The track below started with a bass sound coming from my Moog Voyager. It was one of the first sounds I programmed and it inspired me to the short musical phrase which builds the base. Andreas added his typical Percussion / Drums arrangement and Eberhard filled the gap in the slow part with Bells, Bell Piano and Noise.
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Used equipment:
Moog Voyager (syn-bass), Oberheim OB-8 (sync sound), Korg OASYS (wavesequence, bells), Roland XV-88 (piano, syn-vox, pads)
During programming and playing some sounds on the OASYS I became curious about the differences of all these internal VAs one has access to.
There are many obvious ones, for example the number of Oscillators, Waveforms, Filter types, Modulation Sources and Targets etc. But this is not what I am interested in, you can find that on your own either in OASYS or the manual. But for example, how do the SAW waveforms in AL-1, MS-20 and Polysix sound? Is there an audible difference or at least a visible one? And what about the Filter?
Screenshot of dp5.1 project showing MIDI file and corresponding audio file of AL-1, MS-20, Polysix and a “reference”
So I decided to program INIT files for each of OASYS`VAs as there are non by default. Each one consisting of a single oscillator, playing a SAW waveform. The different Filters and their CutOff (CF) are completely open (depending on the VA this means value = 10 or 99) and Resonance = 0. For MS-20 the High Pass Filter was not touched. Additionally I tried to set the envelopes to the same settings within the different synthesizers and deactivated Keyboard Tracking and other Modulation Sources as most as possible.
I recorded then with MOTUs dp5.1 a MIDI sequence consisting of one note played legato. During recording I closed the filter (CF: Max -> 0) and after reaching 0 I increased Resonance to Max (R: 0 -> Max) and opened the filter again (CF: 0 -> Max). Afterwards CF was kept @ Max and R was put from Max -> 0 and finally the filter closed at the end. This MIDI File was copied to two more channels in dp5.1 to get equal MIDI Data for transfer and trigger AL-1, MS-20 and Polysix.
Audio files were recorded by using OASYS’ ADAT Out which feed as usual ADAT In of Lynx Audio Interface (OASYS WordClock Sync was set to “external”). Audiofiles were exported from dp5.1 to Bias’ Peak which was then used to make screenshots of the thre + audio files.
Canditate 1: AL-1
Screenshot of AL-1 audiofile recorded with MOTUs dp5.1
AL-1 audio file
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Canditate 2: MS-20
Screenshot of MS-20 audiofile recorded with MOTUs dp5.1
MS-20 audio file
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Canditate 3: Polysix
Screenshot of Polysix audiofile recorded with MOTUs dp5.1
Polysix audio file
…. last but not least the “reference”
Reference:
Screenshot of “reference” audiofile recorded with MOTUs dp5.1
Reference audio file
The process of changing CF and R of the “reference” file is not as fast as in the other files. The generated MIDI file used for AL-1, MS-20 and Polysix could not be used. Voyager was used to give listeners an idea of how a Moog behaves in a similar situation.
It would have been interesting to compare the LAC brothers to their hardware ancestors, no doubt about that. Anyway, I would like to congratulate the person(s) who programmed all the different VAs and most of all the one who did the Polysix. I remember myself posting @ korgforums shortly after the LAC release that the Polysix sounds a little “moogish”…..
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Screenshot of dp5.1 project showing MIDI file and corresponding audio file of AL-1, MS-20, Polysix and a “reference”
