Yet Another Review

I’ve currently come across three reviews of Arturia’s Moog Modular V and while most brought the point home, that the Moog V is a great physically modeled synthesizer, none of them actually wrote about using the synth. An article that simply describes a synth’s features and its coolness factor is not enough for me to plunk down my hard earned cash, especially when something of this magnitude is involved. With that nonsense out of the way, how does the Moog V actually sound and can it save me $1000’s of dollars?

Got Oscillators?

At the heart of every synthesizer are the oscillators. The oscillators in analogue synths are crucial to the synthesizers overall sound and this discussion has waged many wars over the years. Bob Moog used discrete voltage controlled oscillators (VCO’s) and while sounding incredibly rich in timbre, had tuning stability problems. Arturia has painstakingly modeled Dr Bob’s 921A and B (not the 921) oscillator circuit and the results are convincing, without the tuning stability problems of course, even though the 921A and B were relatively stable when it came to tuning. You can however; with some careful programming, recreate the drifting of oscillators over time.

The great thing with Arturia’s Moog Modular is that it comes with 9 oscillators. If you are familiar with analogue synthesizers you should feel right at home when you look at the Moog V. You will find 4 outputs and a number of inputs. Each oscillator has sine, triangle, sawtooth, and pulse waveform outputs. Next to these outputs you will find a “sync” input and 2 control (CV) voltage inputs. The oscillators also have range and frequency pots. One great feature of the frequency knob is that if you right click and move the mouse you can tune the oscillator using semi-tones. If you left click you can fine-tune the oscillator. This is extremely helpful.

On the Moog each three oscillators are paired with an oscillator driver, which gives each oscillator, added functionality. The driver acts as a master for the next 3 oscillators in series and when the driver is used essentially slaves the oscillators. Each driver gives you 3 linear FM inputs, 2 pulse width modulation inputs, a master tuning pot with an octave and semi-tuning switch and a pulse width knob. Arturia also added a number of predetermined modulation sources on each driver. These are the 2 little boxes at the bottom of each driver. While some users would find this extremely useful, I have not used them, as I like to see every connection on a modular. When connections are not seen on a modular synth it can lead to mass confusion.

You might be wondering how these oscillators stack up to its analogue counterpart? I listened to a few OG Moogs to see if Arturia’s oscillators could compare. After some listening tests and analyzing the raw waveforms I came up with the following:

The differences between the modeled oscillators and Moog’s oscillators are minute. Each modeled VCO outputs a very similar waveform to the original. (Even though small variants appear across 2 different oscillators.) The original oscillators seem to output more a bit more low-end and distortion than the modeled oscillators, but this could be due to the age of the oscillators. To my ears there was a small difference between the analogue counterparts but the modeled oscillators are close.

The other discrepancies I found between the two should be rather minuscule to most users. The Pulse Width Modulation sounds slightly different as well as FM rendering somewhat different results, especially with complex FM sounds. Barring these two things being slightly different than the original the modeled oscillators sound great and would probably fool most into thinking you own a huge modular.

Mixing

Conveniently located below the 9 oscillators and 3 oscillator drivers you will find a VC mixer that has 16 inputs, 16 outputs, 16 volume pots and 16 CV inputs. While most people take mixers and/or VCA’s for granted, Arturia did a great job with implementing this mixer. It is easy to use and is essential for even the simplest of patches. It will even distort like the old VCA of yesteryear, though the distortion characteristics are not as “pleasing” to my ear.

Look Mom, A Filter!

Another important part of any synthesizer are its filters and how they sound. This tends to be especially true with analogue synths. A great feature of the Moog Modular V is the ability to switch between different types of Moog filters. You’ll find the traditional 24dB lowpass, a multi-mode filter, a 24dB Hi-pass filter and a filter coupler. The lowpass filter is one of the most famous filters ever made. Each of these filters can be switched on the Moog V by right-clicking on the name of the filter. This sure beats switching all hardware modules in your rig! Hell you don’t even need a screwdriver. On the Moog V you can have 3 filters at one time.

There are the standard connections for each filter. All of the filters have audio inputs and output jacks, as well as 3 CV inputs. All of the filters have similar controls, but can yield very different effects. On the VC lowpass filter you will find a frequency (cutoff) and a resonance pot. On the multimode filter you the same frequency and resonance including a notched pot that gives you 7 different types of filters and a small little input gain pot. On the filter coupler you will again find the frequency pot (since it is a filter after all!), a bandwidth pot and a 2-way switch that makes the filter either bandpass or band reject. A cool part about this particular filter is that the bandwidth can be modulated with CV. This can lead to whole new timbres that most people have never played with. Last but not least is the VC hipass filter, which is rather simple. You will find a simple cut-off pot.

As with the oscillators, you will see the clever little pre-patched modulation boxes on each filter unit. Again, I didn’t use these, as they can be rather confusing when trying to edit complex patches.

The fixed filter bank is also a filter and this module is located right above the keyboard. The fixed filter bank looks complex, but it is rather simple. Thinking of this unit like an equalizer might help, as most people use fixed filter banks normally as they would an EQ. There are two switches located at the bottom that route VCA 1 & 2 to the filter bank, no further routing is necessary. There are also a number of pots for cutting or boosting certain frequencies. You will also find bandwidth controls (Q) for each frequency underneath the larger frequency pots. Having a narrow bandwidth affects fewer harmonics as having a wide bandwidth effects more harmonics. You will also find an input gain knob that changes how the overall EQ affects the signal. The Fixed filter bank can be used to simply add some more bass or treble, or you can do some interesting sound sculpting with the fixed filter bank, if you so desire.

After Arturia modeled these filters, Bob Moog gave Arturia a number of areas of improvement. I believe most of these were the specific distortion characteristics that Moog’s filters impart on the audio signal.

I compared these modeled filters against some of Moog filters and when used in normal applications I could rarely hear a difference. I did not have a filter coupler or a fixed filter bank to compare, as these modules are rather rare. The only discrepancies that occurred with the modeled filters, that I tested were when they were pushed into extreme or abnormal situations. When the filters were pushed into self-oscillation the modeled filters produced slightly different results, even though it was still a sign wave. The other discrepancy is when the filters were FM’ed and/or cross-modulated. One of the applications of FM’ing a filter is to produce vocal formants and Arturia’s filters produced different effects. Cross modulation can be created by taking the output of the filter, with a high resonance setting and patching back into one of the oscillator’s being used. Again, to most users this is insignificant. Arturia’s Moog V did have different effects than it’s analogue counterpart.

Conclusion

Arturia has done a great job with this software synth. In my opinion, I think this is the first step into physically modeled synthesizers being able to reproduce the sound of analogue synths. With careful programming and good DA converters the Moog V sounds strikingly close to being an analogue synth; so much that it will probably fool anyone into thinking you own a huge modular system. You also have the advantage of running multiple instances of this synth within any number of hosts. You gain the ability to save patches and have libraries. I tested the Moog V on a Pentium IV 5.53 chip and it never really taxed my CPU. Even with the most complex patches the CPU was only hitting around 10-12%. This is a welcome trade off for me since it sounds so damn good.

There are a few things that I would like to see added in future updates however. I would like the option to view the S-trig cables, even if it clutters up the interface. This is a modular synth after all, not a pre-patched semi-modular. In addition, I would like the option to see the entire modular at once, without clicking those 3 little buttons on the top to change views. It would also be nice to have the modeling improved to the point that even highly complex patches produce near identical results to the original.

Excluding all of that nonsense, I have been having a blast with the Moog V and have already come up with a number of great patches. To date it is my favorite softsynth, but then again I am a sucker for modulars.

Have more questions about this product? Please write me at:
greg@audioMIDI.com

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