Well I have braved the ever growing cable jungle and re-patched my synths yet again. This time, I’m using the Moog Voyager as a controller keyboard for my synthesizers.com modular. This is awesome as the Voyager has tons of CV potential with the control voltage expander accessory, and it’s also been a lot of fun as I have not been exploring this aspect of the hardware. Up until this point, I’d been using the Voyager entirely as a stand-alone keyboard while the VX-351 CV Expander collects dust. Now that I’m running the Moog as a dedicated controller, it’s hard to imagine going back!
Moog Voyager controlling my Synthesizers.com Modular
While the Voyager and the dotcom are more than capable of standing on their own, when combined they turn into this crazy-mammoth-6 oscillator-uber-synth! However, I think six oscillators is a lot to designate to a single sound, so I’ve mostly been using them in a layered configuration. This allows two entirely separate sounds stemming from a single key press and has enabled me to come up with some very creative patches.
I find myself using bits & pieces between the synthesizers almost seamlessly. It’s almost as if the keyboards lose their individual identities and become something….larger. This really is one of the beautiful things about analog gear, and makes me glad I decided to go that route in an era of 128 voice digital-do-everything keyboard workstations and DSP driven “analog modeling” synthesizers that are about as unique as brown paper bag.
Moogerfoogers hanging out with a Future Retro Mobius Sequencer and DSI Evolver
This unsurpassed awesomeness is not without its caveats however. I have stumbled upon a couple problems thus far that I’m truly surprised have not been noticed by more people. Number one would be a volts per octave pitch problem with the Moog. It seems that the output of the VX-351 is not able to drive more than one oscillator at a time. This is ridiculous to me! When patching into a multiple panel, there is severe voltage drops which knocks the oscillators out of pitch with the rest of the musical world. I’m currently looking for a work-around for this issue but have notified Moog of the problem and they were able to duplicate the problem on their end. For more info on this, read my post at the Moog Forums here: http://www.moogmusic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4587
The second problem I’ve run into has been using the MF-102 Low-Pass Filter with my Synthesizers.com equipment. This is really a shame as it’s why I bought the filter to begin with. Why bother with “imitation” transistor ladder filters when you can have the real deal? Yes, the MF-102 sounds creamy and soft and I totally LOVE it, but it appears the signal levels out of the modular are far too hot for this particular piece of gear. Taking an unattenuated oscillator’s output straight to the filter will strongly overdrive it, which provides a cool effect but it’s not desired most of the time I use it. The obvious solution here is to attenuate the signal prior to coming into the filter, but that also means I have to either amplify it coming out of the filter, or lower the volume of every other source to match! I haven’t really found a solution that I use regularly for this and sadly this has lead me to use the filter less than I’d like. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing as I rely on the Synthesizers.com Q107 State Variable Filter for almost every patch I make, but it’s been making me consider their transistor ladder filter to provide that 4 pole response that sounds so damn good.
In closing, if you just happen to have a Moog Voyager laying around with some other analog gear, I recommend giving this configuration a shot. The time required to re-wire your whole rig is worth it! 
