ARTURIA Moog Modular V 1.1 (MAC/WIN)

Jan 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

There's been so much buzz about Arturia's software emulation of the classic Moog Modular synthesizer that I'll get straight to the big question: is it the real deal? The answer, as you might expect, is yes and no.

Arturia's Moog Modular V has a complement of modules typical of a midpriced hardware modular system from Moog, though not the exact configuration of any of the standard modular packages. Each type of module resembles an original Moog piece but is not an exact replica.

The patching scheme is also very much like the original, but with two major enhancements: each control input jack has a built-in bipolar level control, and you can connect any output to multiple inputs. Modern-day conveniences, such as delay and chorus effects, MIDI implementation (including Velocity sensitivity), the ability to save and recall patches, and polyphony have been added.

You can get Moog Modular V to sound a lot like its hardware predecessor, but you can't exactly recreate every sound the original Moog makes. On the other hand, you can get lots of sounds from Moog Modular V that you can't get from the original. (For a head-to-head comparison, see the sidebar “Hearing Is Believing.”)

PRODUCT SUMMARY Arturia Moog Modular V 1.1 (Mac/Win) software synthesizer $329
FEATURES	4.5
EASE OF USE	3.5
QUALITY OF SOUNDS	4.0
VALUE	4.0
RATING PRODUCTS FROM 1 TO 5
PROS: Authentic hardware look and feel. Excellent factory library of patches. Lots of creative potential. CONS: No linear FM inputs. Some calibrations are off. CPU intensive.

NOTES AND SPECS

The Moog Modular V comes in a standalone version as well as several plug-in formats: VST, RTAS, HTDM, and Audio Units for the Mac; and VST, RTAS, and DXi for Windows. (Standalone operation is not implemented for Mac OS 9.) Although the minimum requirements call for a 500 MHz Pentium II or Mac G3, you'll need a considerably faster processor to play complex polyphonic patches. For this review, I tested the standalone, VST, and Audio Units versions on a PowerBook G4/800 MHz, and I easily pushed the CPU meter over the top by playing four voices of a complex patch. When that happens, the signal breaks up and you lose control of the front panel. However, things settle down in a few moments and you're back in business. Remarkably, I had very few crashes or serious failures.

Moog Modular V ships with a printed manual — 130 pages in each of three languages — and more than 400 factory patches from eight sound designers experienced in using modular synths. The assortment of patches is outstanding and covers most anything you'd want to do with a modular synth. Also included is a bank of 60 template patches, which provides a great launchpad for sound exploration.

The manual contains a brief history of Moog modular instruments as well as sections on general operational concepts, the individual modules, the basics of subtractive synthesis, and sound-design tutorials. Unfortunately, the individual modules are very poorly described — some of the inputs, outputs, and control descriptions are incomprehensible or just plain incorrect. However, the other sections of the manual are quite helpful. Modular synthesis is a complex business, but the examples and documentation provided by Arturia will definitely get you up and running.

YOU'VE GOT THE LOOK

FIG. 1: The First View control panel of Modular V contains all the sound-design modules. Color-coded cables make patch analysis easier, but cable display can be suppressed, and all patching can be done without cables.

The Moog Modular V's modules are revealed in two main views, creatively labeled the First View and the Second View. The First View consists of two virtual cabinets filled with the sound-design modules — oscillators, filters, amplifiers, envelopes, LFOs, and assorted ancillary modules (see Fig. 1). The Second View consists of two more cabinets containing a step sequencer; delay, chorus, and multiband-filter effects; a keyboard with keyboard-setup controls; and quick-access controls for several modules in the First View (see Fig. 2). There is also a more compact Third View that shows only the keyboard and quick-access controls of the Second View. Only one view can be displayed at a time, but all cabling is done in the First View so a lot of switching is not necessary. It would be nice to have key commands for changing views, but these are not provided.

FIG. 2: The Second View control panel of Modular V contains all the keyboard and MIDI routing, the step sequencer, and the Fixed Filter Bank, Dual Delay, and Chorus effects.

The color-coded cabling scheme is quite clever. Three colors of cables distinguish audio sources — red from oscillators, yellow from filters, and blue from amplifiers. Two additional colors distinguish control sources — green from envelopes and LFOs and white from everything else. You can suppress cables of any combination of colors, and you can control the cables' virtual tension (how much they sag) as well as whether they move out of the way when approached by the cursor.

You make connections by clicking on any output or input jack and dragging to a destination. The appropriate destinations sprout yellow rectangles as soon as you begin to draw a cable, which is something you won't find in a hardware synth!

You can also make and break connections using context menus that pop up when you right-click (Control-click on the Mac) on any input or output jack. Trigger connections, indicated by jacks with two flat vertical slots, can only be made by menu. Last, there are scrolling digital selectors for keyboard, MIDI, and sequencer connections to the oscillators and filters, although jacks for routing those sources to other destinations are also available. If you prefer, you can patch any source to any destination on the Moog Modular V without ever drawing or viewing a cable.

MODULE TO MODULE

Moog Modular V's nine oscillators are modeled after the Moog 921a Oscillator Driver/921b Oscillator configuration. In this case, each of the three 921a drivers controls three 921b oscillators. Frequency and pulse-width modulation inputs are provided, but at the moment, no linear FM input is available, making typical enveloped FM operators impossible. (Arturia plans to add linear FM in a future release.) As in the originals, each oscillator has simultaneously available sine, triangle, sawtooth, and pulse outputs, and any oscillator can be hard- or soft-synced to any other. White- and pink-noise generators round out the complement of sound sources.

Each of the Moog Modular V's three filter modules has four configurations: lowpass; highpass; Filter Coupler filters modeled after the Moog 904 series; and a resonant multimode filter not available in the original Moog line. Additional filters include 6 dB-per-octave highpass and lowpass filters built in to the noise-source module and an emulation of the Moog 914 Filterbank, with nine variable-Q bands, in the Seq/FX panel.

Control modules include two multiwaveform LFOs, six ADSR envelope generators, and an additional ADSR envelope built into each of the two output amplifiers. The LFOs are quite flexible, and they include built-in delay and fade-in controls as well as inputs for frequency and pulse-width modulation. The envelope generators are modeled after the Moog 911 envelopes. The attack, decay, and release ramps are highly exponential: their knobs are calibrated to show the time it takes to reach half the target value, which makes them somewhat hard to set intelligently. (A setting of 1 second, for example, results in a ramp time of over 4.5 seconds.)

In addition to two output amplifiers with their own ADSR envelopes, there is a mixer module with 16 amplifiers that can be ganged together in any combination to form submixers. Each amplifier has its own control input, and control signals as well as audio signals can be passed through them to allow control-signal modulation. For example, you could use that to control the level of one LFO by an envelope, another LFO, or MIDI Velocity.

KEYED UP AND STEPPIN' OUT

Minimum System Requirements Moog Modular V 1.1 MAC: G3/500 MHz; 128 MB RAM; Mac OS 9.1 (operates as a standalone instrument in OS X 10.2) PC: Pentium II/500 MHz; 128 MB RAM; Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP

Notes, whether from MIDI or the onscreen keyboard, are routed through four separate keyboard followers. Each keyboard follower gives you independent control of the key range within which triggers are sent, of scaling, of the threshold at which tracking begins, and of an offset. You can, for example, split the keyboard into separate or overlapping zones, create alternate tunings by changing the scaling, and transpose the keyboard using the offset.

The Sequencer module is modeled on the Moog 960 step sequencer, but with some additions. It has three rows of eight steps, each with its own output. A fourth output allows the rows to be linked in various ways — for example, in series, in alternating steps, or randomly. Each step can be set to repeat up to eight times with or without retriggering or be linked to the previous step for a legato effect. Furthermore, for each step, you can select the next step, which can be any other step, a step selected at random, or no step (stop). There's a built-in clock, a trigger input for stepping the sequencer, and individual trigger inputs for selecting each step. In short, you can get very creative with triggering and output configurations, and the sequencer is not limited to sequencing notes — you can route the outputs to any control input. The MP3 file SongV (see Web Clip 1) is an example of what the Sequencer module can do, and it shows the variety of sounds possible from Moog Modular V.

VIRTUAL REALITY

Although not an absolutely authentic reproduction of its hardware namesake in terms of design and sound, Moog Modular V is a very powerful modular software synthesizer in its own right. It succeeds in capturing the look and feel of the original Moog instruments, while adding many modern conveniences that can't be provided in hardware. Most important, Moog Modular V sounds great and gives you the experience and sounds of a hardware modular system at a fraction of the cost of a vintage instrument.

HEARING IS BELIEVING By Mike Peake As a long-time owner of an original set of Moog modules, I was interested to hear a side-by-side comparison of Arturia's Moog Modular V to the real thing. Moog Modular V makes a decent attempt at re-creating the raw tone of the hardware instrument, but it exhibits some major differences. To begin with, the 921b oscillators in Moog Modular V sound as though they always start from the same phase point. To hear this, slightly detune two oscillators and re-strike the same bass note while listening to the sawtooth outputs. Unless there is a free-run function in Moog Modular V that I'm not aware of, the oscillator phase definitely restarts upon each key-strike, which produces a 100 percent predictable detuning character on each note. The original Moog oscillators don't do this. With the filter wide open, Moog Modular V oscillators exhibit a slightly nasal and forward midrange and a bit more upper-mid bass. The Moog oscillators are sweeter-sounding, with the expected very high harmonic content providing “air” and whisper, which is important in long filter sweeps. Moog Modular V's oscillators track. The Moog's don't. Moog Modular V's oscillators don't drift. The Moog's do. The original Moog filter also sounds sweeter than the Moog Modular V filter near and in self-oscillation. When it self-oscillates, the Moog Modular V filter whistles too strongly at low frequencies and doesn't blend with the oscillators. Instead, it sounds like a separately mixed sine wave. Also, the real Moog filter drifts, which became obvious when I created the same sound on both instruments simultaneously.

 

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Len Sasso can be contacted through his Web site at www.swiftkick.com.

Manufacturer

Arturia
e-mail info@arturia.com
Web www.arturia.com