Moog Muse timing

[Musings]

Hello fellow early adopters,

there's something that worries me about Muse (or my unit): Timing doesn't feel very constant when you play it. I first noticed that when I played some chord pattern, frequently not all notes would sound at the same time, instead giving a slightly arpeggiated response.

A way to verify this is by activating Unison with a full voicing, then repeatedly striking the keys. On my unit the voiced don't sound together, half the time.

Generally it's not the quickest feeling synth I've played, but that might be connected if my unit is faulty...
Nothing external connected, by the way. Just power and main outs.

Thanks for your input!

[analogmonster]

Probably another OS problem. A polyphonic keyboard normally is scanned word-wise, or block-wise. It is a serial process of processing key groups, derive a key sequence from the words read from the keyboard and assign voices to the key events. If the voices respond in different times, I assume an OS timing problem.

[GetsemaniMusic]

I’m also not comfortable with the Muse’s timing. I have several Moog’s and my Grandmother and Matriarch work flawlessly with my Arturia Drumbrute using the Clock In jacks. My Muse doesn’t see the Drumbrute at all. It will sync with the Grandmother and Matriarch, and even with a Keystep Pro, but feels like it’s about 1/4 second late, and doesn’t respond the the start and stop signal from anything. It’ll keep on playing until you manually stop it. I would expect all my Moog’s to behave the same. Trying to figure out if that’s an issue with all of them or if mine is just broken.

[steve_moog]

Hello fellow early adopters,

there's something that worries me about Muse (or my unit): Timing doesn't feel very constant when you play it. I first noticed that when I played some chord pattern, frequently not all notes would sound at the same time, instead giving a slightly arpeggiated response.

A way to verify this is by activating Unison with a full voicing, then repeatedly striking the keys. On my unit the voiced don't sound together, half the time.

Generally it's not the quickest feeling synth I've played, but that might be connected if my unit is faulty...
Nothing external connected, by the way. Just power and main outs.

Thanks for your input!

I did the unison test, and yeah, it's pretty sloppy.

[runtipla]

Also did the unison test. Sounds like strumming strings on a lot of key strokes.

[CP3_lover_420]

Yeah this is pretty rough, I have been noticing it too. What's going on here?

[steve_moog]

There was a YouTube video by a content creator I hadn't run across before and who's name I don't remember that indicated Moog are aware of latency problems and that firmware tweaks to address it are in active development. I'm hoping these same latency issues are responsible for the glitches in the velocity response. We'll see soon enough.

[SoundQuest]

I don't know if its clock related, but I'm getting lots of clicking on the delay. It gets really bad sometimes, especially when the unit has been on a while and run thru its paces. This makes me think its a processor issue, because if I reboot and come back to same patch/same settings, the clicking is gone.

[Hviid]

Hi I struggled for a long time (3 days) with the voice allocation problem and was very frustrated. So far solved it by turning velocity off, both on Filter ENV and VCA ENV, it was really nice to hear yourself playing tight again. I am glad that it also works with velocity on.

[steve_moog]

This is *much* better in firmware 1.3. It's like a new instrument.

[sdwillingham]

This is *much* better in firmware 1.3. It's like a new instrument.

That’s great to hear. The question though, is how in the hell does firmware with lousy latency or responsiveness get past Beta testing?! That is a fundamental showstopper for an instrument.

And frankly, any company could provide a gazillion modulation sources and routings if no one cares about response. So if the firmware responds sluggishly, the whole point of the instrument is lost.

[Kwamensah]

This is *much* better in firmware 1.3. It's like a new instrument.

That’s great to hear. The question though, is how in the hell does firmware with lousy latency or responsiveness get past Beta testing?! That is a fundamental showstopper for an instrument.

And frankly, any company could provide a gazillion modulation sources and routings if no one cares about response. So if the firmware responds sluggishly, the whole point of the instrument is lost.

It happens when corporate want a synth out for the end of a financial quarter, rather than when its some. Big corporations kill artistic endeavours.

But I completely agree. Tuning, response and playability are the most important things in an instrument. If it can't play well and in tune it's basically worthless. There needs to be accountability, because increasingly in all industries, sloppy programming has become the norm as corps try to squeeze as much as possible out of the bottom line. The game industry is suffering terribly for this as well.