Moog Music Forum

I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "Not this topic again...." But please check this out...

I fired up my Voyager Electric Blue for the first time in a while. The LCD screen just showed gibberish and most of the panel controls weren't working. Adam at Moog Support helped me determine that some controls were turned off, and so we got those turned back on. So the panel worked again, but the screen still showed gibberish (on the bank screens only -- the menus worked fine). Factory reset didn't fix that. Only doing factory sound resets on each bank fixed the gibberish, but each bank had the same sounds as bank A.

Hoping to clear things up and possibly rule out a firmware vs. hardware problem, I decided to try doing the Voyager 3.5 update (I'm on 3.4 now). I'm on Mac OS X 10.11.6 with a Digi002 hardware interface and Ableton Live 9. I wasn't able to get SysEx Librarian to talk to the Voyager via the Digi002, so I dragged out my old WinXP machine, which I've used in the past to upgrade my Voyager. Using Midi-Ox I was able to send the first sysex bank (Bank B) to the Voyager, but at the very end of the transfer of Bank B the Voyager said the transfer failed.

I read through the various threads in this forum on SysEx issues and tweaked the buffering in Midi-Ox per Rudi's screenshot, but it's still failing (always at the very end of the transfer of that first Bank B file).

Any help is most appreciated!

Update: I updated Midi-Ox to the latest version 7.0.2 to no avail. I also tried SysExBox, which I saw someone else say worked well for them. But it claimed that the .syx files were not a recognized format. So back to MIDI-Ox...

Aaaaaand, now I've gone and done it. I went to unplug the MIDI-in cable from the Voyager so I could try swapping it for a different cable, and my finger bumped the rocker switch for power... Now when I power it on, it says the operating system has to be re-loaded, and asks if I'd like to re-load Bank D. The first time this came up I chose "No", and then went to Master / Receive Update to see if I could try loading Bank B again. But when going into the Receive Update screen, instead of saying that it's waiting for a transfer of "Bank A, B, C, or D", it specifically asked for Bank A.

At this point I thought, "Ah, what the hell. I'm probably going to have to RMA this thing anyway," and I tried sending Bank A. It happily transferred until the end of the file, and then failed just like before. Powered off/on again. It prompted for Bank D again, so I tried it this time. Same deal: it transfers until the end of the file and says the transfer failed.

So here's where things stand:

* The splash screen upon powering on still says v3.4.
* There are no Banks A through G anymore.
* There are preset sounds under the heading Panel Preset 1-128, but the names are gibberish.
* Depending on the preset selected, the synth either makes no sound, or makes a loud high-pitched squeal.
* None of the more advanced functions are available in the menus.
* But hey, MIDI in/out works...!

So I think I've landed in some sort of limbo where part of the system thinks it's 3.4, but other parts are lost in prehistoric times.

RMA time? Or is there a way out of this?

Hi square_wave,
as long as you are using a cheap MIDI interface without other drivers than the Windows drivers it will not work.
Take a look here in the middle of the thread:
http://forum.moogmusic.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22525

Hi Rudi -- thanks for the quick reply. I read through the thread you linked and tried these steps:

- Downloaded the 3.6 files for regular Voyager
- Powered off
- Held down -1 / +1 buttons and powered it on
- It prompted for Bank D. Released the buttons.
- Powered off
- Held down Enter / Cursor buttons and powered it on
- It prompted for Bank C. Released the buttons.
- Said "No" and went into Master / Receive Update
- It prompted for Bank A and I sent Bank A
- Transfer got all the way to the end, and then failed

It didn't seem to load into a "boot system". It just loaded as normal with the limited functionality I described earlier.

I gotta go get some sleep, but I will check the forum in the morning. Thanks again!

Hi square_wave,
the trick with the -1 and +1 buttons only works in boot system 3.6 not in older versions.
Do you have own drivers for your interface?

Hi Rudi,

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by my "own drivers". On the WinXP computer, I just have whatever Pro Tools installed when I got the Digi 002. On the Mac, I was shocked that the Digi 002 even worked with Mac OS X and Live 9. So I can't say that I've done much in the way of hunting down my own drivers. If I understood more about configuring MIDI on my Mac, that'd be my preference. But the whole process is pretty mysterious to me.

I'm open to suggestions!

Hi square_wave,
OK power on the Voyager and when it asks for a bank ignore it and press ENTER.
Then on the last position in the MASTER menu select the update. The display sould say send bank A.
Send bank A (3.6 version) to the Voyager and let me know if there's a System Exclusive Error or just
saying "send bank C".

Hi Rudi. I just tried again as you suggested, and the Bank A fails at the very end with the "System Exclusive Transfer has failed" message. It seems strange that it seems to copy just fine until the end -- almost like Midi-Ox isn't exiting that process gracefully. As I mentioned previously, I've used this WinXP computer in the past to do sysex transfers with no problems.

I spoke again with Adam at Moog Support, and he's thinking that because I'm seeing gibberish on the screen for the patch names (even in its current state) that my digital board may be failing. He recommends RMA.

Any other thoughts before I go that route?

square_wave wrote:the Bank A fails at the very end with the "System Exclusive Transfer has failed" message. It seems strange that it seems to copy just fine until the end

That's normal cause at the end of the transfer the Voyager checks the bytes and then you get a message when the cecksum is wrong. Are the MIDI settings the same as I suggested in that thread?

Rudi

Hi Rudi. They sure are!

Input buffers:
Size: 512 bytes
Num: 16

Output buffers:
Size: 128 bytes
Num: 16

Output timing:
Delay between buffers: 60 ms
Delay after F7: 60 ms

This is too funny. I just stumbled upon this post while troubleshooting a failed upgrade to 3.6, and didn't realize at first that this was a thread I started 8 years ago. This seems like a good opportunity to tie up this dangling thread.

I did end up sending my Voyager back to Moog back in Oct 2016. They reloaded 3.5, and I guess I forgot all about 3.6, just being glad to have my Voyager working again. Jump forward to 2024 and re-discovering the existence of 3.6... I did my due diligence to make sure I understood how to perform the upgrade, and gave it another shot. I left the old WinXP machine, MIDI-Ox and the Digi002 behind ages ago. Now I use SysEx Librarian on my Mac with a MOTU MIDI Express XT.

I knew that transfer speed might be an issue, so prior to this attempt I followed the advice from other posts and set the "Pause between played messages" to 150 ms and "Transmit buffer size" to 128 bytes. I also preemptively adjusted SysEx Librarian's transmit speed on the MOTU MIDI port to 50%.

Despite these precautions, Bank B still failed at the end of the transfer -- just like my experience all those years ago. I knocked the transfer speed down to 25% and tried again. This time the transfer succeeded, as did the remaining banks.

So... hopefully this info will be helpful to someone else: Try just slowing it down!