Punchy Voyager Tip

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 2:09 pm

Hi,

Recently, I have been comparing my voyager with minimoog samples, minimoog patches in spectrasonics' trilogy and creamware's minimax (because I don't have a model d) and was coming to the conclusion that the voyager just isn't as punchy as its old dad. The envelopes don't seem to be able to produce a sufficiently plucky result and are a bit clicky as well. Also, there is a bit less top end in the voyager's oscillators and these factors seemed to conspire to produce a a slight flabbiness of tone.

But I couldn't believe the voyager wasn't capable of more so I started experimenting with my modular and pretty soon I was getting much more favourable results, particularly when I used another envelope together with the voyager's.

About an hour ago, it struck me: the voyager's filter envelope doesn't open the filter enough. This means that in order to completely open the filter, the filter cutoff has to be quite high. So when the filter shuts down, there are still a lot of higher frequencies hanging about. And it is this that is contributing to the voyager's paunchiness.

Even without a modular at hand, though, you can utilise this technique by routing the filter output of the vx351 into the filter input on the back of the voyager and voila!, much punchier envelopes.

Try it, I think you'll like it

suth.

Lengai · Post by **Lengai** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:52 pm

You can utilise this technique by routing the filter output of the vx351 into the filter input on the back of the voyager

Is that the filter jack in the ENV section of the VX-351?

goldphinga · Post by **goldphinga** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:57 pm

i wonder if the filter cutoff response could be changed to be more minimoog like in a future software update or is the problem hardware related? i definately noticed that sometimes it is difficult with the voyager to get enough high frequency sizzle from the filter.

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 3:23 am

Is that the filter jack in the ENV section of the VX-351

Yes. You could also try routing the vx351's filter env out into the voyager's Env rate in if you want to chaneg the shape of the voyager's filter envelope (a positive voltage here will make the voyager's envelopes more exponentially shaped). Or you could route filter env out into a multiple and send it to both the filter and rate ins. Which will give you a different sounding envelope again. Or you could...

i definately noticed that sometimes it is difficult with the voyager to get enough high frequency sizzle from the filter

The voyager's waveforms definitely don't have the same high frequency content as the mini's. This has nothing to so with the filter, either, because I have compared the mixer out to raw model d samples. What exactly causes this, I don't know, but it is almost certainly hardware related (some sort of band limiting), so I am pretty sure this cannot be rectified with software. Still, you can always route other oscillators into the voyager if you need a little extra fizz

p.s. goldphinga, you do know, though, that the fc knob doesn't completely open the filter? It takes a combination of fc and envelope send (or by using the xy pad) to completely open it. It's not a huge difference, but it definitely gives a little more top end.

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 3:34 am

When I first started doing direct comparisons between the voyager and the model d, I became despondent because the model d seemed to have the edge in areas that were important to me (a little bit tighter, a touch harder and deeper, definitely punchier). But having spent a lot more time with the voyager, I was able to largely recreate those sounds I liked best. And, in virtually every case, I was able to add a little extra, too, because of the additional ways to shape the sound that the voyager offers. Then, when you consider all the other things the voyager can do, it became clear to me that the voyager was the right synth for me. The fact that there are currently no less than 12(!) patch cables between the voyager and my modular played no small part in this.

But the fact remains that the voyager is *not* a model d and if that's what a person is looking for, only that will do.

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 3:39 am

Back on topic, I found this at the synthesizers.com site:

http://www.synthesizers.com/egpunch.html

I think that this is exactly what is happening with the vx351 env out into the voyager's filter in: the voltage being sent to filter env is exceeding the maximum possible and so it holds cutoff at maximum until such time as the voltage drops below that level...