt Beardheart]

When I connect my Voyager to other gear with mini jack CV (Doepfer Dark Time, Korg Monotribe) I just use standard 1/8" patch cables with a 1/4" male - 1/8" female adapter. Like what you would use for headphones.

Works for me.

[tomf]

ah ok thank you. i'll give it a try.

would i be right in thinking that CV is to send a pitch note to the voyager and gate out is to send an on/off message to the voyager?

my plan is to connect the CV out to the control inputs pitch, and the gate out to the env gate input. would this be right?

thanks

[thealien666]

Yes, you're right. Pitch CV for controlling the pitch, and Gate signal to control the envelopes.
You'll have to flip the Envelope Gate switch on the front panel of the Voyager to the "On/External" position.

But be aware that controlling precisely the pitch and getting the Voyager to play in tune will be very approximative with pitch analog CV signal. It might be out of tune across the keyboard range. This is one of the drawbacks from the old analog days before a standard interface was available. This is exactly why MIDI was invented; to allow different machines from different manufacturer to tack to each other and be all in tune with each other also.

[youunicornsyou]

I heard the Voyager has less than one volt per octave CV. Does it then work with, say, Minitaur (or anything that is one volt/octave)? Is that why something connected to Voager would be out of tune?

[J C Selector]

I think this is true, so, if I send a 1v/octave CV to my XL, would attenuating this just a little fix the scalling issue?

[EMwhite]

Attenuating WILL fix the issue but depending on how lucky or good you are, you may only get the pitch to scale well across 2-3 octaves which is really all you want anyway; and it's more noticeable at higher frequencies so pick a good center point. With an attenuator, you will be able to mess with the RANGE, but not the starting point or offset and some pots may not squeeze down the voltage to absolutely zero as they should o at full CCW. If this is the case, adjust the master tune on your voyager to compensate. Some sequencers are digital/encoder driven, especially when they are USB and teamed with Midi-CV but you should be able to get by one way or the other.

[quick advertisement for the MP-201; that thing was awesome since it allowed for very precise tuning of voltage range; none of the others that I've come across have been this flexible]

But if you are using a true analog sequencer with no quantizer, the fact that a Voyager may not be 1V/Oct dead on will NOT matter because you can simply tune each step by ear or with a reference keyboard.

[J C Selector]

Thanks EM, thats great help, kinda like getting an MF-101 to track to my XL using it as a forth osc. I got there after a while. But yes only over maybe three octaves.