GRollins

And it's rack mountable and no keyboard and two filter banks (the early Moog-ish one and the later one) and it's got MIDI, etc. Yep, it's different. For me, the LEDs are okay. In fact, I think I may even like them once I learn the layout. I'll be able to drive it in the dark. This isn't a case where I feel the need to be a purist. All I'm after is the sound. It doesn't have to be a to-the-nth-degree reproduction that's indistinguishable from the original 2600. I played with a guy who had one back in the '70s and have a soft spot for them, but not so much that I have to go down that path. I've got two Behringer Model Ds now and am experimenting with using a Mutable Instruments Yarns to drive them polyphonically (as opposed to the onboard Behringer polychain option). Gods forbid that I try to poly-whatever a brace of 2600s at $3900 a pop! Grey

And I couldn't afford it then, either. Nor was I ready to tackle keyboards. I bought a used double-neck Gibson (aka The Jimmy Page guitar) a few years ago and that's as much as I expect to ever spend on a musical instrument by a fair margin. $3.9k is well into the no-go zone, no matter how much I might want one. It'll be Behringer or nothing for me. It's not like I can write these things off my taxes--it's pure hip pocket expense. Grey

I'm liking what I'm seeing, but need pricing information before I start making concrete plans. There's also the fact that the synth in the video is a prototype with more work to be done. He ends the video saying that they'll be at Superbooth "with the production item." I imagine pricing will be firmed up then (Thu, Apr 23, 2020 â Sat, Apr 25, 2020, according to Google). Grey

I'll take three... Grey

Between the Behringer Moog modules and Arp 2600 reissue (whenever it finally actually drops), my wallet will likely be seriously annoyed with me. The Model D is the only piece of Behringer gear that I've ever owned, but I feel that it's fairly well built, especially at its price point and other than a firmware update glitch, it's been fun and sounds like the voice of a captive angel. At some point Uli said something about their 2600 being a rack mount unit (6U, I think he said). Assuming that holds true, the knobs will probably still be tight, but if it sounds good I'll probably get one. The Moog modules are the kind of thing that I'll likely accumulate over time rather than buy all at once. The Roland 100s? I'll think about it. Maybe listen to some demos. I mean, really, I've only got so much physical space, you know? Grey

I'm kinda irritated that Yamaha is so fond of wall warts. The MM8 has one--as a lower mid-line keyboard I could try to overlook it, but face it, the chassis on that thing is virtually empty and it weighs next to nothing, so you can't use those as excuses. My MOXF8 is a little heavier, but still more or less the same situation as the MM8. Note that the weight question--which people always try to use as an excuse--isn't really valid. You're carrying the wall wart anyway, likely in the same gig bag as the keyboard, so it's the same as if it was inside the keyboard. I've got a Motif XS Rack and it's got this brick of an external power supply that's actually moderately heavy. In that case, the chassis is pretty jam-packed and is already huge. It's only 1U, but it's about three feet deep and pretty full. I think they would have been better off using a 2U chassis and putting the power supply inside. As a fringe benefit they could have used a bigger display and made the chassis less deep. Grey

Analog power supplies don't make switching noise. If the load makes noise, it's not the power supply's fault, although you could argue that the designer should have added ceramic or mica caps to shunt the hash from the rails to ground (as close to the noise source as possible) and/or inductors in the lines to absorb it. Electrolytics don't work at high frequencies--they pretty much cease being effective before you even get out of audio frequencies, much less into RF ranges (which is why bypassing an electrolytic with a film cap is so astonishingly effective). You'd be surprised how many designers are unaware of that simple fact. ESR? Whuzzat? Back to school, boy! If there's so much digital nasty that it pollutes the rails regardless, give the digital stuff its own PSU to save the rest of the circuitry from having to put up with bad neighbors. There are solutions to all these problems...they just need to be employed rather than shrugged off. A lot of this crap is dirt cheap (ceramic caps, for instance), but even those few pennies upset the bean counters. Worse yet are the designers who have the attitude that the power supply is just a utility item; an afterthought. In their view, if it delivers the voltage they spec it's good enough. Not so. They should know better. They need to have their noses shoved in the mess they made, then get whacked over the head with a rolled up newspaper. The power supply is part of the signal path. It matters. In my world, pure Class A power amplifiers running heavy bias currents are common; hundreds of watts of heat dissipation at idle. Tube amps use a lot of current even when they aren't Class A. A Class A tube amp is a beast--the 800 pound gorilla of the audio world. No one uses switching power supplies for high end audio willingly--they sound horrible. I haven't looked at the legal situation in a while, but Europe was trying to pass laws to force audio companies to use switching PSUs. They were pushing back, wanting an exemption. I don't know how that turned out. A keyboard? 20, 30, 50W PSU? Piffle. That ain't nuthin'. Barely a blip. Yes, I want sound quality. I'll pay the extra $10 and carry the extra pound. I used to redesign power supplies--hack them and build a beefier PSU outside with an umbilical leading back to the chassis. I don't have the time to play with things like that anymore, but it's amazing what a few dollars worth of parts and a decent regulated power supply can do for the sound of a circuit. Amps and preamps are usually designed pretty well, but some of the other units, like active crossovers, often cut corners. If I recall correctly, some of my first posts here were about my Yamaha MM8 (wall wart--ugh) having gotten hung because of a power surge here at the house. That's ignorant design on Yamaha's part. All because they cheaped out on the power supply for a $1000 keyboard. Jeez. Inexcusable. Grey

I've got my eye on that one. Grey

Some folks seem to be missing my point. I'm trying to compare apples to apples, price-wise. I have yet to run out of instruments in MuseScore and it's free. MuseScore may not be perfect--it doesn't seem to export MIDI files cleanly, for instance (or didn't, the last time I tried [older version])--but it does a pretty good job for my needs and I can't complain about the price. Grey

Aye, but I like things I can repair and adjust. I'm not a big fan of filling land fills with discarded electronics. Just because it's convenient doesn't make it right. Plus, with an analog power supply you're not spewing digital hash into the power lines or rails. Coming from a background in high end stereo equipment, I take things like that very seriously. Analog power supplies sound better. Grey

At this point Behringer's pretty much sewn up the traditional Moog synths with the D and the modules. Personally, I feel that Moog (the company) missed a step by not issuing Eurorack versions of their modules years ago, but it's not my decision to make. On the business side of things, I'm going to be keeping an eye on companies like synthesizers.com. They're going to get hit hard by the new Moog modules. I think they, too, should have released Euro versions of their gear but, like Moog, now it's too late. I've noticed that many here seem deeply suspicious of the Euro stuff. Yes, the knobs are small and it's fiddly, but it's more fun than the law allows and as of late yesterday afternoon I finally nailed a sound I've been hearing in my head for a piece I'm working on--a sound that would literally be impossible on my Korg, Yamaha, or Hammond. The Voyagers and Little Phatty were only able to approximate it (although I got pretty close). With Euro modules, I got it. You've got more control with Euro because you've got more access to the functional blocks; you're not locked into someone else's flow chart. Would anyone else care if it was merely "almost right?" I don't know whether they would or not, but it matters to me. Being an old school Moog kind of guy I will be taking a very close look at the Behringer Moog modules, but it sounds as though there are more in the works so I'll wait for a bit before building a Mini-Me clone of Emerson's rig. Grey

If I'm understanding correctly, it will only do two instruments, right? For me, that's a deal-killer. Back to MuseScore. Grey

It's not like a decent power supply is all that hard to design...surely they've got someone in house who can handle such a trivial exercise (don't make me come up there to hand you a schematic boys and girls, I won't be happy). I'm sure it'll come down to cost; buying an OEM power supply saving a dollar or two, but at their typical pricing I think they could manage to work out something a little better. Grey

Thanks. I'll take a look. I keep a fair selection of styrene caps in stock, so even if they're wonky I might be able to burrow into my parts bins and come up with the right stuff. I can't imagine that you'd need more than a 25V rated cap in a Voyager--they use, what, +12, -12, +5, and...something else...10V? I know that the first step in tuning the boogers is to check the voltages, but I don't remember what the rails were off the top of my head. I've got notes somewhere. (Their power supplies are pitifully designed, but that's another matter for another day.) Grey

I got the email from Moog and was kinda wrinkling my nose at it. Why would they do such a thing? It seems pointless. I relayed some impressions of trouble in Moog-land in my "Visit" thread the other day. This seems to me to be of-a-piece with my thoughts that Moog is drifting aimlessly. Grey

What about the sorbothane ergonomic wrist supports that go in front of keyboards? About 10-12" wide and maybe 3" across. Put one under each end of the keyboard. No, I have no idea what they cost. It may not be practical. We had 'em at work and I always was fascinated with them; trying to think of other uses. Grey

Pots and the front panel are what kill you. Resistors, capacitors, and semiconductors (usually) are pretty cheap. Once you get into anything remotely mechanical it gets annoyingly expensive. I was all set to design/build my own mixer. Looked at the Allen & Heath ZED14, counted the pots, looked up pricing, and bought the damned A&H. It was less to buy the ZED14 than it was going to cost me to buy the pots alone (at least at sale pricing). Grey

I already knew those were coming. I saw pictures somewhere a couple of weeks ago, just loose modules stacked against one another--can't remember where--and I believe Uli himself had already said something about it...uh...last year, perhaps? Still...cool. When I was in Asheville at the Moog store this past weekend I gave the sales critters a rasher of shit about why they were neglecting such an obvious opportunity as to make Eurorack versions of their old modules. The guy I was talking to said he'd been lobbying for same for quite a while, but it wasn't up to him and the bigwigs weren't receptive to the idea. Now it's too late. It'll all come down to price, I suppose, but I'm not seeing any info on that yet. Grey

I'm not understanding the last few posts...why can't you have your rack next to your keyboard? My Yamaha Motif XS Rack is fairly navigable. Not as knobby as a full keyboard, true, but it's not that bad, and if you use presets you can hop to things efficiently. The Behringer Model D--other than the knobs being smaller--is no worse than a Moog Model D for dialing in sounds. The Moog Voyager RME is virtually identical to the keyboard version. If the rack is on, say, your left side, then you reach left instead of forward. No biggie. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I just don't see the problem. Are there rack pieces that are a PIA? Sure. Solution: Don't buy 'em. Others are easier to live with, so look at them instead. Choose wisely and you can potentially save some space and weight. Grey

I'm big on 19" racks, including Euro/19" adapters. It's the only way for me to keep all the stuff I've got in a reasonable space. Grey

This is getting a little creepy... (What was that movie...? Harold & Maude?) Grey

Ooops...I mentioned Bagatelle Books above; I should have said Harvest Records. To the best of my knowledge, Bagatelle does not have a synth in back. Sorry 'bout that. Grey

Obviously Behringer's been pushing ahead on many fronts simultaneously, but it would be an interesting strategic move if they dropped their ARP 2600 immediately on the heels of Korg's ARP 2600. Grey

Everyone's going to gravitate to the stuff that most closely matches their inner sound palette. I respect the Dave Smith synths, for instance, but the sound just isn't what I hear in my inner ear. There's also the matter of application. When you're blasting a beat at 119dB for people on a dance floor, a more edgy lead line will cut through the sonic clutter. It's all in the frequency domain. I'm more in an "orchestral" mode, where you've got a larger number of different instruments playing at the same time and if you write a solo then everyone else drops back a bit to let that instrument take the lead. That's in the volume/amplitude domain. That suits me better, for any number of reasons. I'm not writing music to dance to, I'm writing music to listen to. Not a popular idea, I admit, but someone's got to buck the trend. The world's up to its ears in dance music. If I go marching along to my different drummer, they won't miss me. I'm okay with that. Grey

A couple of things that are semi-related to what I said above that didn't get said: --I never expected to become a keybed snob. I mean, really...me? I can't even play with two hands worth a damn, so why should I care about the length of the keys and the pressure and the travel and such esoterica? And yet, here I am, with firm notions of what I want in a keybed. Never saw that coming. --Pure speculation on my part, because as I said above, I've no knowledge of the innards of the 37, but what if the resistive heating element used to keep the chip(?--I'm assuming that it's not a discrete oscillator) in the oscillator warm had come unmoored? I'm assuming that there's a negative feedback loop that monitors the temperature and increases or decreases the current through the heater to keep the temperature stable. If the adhesive were to give up, then there might be an air gap between the heater and the chip body which would lead to a sort of hysteresis-lag situation where the resistor heats, but is not effective at heating the chip. Instead, the heater heats the surrounding air, the chip warms inefficiently, the servo turns off (or reduces?) current to the heater, then the air cools very rapidly, as in seconds, rather than the much, much slower cooling that you would get as the solid mass of the chip body cooled. There may or may not be pictures of the guts on a 37's oscillator section on the web. I haven't looked. Schematics won't be available, but that's not germaine to my hypothesis anyway, as I'm postulating a purely mechanical problem, not an electronic design flaw. Whether it would rise to the level of a mechanical design flaw--rather than an unfortunate one-off problem with the demo unit at the Moog store--I'm in no position to judge. I have no statistical basis because my entire 37 experience consists of that one unit. --Something that I didn't put in above because it's muddled in my memory and I didn't want to confuse things: Somewhere in my travels on Saturday I ran across a really ragged-out pair of headphones. It was either at Bagatelle Books, where they have a couch in back with a Grandmother (at least I think it was a Grandmother) on a coffee table, or at Moog. The headphones were so far gone that the fabric cover on one ear pad was ripped to shreds and the foam was coming out. I had to stuff the foam back inside before I could put them on. If it was Bagatelle, that's one thing. It if was Moog, that's another entirely. I didn't want to cast aspersions on Moog undeservedly in my initial post. Approach this observation with caution unless someone from the Asheville area can dip into the places in question and verify. It's too long a drive for me to make just to look at a pair of headphones. The Real MC, I've got a Voyager keyboard (an early one) and an RME (sorta early). Which caps are you referring to and what dielectric should they have? I'm all in favor of stable tuning. jimkost2002, I agree that the knobs could use a little more air between them, but after fiddling with Euro stuff for the last six months it seemed like the wide open spaces to me... Josh Paxton, Yeah, that's all it takes--just one patch. Fortunately, the Little Phatty and Voyager have more than that, but knowing that there's one magic sound hidden in a piece of hardware can change everything. I'm really, really hoping that I'm wrong about Moog declining, but things like that pathetic Chiclet keyboard and its cable on the Model 10 (and the story of why they're there) are troubling. ksoper, Along with my notes from my visit Saturday, keep in mind that Moog cancelled the Moogfest. The question that raised for me was whether they were financially sound. Sure it costs money, but it's also good advertising for them and a tax write off. For them to cancel the Moogfest so abruptly and with no explanation and with no (announced) plans to restart it struck me as worrisome. Another point: My lukewarm response to the One has been echoed by a number of others, both here and on other boards. It doesn't seem to be a runaway hit. Yes, I'd have a hard time justifying the money, but if I loved it, I'd say so--I'm not the kind of guy who does the sour grapes thing. I'd drool over it and start watching used prices. Instead, I'm planning on sticking with my Voyagers for, like, ever...especially if it's the last of the old school sounding boards. Hell, maybe I'll stockpile a couple in case one fails. Grey