Magnificent. Gorgeous. Moog.

This is one machine that has been a long time coming. Everyone, even those folks that know they will never buy one, have been keeping there eye on the development. The company behind the machine has gone through a great number of changes just to get this machine out. The key man behind the machine is one of the major influences of the sound of synthesis that we know today.

It's been just about 3 years since the first public words of this machine showed up. So... how did Bob do?

One of the first things I noticed as I unpacked the machine is that you could smell the oil on the wood. The finish on this machine is incredible, it's a joy to look at something in this day and age that's been crafted and not just built. The case and cabinetry is immaculate. The machine is heavy, weighing in at just under 40 pounds, and as you set it up, you start to get a feeling for what went into just the chassis.

No where on Voyager will you find a sloppy pot, a wiggly wheel, or a switch that isn't firmly anchored. There are plenty of screws around the case pieces to seal up the machine tight. Screws heading for wood are long, and straight.

It's one heck of a crafted machine.


Plug it, turn it on, lights, display, power.

It's Alive!


Okay, skip the presets (sorry Brian!), I gotta' get some hands-on with these knobs!

Spinning the knobs gives you a different clue to the craftsmanship in the machine. They all glide through their rotation. There's no hint of grit or tightness to them. They feel great. Bob set out to build a machine that begged to be touched and manipulated, and it shows here.

Dialing up a straight VCO->VCF->VCA patch, set 'em up for 16', and hit a key. heh. Smiles. Yeup, this is what I've been waiting for... I've had a lot of machines come through my hands, analog and digital alike, but there is simply nothing like this filter - (well, there's the 904A from the modular!).

The filter is VERY similar to the one that's in the MF-101. I think this was tweaked a bit in some way that I can't just put my finger on, but it's true Moog to form. A bit ago, Brian Kehew noted that each Moog filter implementation (modular, Mini, Micro, Memorymoog, etc.) has been definitely "Moog", but yet having it's own character. This one fits that description well. It's VERY responsive, it's VERY smooth, it's VERY playable and VERY nice sounding.

A comment from a buddy that got his Voyager today probably sums it up best...

"Oh, so THAT'S what a Moog sounds like! Anyone wanna buy a Pulse?" :)


I'm gonna step away from the "drama-speak" here and kinda' do a walking commentary on the machine from left to right.

Without question, a dedicated LFO is a welcome addition to the "classic" machine. This one runs from about 1 cycle every five seconds up to 50 cycles per second. Some may say that this isn't fast enough (or slow enough) but a more dramatic range can be had by using OSC 3 as a modulation source, plus, the LFO rate is externally controllable from a CV. Using the RATE input, the LFO can be clocked way beyond the range assigned to the front panel control.

The LFO can be free-running or sync'd to a number of sources. Sync sources include external clock, MIDI clock, keyboard (force a new cycle on each keypress), or envelope gate (different from keypress because the envelopes can be gated from an external source). All told, the LFO is quite versatile.


The modulation busses are an interesting set, and it will take a bit of studying to work through all that you can do here.

There are basically two busses in the machine, each with an assignable source, destination, and "shaping" which I would be tempted to call a "modifier" instead. There is one bus which is hard wired to feed through the mod wheel, and the other is more free-form. Each bus gives mostly the same source choices, with the exception being the MOD WHEEL bus has a choice of "Mod 1" (an external input) where the PEDAL bus offers a choice of "Mod 2" (another external input). Both busses also offer a choice of "PGM" which is a software defined modulation source (not active in OS v1.0).

Each bus offers up an "amount" control. Turning this control up from zero on the MOD WHEEL bus defines the maximum amount of modulation that can be applied to the destination from the mod wheel. The PEDAL bus works a bit differently, here the AMOUNT control applies the modulation source directly to the destination.

Each bus offers a choice of "shapers" - this is an additional level of control over the amount of modulation that's applied to the destination. On the MOD WHEEL bus, this works in addition to the combination of the AMOUNT control and the position of the mod wheel. So, if you had the AMOUNT control at "3", SHAPING defined as "PRESSURE" then if you turn the mod wheel all the way up, that would give you a modulation amount of "3". If you then apply pressure (aftertouch) to the keyboard, the modulation amount will increase.

On the PEDAL bus, the net effect is the same - the shaper will increase the amount of modulation past the static amount set by the AMOUNT control.


Oscillators - this is where it all starts.

There are three oscillators on Voyager, and they come with a couple of special features. First, each one has a continuously variable waveform from triangle to narrow pulse. This is basically the waveshaper circuit from the Micro/Multimoog series. The extension here of being able to (basically) dial-in the amount of harmonics that you want from each oscillator is way cool.

Something else here is two level's of cross-modulation. One comes from being able to sync OSC 2 to OSC 1; this is where the typical "hard Mini lead sound" comes from - and it's very much available on this machine. The second form of cross-modulation comes from a pure analog FM routing from OSC 3 to OSC 1. The net effect here is much like that of a ring modulator. Being able to FM with dissimilar (and varying!) waveshapes provides a load of sonic possibilities. There's a lot to explore within this one spot alone.

To point out - one of the modulation destinations is "WAVE". This allows for the waveshapes of all of the oscillators to be modulated at once, thus giving the ability to dynamically move from a triangle wave to a narrow pulse without any stepping. Now, a side note here is that this does modify all the waveforms at once. There is presently no support for being able to modulate the waveshape of just a single oscillator. This MIGHT be possible as a software function, but that's not for sure.


Filters!

Confession time! I'm a converted nay-sayer. I didn't have faith that having dual filters would be "cool". heh. Heck yeah it is!

The filters have a slope of 24db, and can be set up in two ways... Either two lowpass filters in parallel - each feeding it's own VCA for a left/right stereo spread, or in serial as a low pass feeding a high pass.

The cutoff frequency of the filters is set through the use of two knobs, CUTOFF and SPACING. The CUTOFF control always sets the base frequency of the first lowpass filter. Then in parallel LP mode, the base of the 2nd LP filter, or in serial LP->HP mode the base of the HP filter. The SPACING control then sets the cutoff of the 2nd filter - either the 2nd LP or the HP. The SPACING control is designed such that you can set the cutoff of the alternate filter from to 3 octaves above to 3 octaves below that of the first filter.

Through this arrangement, you can get the following filter responses:

• Two lowpass filters configured as a stereo pair.
• A highpass only filter (set the cutoff fully clockwise then use the SPACING control to set the HP cutoff)
• A bandpass filter

The sound of the two lowpass filters can be heard in the audio samples below - it's quite "different" from the classic Mini sound, but yet the Mini character is still there. Modulating the SPACING of the two filters produces a very unique sound that seems to pan across the stereo spread. This comes from the filters producing a "comb" effect and phase cancellation causes the sound to appear to shift left/right.

A note here... To get "That" Mini sound, you'll need to take the 2nd LP filter out of the picture. To do this, set up the machine for DUAL LOWPASS mode, and then use only the RIGHT audio output from the machine. This will give you the sound of just one filter. If you leave the 2nd filter in as part of the sound, you will always have some level of difference between the tracking of the two filters (this is a good thing!) and thus end up with some level of a comb effect and subsequent phase cancellation.

btw, the filters sound wonderful. If I had to gripe about something, I'd say that it would be great to have the highpass filter be resonant. But, that can be achieved by splitting the RIGHT output of the machine and feeding it back into the EXTERNAL AUDIO IN. This will give you a feedback loop which will simulate the net effect of having filter feedback, or resonance. That being said, I can understand why the 2nd filters are not resonant - the audio effect of having a resonant filter followed by a non-resonant filter offers up more sonic possibilities. Two resonanting filters in a row would be a bit much.


The envelope generators.

There are two envelope generators (EG's) here, one is hardwired to control amplitude, and the other shows up as a modulation shaper as well as being able to be directly routed to the filter. Both EG's are pure analog, which is nice to find in these days of hybrids. One of the case points that people make for digital EG's are that they can be faster. Well, the A/D/R specs on these are 1m - 10secs. I think one millisecond is plenty fast for even the hardest core synth head.

Now, the biggest downside of having analog EG's are that you will generally get one slope out of them. That's sort of the case here, but there's a trick waiting to be used. :)

One of the CV inputs on the machine is for ENV RATE. Applying a control voltage here will modify the overall rate of the EG's, either making them longer or shorter. If you modulation this input in sync with the envelope decaying on it's own, then you can change the slope of the envelope. :) If you were to use the envelope to modify itself, there's a world of fun to be had. There is no direct output for ENV CV on the back panel, but it may be hiding on that DB-25 interface connector - we'll have to see about that one. :)


Lesse, whad I miss? Hmmm... Oh yeah... The Pad. :)

Okay, first things first - this is NOT the Tactex pad. That pad proved to have a number of hurdles that just didn't make sense in the end. The pad that's here is based on technology that Bob developed a number of years ago. This is a pure analog design whereas the Tactex interface was digital.

The pad on the machine offers up 3 areas of control, X & Y of course, and the third being "area" (versus "pressure" on the Tactex pad). "Area" is a bit interesting to get used to... The more area of the pad that's covered, the high the output is from the pad on that "channel". This means that applying one finger lightly on the pad will generate a low value, pressing harder will cause more area to be covered, thus producing a higher value, then adding all fingers will produce a higher value yet. Like I said, it's interesting... But VERY usable.

In rev 1.0 of the software, the three channels of the pad are hardwired to control three distinct modulation points:

• X (left and right) - Filter cutoff
• Y (up and down) - Filter spacing
• Z (area) - Filter resonance

In an upcoming software release, the output of the pad will be fully assignable.

"Niggles"? There're "Niggles" on this machine? After this long in production?

Yeup, and I think I should bring them up. But, please note most all of these are software related issues and are due to be addressed. I'll keep this page updated as things get resolved.

• Scrolling through patches is a bit painful. The machine has 127 patch slots, and you can only scroll one slot at a time. It would be nice if holding down the -1/+1 keys gave you an auto-repeat. Similarly, if you could (say) press and hold +1, then press -1 to increment by 10's. And, the inverse to press and hold -1, then press +1 to decrement by 10's.

• When you're in PANEL mode (listening to a preset), the front panel is cut off. The only controls that are live are the GLIDE and RELEASE switches along with the PITCH and MOD wheel. Fear not though, the design philosophy behind this machine has always been that it should be PLAYED. The knobs will go live in a later release.

• At the moment, the keyboard responds as single triggered. An option for multiple triggering would be great. Again, this should be a software point.

• The keyboard also runs as low-note priority. While this is the "classic" mode, it would be nice to have a couple of choices. Software.

• Choosing "S&H" (Sample and Hold) for a modulation source doesn't allow for the envelope gates to be triggered. You can lock the amplifer gates open via a front-panel switch, but it's not the same. Obviously, it'd be nice to have the LFO (the source clock for S&H) to be able to gate the EG's. Then, if that's possible, then it would be ideal to have a choice of "trigger both, trigger filter, or trigger amplifier".

• The keyboard Pressure sensitivity is pretty sensitive. I see a software rev making this adjustable or a set of multiple curves for the user to choose from.

• Velocity follows my "vision" of Pressure above.

• The modulation "Amount" controls are really hot. This is great for setting up insane modulations (the filter can be modulated up through a range of 8 octaves) but it would be nice to be able to give the control more of a logarithmic response. Possibly coming from a software rev.

• Be careful when hitting the ENTER key!! It's WAY too easy to overwrite something. To bring up a preset, you move to PANEL mode, select a preset and hit the ENTER key. Well, if you've been playing the front panel, then you're in EDIT mode, and if you're in EDIT mode, guess what happens when you hit the ENTER key? You just stored a patch. I think we can expect a STORE operation to become a double hit of the ENTER key for confirmation.

  
  

• Okay, I have a hardware based niggle.

  The MIXER_OUT / FILTER_IN jack is setup as a stereo jack with a normally closed connection. Using a normal "insert" cable here will allow you to insert an effect (say, a phaser, delay, distortion, anything!) such that it gets the raw sound of the oscillators and then returns to just before the filter. This is an awesome feature, except... The SEND side of the jack (the signal from the mixer) is set on the ring, and the return is set to be on the tip. It would have been more useful to have this reversed. That way, you could insert a mono plug "up to the first click" which would have given you a way to tap the raw sound coming out of the mixer without breaking the connection within the synth.

  Now, since this signal would be always-on (it's pre-VCA), it would be of limited use. But, I could see it maybe feeding a an audio gate for rhythmic effects or perhaps a vocoder.

In closing, I will repeat what I've been saying for almost three years now.

This machine is not for everybody
because it wasn't designed for everybody

Is it right for you? The only person that can answer that is yourself. Yes, it's expensive; Yes, it's just a monophonic; Yes it's an expensive monophonic in the days of other analog mono's costing a lot less.

But there are clearly people out there that can appreciate what this machine is. It has THAT sound along with so much MORE than THAT sound.

I think that Bob - and all of the folks at Moog Music - have a winner on their hands. People will find things to criticize about the machine; people also find things that they don't like in $300,000 Testerosa's.

The primary goal of Voyager was to be a machine that people would want to play and a machine that people could play. This machine begs to be touched, it responds VERY sweetly when it is touched, each touch makes you grin - and want to touch it some more.

Thank you to Bob - the man behind "the filter that started it all", to whomever it was that hand-rubbed this gorgeous finish.

This one's a keepah.