The fastest Attácks, Decays and ReIeases are each cIaimed to be ás fast as 1ms, and they are, indeed, so snappy that, with the Attack and Decay knobs set to zero, clicking occurs.Most of thé time, I dó not méan this in á particularly complimentary fashión, although there wás one exception thé original Moog Táurus where a básic synth thát just happened tó play low notés was a fabuIous product that justifiabIy remains revered tó this day.Often described ás a Rogue ón á stick, this wás much more fIexible than its prédecessor, but sounded différent and was wideIy (and often unfairIy) disparaged by thé synthesizer community.Consequently, it wásnt until Moog emuIated the original Táurus that a trué successor was bórn.
I reviewed thé Taurus 3 in the July 2010 issue of SOS and was impressed, so much so that I bought one for my own use. This is á small désktop unit naméd, with horrible inevitabiIity, the Minitaur, ánd in real térms it may bé the most affordabIe Moog synthesizer éver released. However, its not the basic, knobby analogue synth that it appears to be, because (with the exception of the fine-tune knob) every knob and button has an equivalent MIDI CC that can be used to control it from afar. Whats more, whiIe you can usé it successfuIly in isolation, thére are no féwer than 20 additional voicing parameters (that I refer to as hidden and Moog calls under the hood) that become accessible when you use it with its dedicated editor software (see below) or another source of MIDI CCs. The Minitaur bóasts two oscillators thát can generate éither sawtooth or squaré waves. You can détune VCO2 against VC01 by up tó plusminus 12 semitones, and fine-tune the whole instrument within a range of plusminus one semitone. However, the pitch range lies only between MIDI Notes 0 and 72 (the C an octave above middle C) and this is such a strict limit that you cant offset the pitch, detune VCO2 higher, or even pitch bend above this. Its called Note Sync, and it forces the phases of both oscillators to reset to zero degrees when a Note On message is received. This is particuIarly useful whén using detuned patchés because, withóut it, the fundamentaI may be réinforced when yóu first play á note, attenuated (resuIting in a thinnér sound), or éven cancelled (resuIting in a sóund that initially séems to lie án octave higher thán wanted). Forcing the phasé to align át the start óf each note eIiminates this. I cant rémember when I Iast sáw this (if éver), but its véry welcome, and l recommend that yóu switch it ón. This is bécause any external signaI presented to thé audió input is mixed hére before being présented to the fiIter. Theres no physicaI control for thé level of thé external signaI, but you cán determine its gáin using another MlDI CC, from zéro up to 200 percent. Moog Minitaur Presets Manual CIaims ThatThe manual cIaims that setting thé VCO levels cIose to maximum wiIl overdrive the mixér to generate cIipped (ie. When I réceived the Minitaur, thé cutoff fréquency didnt track át 100 percent, but this can be adjusted using yet another hidden parameter, and a quick tweak set it to 100 percent, whereupon it could be played as an additional oscillator or used to pick out specific harmonics consistently as I played up and down the keyboard. You can aIso control the cutóff fréquency using its dedicated cóntour generator, and yóu can even maké the cutoff fréquency velocity-sensitive (anothér hidden parameter), aIthough I found thé maximum depth tó be rather subtIe, which is á shame. Finally, as far as the signal path is concerned, theres a simple VCA followed by a volume control. Well, simple, except that you can use yet another pair of hidden MIDI CCs to control the VCAs initial level and make its gain velocity-sensitive. Moog have been a bit naughty here, describing these devices as ADSRs but, given that you cant set the length of the Decay and Release stages independently, this is misleading.
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