ARTURIA MINIMOOG V
Jul 1, 2004 12:00 PM, BY LAURA PALLANCK
Few musicians would argue that one of the most popular — and most mythologized — analog synthesizers is the Moog Minimoog Model D. When it hit the streets in 1971, the Minimoog was one of the first commercially made portable synthesizers that didn't require patch cords. Ultimately, it became the standard in the industry for performance-oriented synthesizers, and for more than 30 years, this monophonic instrument has been the benchmark for bass and lead sounds, primarily due to the combined richness of its three oscillators and 4-pole lowpass filter.
Because of the Minimoog's stature, I find it remarkable that Arturia released Minimoog V after its stellar Moog Modular V and CS-80V soft synths. Although a number of software versions of the Minimoog already exist, Minimoog V is unique because Arturia was careful to get Bob Moog's approval about the sound before releasing it. Despite all of the hype and cache surrounding anything carrying the Moog name, does Minimoog V live up to the reputation of its namesake?
SUPER MODEL D
Like with other Arturia instruments, installing Minimoog V is a snap. It's worth noting that, during installation, you get to choose the wood finish — maple, mahogany or dark walnut — for your virtual Minimoog. But choose wisely because you can't change the finish after installation unless you reinstall the software.
One of the things that made the Minimoog so easy to use was that the signal flow was clearly indicated from left to right on the front panel: Controllers, Oscillator Bank, Mixer, Modifiers and Output. As you would expect, the modules of Minimoog V are nearly identical to those on the Minimoog. The Controller module includes a Tune control, with a range of a minor third up and down; a Glide control; and a Modulation Mix knob offering oscillator 3 and Noise. Minimoog V's Oscillator Bank is virtually the same as its namesake but with two important additions: a LowMono setting on oscillator 3, which can be used as a steady, low-frequency-modulation source when playing polyphonically, and the Sync switch, which synchronizes the onset of the oscillator 2 waveform to oscillator 1.
The Mixer module has the requisite on/off switches and volume controls for each of the three oscillators, the noise source (your choice of white or pink noise) and external input. However, in this case, the external input has a 3-position switch that adds an Out mode, which automatically routes Minimoog V's output back into the mixer. This is a software version of the old Minimoog trick of sending the output of the instrument back through the instrument's mixer to fatten the sound. In this case, the effect adds feedbacklike artifacts as you increase the level. Be careful to increase the level slowly, because some sounds, particularly ones in which the filter is near a resonant peak, will break up into distortion in a very unpleasant way.
Next is the Modifiers section of Minimoog V, which includes a modeled 24dB-per-octave filter, as well as a VCA with a three-stage envelope, just like the Minimoog. Minimoog V's output section includes the Minimoog's main volume control and the A-440 switch, which provides a stable tone to tune against (although Minimoog V's tuning tone has fewer partials than the Minimoog's). However, the Output module includes three new features. The Polyphonic switch allows you to play the instrument polyphonically, and you can select from 1 through 8, 16 and 32 voices. The Unison switch lets you play voices simultaneously. The Voice Detune control, which enhances the analog sound of the instrument by simulating oscillator drift between the voices, lets you set the degree of detuning.
To the right of the Output module is the Soft Clipping switch. When this effect is on, it helps Minimoog V emulate the Minimoog's overdrive characteristics by adding more bite to the sound. According to the manual, the Soft Clipping feature is CPU-intensive, and I would not recommend using it when playing Minimoog V polyphonically, because the output begins distorting as you add voices.
Like many monophonic synths of its time, the Minimoog had low-note priority, meaning the lowest note would sound if you held down two or more notes simultaneously. However, Minimoog V allows you to set high-, low- or last-note priority within the Playing Mode window. Minimoog V also adds a Legato switch, which allows you to play melodically without retriggering the envelope generator when you are in mono mode.
The Legato switch resides in the panel to the left of the 44-note virtual keyboard, which, by the way, is playable with mouse-clicks if you don't have a keyboard controller handy. Also in the panel sits the familiar Bend and Mod wheels, as well as Glide and Decay switches. Minimoog V adds a pitch wheel on/off switch and Range control, which offers ±13 half steps when turned fully clockwise. Arturia has kept the two ¼-inch jacks that accepted CV switch pedals to engage the glide and decay. Clicking on these virtual jacks lets you activate each feature using a MIDI switch.
OPEN AND SHUT CASE
Just as it did with CS-80V, Arturia included an Open mode in Minimoog V. Click on the Open button at the top right of the screen, and the front panel will raise to reveal six user-assignable modulation routings, an additional LFO and an arpeggiator, as well as chorus and delay effects. These features allow you to venture well beyond the classic Minimoog sound and into some exciting territory. The modulation matrix offers 12 sources and 32 destinations. For example, you can route the LFO to control the filter's cutoff frequency and emphasis or have the filter's envelope generator control frequency modulation on oscillator 2. This feature allows you to add some serious spice to any patch in no time.
Having a dedicated LFO means that you don't have to sacrifice oscillator 3 for modulation duties, which was the case with the Minimoog. The LFO has six waveforms (sine, ramp up/down, square, noise and random sample-and-hold), a rate control (with a maximum frequency of 20 Hz) and a MIDI-sync switch for synchronizing the rate to the tempo of the host application.
The arpeggiator also includes a MIDI-sync switch and rate control. Sync locks the arppegiated rate and the delay return times to the host tempo. With sync switched off, you can set the tempo into audio rates. The Play button switches the effect in and out, and the Off/Hold/Memory switch gives you two ways of controlling the arpeggios: With Hold engaged, only the notes held down on the keyboard are played; with Memory on, every new note played on the keyboard is added to the arpeggio until you switch it off.
The arpeggiator has five playback modes (up; down; backward/forward; random; and notes, which repeats the notes in the order in which they are played). In addition, you can set it to play the arpeggio through five octaves and repeat each group of notes in an octave as many as five times.
IS IT THE REAL THING?
The answer to your first question about Minimoog V is yes: It can closely imitate the sounds of a vintage Minimoog. Arturia uses its True Analog Emulation (TAE) technology in Minimoog V to model the sound of analog hardware and keep aliasing at bay. And because Minimoog V's interface is nearly identical to the Minimoog, it's easy to re-create Minimoog-like mono instruments. If you have some old Minimoog patch sheets lying around, you can easily build them on this level of the virtual instrument.
In a series of side-by-side tests, I pitted the stand-alone version of Minimoog V against a late-model Minimoog (serial number 12728, which includes the revised oscillator card offering greater stability). I ran Minimoog V on a Mac G4/1.33GHz Titanium laptop under Mac OS 10.2.7, using the knobs and sliders of an Edirol PCR-A30 to control as many of the soft synth's knobs as possible. The install disc includes VST, RTAS, HTDM, DX, MAS and Audio Units versions of Minimoog V, as well.
I began by matching the hardware Minimoog to the Minimoog V default instrument, which comes up when you launch the program. The default patch, KU_3Osc, is a mono instrument without effects, but with the Glide, Decay and Soft Clipping switches on, it represents a fairly generic Minimoog bass sound with a buzzy, strident attack. Getting the hardware synth to match this three-oscillator, ramp-wave bass sound was fairly easy.
Next, I tweaked the Minimoog sound in a number of ways, being careful to move the corresponding Minimoog V knobs the same distance. Remarkably, Minimoog V's controls responded just like those on the Minimoog, and the resulting sounds were nearly identical. Occasionally, it took some extra effort to get the two instruments to match sonically, but I certainly wouldn't count this against Minimoog V — matching the sounds of two vintage Minimoogs can be equally tricky.
It should be remembered that, throughout the 13 years it was in production (during which more than 12,000 units were built), the Minimoog went through a number of design changes. In addition, the components in an analog synth change over time, affecting not only the performance of the knobs and wheels but also the behavior of the circuitry itself. Consequently, if you put three randomly chosen Minimoogs head-to-head, it's likely that there will be subtle differences in sound and response between them. That I could match the sound of this Minimoog V to this particular Minimoog is really quite remarkable.
Because I was using a modern keyboard controller, the pitch bending was smoother and more reliable with Minimoog V than with the Minimoog. In fact, a host of other features were easier to use on the software version of the synth, and the list of problems on this 25-year-old Minimoog include uneven triggering, flaky keys, sudden pitch drifts and a pitch wheel that doesn't always return to the center. And although the knobs on an analog instrument are supposed to give you a smooth transition between settings, try tuning three oscillators to an exact pitch with funky old potentiometers. These problems weren't an issue with Minimoog V. However, it would be nice if Minimoog V's controls wouldn't jump to a new setting when you first click on them.
The biggest differences I could hear between the two instruments were in the filter sweeps. On this count, the Minimoog is more strident: The sweep through the partials was smoother yet not as even as with Minimoog V because, as the Minimoog's filter sweeps through the frequencies, partials pop out here and there. The sweep of Minimoog V's filter is more even, and I could detect a slight bit of zippering. In addition, when I continued to hold down the key at the end of a sweep on the Minimoog, the sound had more of a chaotic, unpredictable animation than with Minimoog V.
Such unpredictability was also evident when adding LFO modulation using oscillator 3. The modulated sound of the Minimoog was much more alive and varied. To be fair, this may or may not be a good thing, depending on your musical tastes, but it seems to be at the core of what differentiates an analog synth from its modeled counterpart. But all of this nitpicking about whether Minimoog V sounds exactly like the real deal goes out the window once you begin using its nontraditional features. In terms of contemporary sounds and versatility, Minimoog V leaves its namesake in the dust.
MY FAVORITE BEEPS
Of the many things that Minimoog V offers that the Minimoog doesn't is the ability to save and recall patches. Arturia includes more than 500 factory presets organized in banks by sound designer, then by instrument and patch name. The list of sound designers includes a who's who of well-known musicians and programmers: Jean-Michel Blanchet, Geoff Downes, Clay Duncan, Celmar Engel, Ted Perlman, Chris Pittman, Mateo Lupo, Klaus Peter Rausch, Klaus Schulze, Scot Solida, Noritaka Ubukata and Katsunori Ujii. The SubBank instrument categories are Arpeggio, Basses, EFX, Keyboards, Leads, Pads, Percussives, Horn, JS-Bach, Synth and three categories of templates (Arpeggios, EFX and Synth).
Overall, the factory programming is stellar and shows off Minimoog V's potential very well. Of course, the familiar Minimoog sounds are all there: woody plucked and percussive sounds, rich and buzzy basses and brass, and metallic and spacey timbres. However, few of the factory patches stick to the limitations of the Minimoog: Modern sounds, full of animation, are plentiful.
Among my favorite patches are Rauch's Kprsteel Drum, which, in the upper octave, sounds like a Javanese saron; Duncan's unassumingly useful CD_Polite Bass; and Blanchet's JMB Long Porta, a pad with a brass timbre and sirenlike glissandi. There are dozens of sounds I found likable and, more important, useful. But because it's so easy to tweak this instrument, I treated every preset as a template. If I could find a sound that was close to what I wanted, I simply modified it until it fit the track I was working on.
In addition, it was really a joy to play Minimoog V polyphonically, because the pads and keyboard sounds are rich and full like an analog instrument. Surprisingly, I found myself in the old prog-rock position — playing bass lines on the Minimoog with one hand and pads, lines and chords on Minimoog V with the other hand — because the two instruments blend very well together. Playing melodic lines on the Minimoog over arpeggiated Minimoog V patterns was equally satisfying.
V IS FOR VICTORY
For anyone wanting the elusive Minimoog sound from a software synth, look no further. Although I could sometimes hear a subtle difference between the hard and soft versions of the instrument, it is nearly impossible to tell them apart in a mix.
I am a major fan of analog instruments, and I would have no problem using Minimoog V onstage or in the studio to add some Minimoog flavor to a project. And it is especially nice to be able to go a step further and use the sound polyphonically or spice it up using the added modulation possibilities, arpeggiator and built-in effects. Ultimately, Arturia Minimoog V delivers the sonic weight and complexity of its namesake, without the hassles of a vintage instrument.
Product Summary
ARTURIA
MINIMOOG V > $199
Pros: Excellent sound quality. Can sound nearly identical to a Minimoog. Easy to use. Simple to install. Nice selection of presets.
Cons: Controls jump to new setting when first moved. Subtle zippering audible during filter sweeps.
Contact: tel. 33-438-020-555; e-mail info@arturia.com; Web www.arturia.com
System Requirements
MAC: G3/500; 128 MB RAM; Mac OS 9.2.2/OS 10.2.
PC: Pentium II/500; 128 MB RAM; Windows 95/98/2000/XP
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