MOOG MINITAUR VST MAC MANUAL
MOOG MINITAUR VST MAC SOFTWARE

You can also control the cutoff frequency using its dedicated contour generator, and you can even make the cutoff frequency velocity-sensitive (another hidden parameter), although I found the maximum depth to be rather subtle, which is a shame.įinally, as far as the signal path is concerned, there's a simple VCA followed by a volume control. When I received the Minitaur, the cutoff frequency didn't track at 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. This offers the standard controls for cutoff frequency and resonance and will self-oscillate when you increase the resonance beyond its two o'clock position. Next in the signal path lies the filter which, as you would expect, is what the company describe as a 'classic” Moog 24dB/octave low-pass design. more aggressive) sounds, but the effect is at best very subtle, so don't expect monstrous, distorted bass from the Minitaur.

MOOG MINITAUR VST MAC MANUAL

The manual claims that setting the VCO levels close to maximum will overdrive the mixer to generate clipped (ie. There's no physical control for the level of the external signal, but you can determine its gain using another MIDI CC, from zero up to 200 percent. This is because any external signal presented to the audio input is mixed here before being presented to the filter. Having determined the waveform and pitch of the oscillators, you can mix them in what seems to be a simple two-channel mixer. I can't remember when I last saw this (if ever), but it's very welcome, and I recommend that you switch it on. Forcing the phase to align at the start of each note eliminates this. This is particularly useful when using detuned patches because, without it, the fundamental may be reinforced when you first play a note, attenuated (resulting in a thinner sound), or even cancelled (resulting in a sound that initially seems to lie an octave higher than wanted). It's called Note Sync, and it forces the phases of both oscillators to reset to zero degrees when a Note On message is received. In addition to all of this, there's a second hidden parameter in the oscillator section that deserves special mention. 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 can't offset the pitch, detune VCO2 higher, or even pitch bend above this. Pitch bend is also provided, with a range of selected values up to plus/minus 24 semitones, and with the Up and Down amounts separately defined if desired. You can detune VCO2 against VCO1 by up to plus/minus 12 semitones, and fine-tune the whole instrument within a range of plus/minus one semitone. The Minitaur boasts two oscillators that can generate either sawtooth or square waves. The Minitaur looks good in its traditional Moog livery and, at just 22 x 14cm, its front panel is certainly compact.īut let's start at the beginning.

MOOG MINITAUR VST MAC SOFTWARE

What's more, while you can use it successfully in isolation, there are no fewer 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. However, it's 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. This is a small desktop unit named, with horrible inevitability, the Minitaur, and in real terms it may be the most affordable Moog synthesizer ever released. Today we have before us the fourth in the series. I reviewed the Taurus 3 in the July 2010 issue of SOS and was impressed, so much so that I bought one for my own use. Consequently, it wasn't until Moog emulated the original Taurus that a true successor was born.

Often described as a Rogue on a stick, this was much more flexible than its predecessor, but sounded different and was widely (and often unfairly) disparaged by the synthesizer community. Moog discontinued the Taurus in 1981 and replaced it with the short-lived Taurus 2. Most of the time, I do not mean this in a particularly complimentary fashion, although there was one exception - the original Moog Taurus - where a basic synth that just happened to play low notes was a fabulous product that justifiably remains revered to this day. I have gone on record, not least within these pages, to describe bass synths as basic synths that just happen to play low notes. The Minitaur may look like a simple beast, but there's much more to Moog's most affordable synth than meets the eye.

Moog minitaur vst mac