Moog Modular V
Aug 28, 2003 - by babaille
Arturia brings out its last Moog Modular V software. It's a soft emulation of the famous and mythical Moog 55. All the control potentiometers and all the modules of that modular have been recreated with an amazing and great realism. Wood board, keyboard and cables to connect the various modules are on your monitor and it's like if you should have the real one.
| Features | |
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Moog Modular V runs on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X native (and incidentally with Win 95/98 and XP).
You'll need a confortable Mac : a PowerBook G3/233 with MacOs X 10.6 shouldn't be sufficient and a 9500 with G3/500 should be on the go when you choose a sound with too much effects.
In fact you'll need a G4 (not too old) or Imac with G3/800. Otherwise you'll need to keep a watchful eye on the Cpu controller. The soft runs stand alone (with MacOS X and Windows) ; but with Mac OS 9.x, you'll have to use it as a Vsti plug-in ( with Cubase, Logic or ProTools...)
| Quick outlook | |
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Potentiometers and controllers are very numerous. The interface brings out three display modes to make easier software control.
- A first screen display the synthesizer to program and edit sounds.
- The second screen displays sequencer, effects and a virtual keyboard with 5 octaves.
- The last screen displays the virtual keyboard and midi controllers.
In all display mode, the top of the screen is unchanged so that you can control midi parameters (inputs, channels and keyboard ), octave changes, audio outputs, loading, dumping and saving sound banks, visual control of cable connexions, effect controls and the choice between the 3 display modes.You can edit sounds by virtually connecting cables between input and output modules. Before to listen a single notes, you have to build the right connexion to generate the right sound : generators, enveloppes, filters... It's a REAL modular programming. So you have to be familiar with this kind of approach ; otherwise you could be disheartened. BUT nevertheless the graphic interface is quiet well designed. And very quicly the "complex plant" will be very accessible.
Shortly, this synthesizer is built with different modules. And you have to connect them (with an input / output logic) with virtual cables. You click on a connector and the soft graphically underlines the possible connectors to plug on. You slide and a virtual cable elegantly moves to the destination you choose. Quiet amazing, you feel like to control cable elasticity. And you can move them aside if you want to visualize hidden connectors. On the photo (click on) you'll see the soft interface. You'll see : oscilators, LFO (Shape sinus, Triangle, saw tooth), enveloppes (ADSR). You can assign a color to each cable so that to keep a clear conception of your instrument.
This picture on your left (click on it) shows you the Moog interface. You can see the Low cut-of frequencies, and a LFO with the sinus, square, sawtooth and triangle waveforms. Also Adsr enveloppes and oscillators. You can give each cable a different colour to find your way trough or to hide each group of cables. ;-)
To enhance sound, you have a sequencer and three effects : filter, delay and chorus.
- Filter, it's quiet a powerful equalizer from 125 up to 5 600 Hz with low cut and high cut filters
- Delay allows you independent adjustments between left and right outputs
- and you get a stereo chorus with 3 settings
And your keyboards have pitchbend, midi modulation, glide effect... and a real time graphic controller which allows you to modulate two voices (X and Y).
| The sounds | |
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A large sound bank is available with the soft. And first, it's a good way to discover the high possibilities of the Modular and to show and display the possible positions of the cables.
Powerful sounds and high quality of the sounds is the order of the day : round and hot analogic bass, pads and large layers, vintage keyboards, synthetic strings, percussive sounds, progressive and evolutive loops... there 's something to suit all tastes. It sounds real goods; But , remember, you'll need a confortable Mac to enjoy it.
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Arturia realise a high performance with this Moog emulation. If you are crazy with modulars and always searching new experiences with sounds far away from the clean factory presets, the Moog Modular V will stand the prime cut in your home studio.
More details on the Arturia' web site.
About the author: babaille
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