could anyone A/B minimax/Arturia Moog V?

next to nothing · Post by **next to nothing** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 12:46 pm

now that arturia has released the moogV demo, could anyone do a A/B comparison? cant test minimax myself as im havin troubles with CW demos.

AlienMachine · Post by **AlienMachine** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 1:29 pm

I just bought the Minimax the last week and I am really impressed with it.

Yesterday, I downloaded the Minimoog V demo from Arturia.

I found the following, and remember these are only my first impressions. I did not have the time to do a exhaustive test, and I probably won't do it.

1) Minimax sounds better and fatter. Minimoog V lacks that deep end we all are looking for from an analog synth emulation. Minimoog V just sounds thin to me. Definitely, I will stay with the Minimax just because of this.

2) I tried short/long filter sweeps and again for my ears Minimax has better filter quality.

3) The famous trick: output to external input worked well in both. However, because of the above it sounds better in the Minimax.

I still have to try translate one or two patches from the original patch book to the Minimoog V to check how it sounds.

The advantage of the Minimoog V over Minimax are its modulation options. You can do crazy things with it.

One thing interesting to note: I analyzed the dry square waveforms of both synths with an oscilloscope and they are definitely not the same.

I was very disappointed with Creamware in the past, and I still criticize them for they lack of end user support and for 3rd party developers, and the aggressive and crude responses I had from them everytime I tried to contact them for routine problems.

However, they did a great job with the Minimax, it is outstanding.

For me the winner is Minimax. Prodyssey and Pro-one are not bad either. Now, I own the three of them.

Just my two cents.

Cheers,

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:22 pm

Good comparison to be sure.

I find that almost everyone who tests the Modular V forget that it is modeled on VERY OLD GEAR. Everyone complains of the lack of fatness of the filters, that it sounds thin. I wonder how many actually have hands-on experience with the Modular, I'm talking about the wall of plugs and huge number of 1/4 inch wires.

The Modular V is maybe just for us nostalgic guys after all.

I love it by the way

AlienMachine · Post by **AlienMachine** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 5:04 pm

Hey there,

Not just you, I love the Modular V. And no, I never had the chance to play with the real thing.

By the way, the sawtooth waveform of the Modular V and the Minimoog V looks very similar in the oscilloscope.

Cheers,

A.

Joxer the Mighty · Post by **Joxer the Mighty** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 9:07 pm

I downloaded the Minimoog V demo last night and spent about 20 minutes doing A/B comparisons with Minimax. The Minimax sounded much better to my ears. Minimax just sounds fatter and richer. Granted, as I said, I only spent some 20 minutes comparing the two. I plan on playing around with them some more later tonight. Still, Minimoog V does sound very good.

[ This Message was edited by: Joxer the Mighty on 2004-02-26 21:08 ]

Quifster · Post by **Quifster** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:25 pm

i've compared them too. The minimax is way better than the arturia one. Especially when you open the reso filters on the arturia, the sound is almost gone, it lacks a lot of power. The minimax stands out with miles ahead.

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 2:04 pm

I'm afraid I have to give the MiniMoog V a scathing review.

I just tried it out for a while, and I noticed several things right away:

1. They didn't implement the filter keytracking properly. When you have the res filter on self-oscillation and the two tracking switches on, the original Moog did not have a perfectly-scaled osc: the various notes were out of tune. (I got this info from CW.) The MiniMoog V did not implement this properly, as it is perfectly scaled. I know that sounds more practical, but I got some rather interesting sounds out of the fact that the filter keytracking was not perfectly in tune in MiniMax.

2. The filter is steppy! How can you do anything with that??

3. They didn't implement the highpass filter when self-res kicks in. That was to prevent your speakers from blowing up.

4. I couldn't find the feedback switch anywhere. Can someone please tell me where it is?

5. The corse/fine tuning of the oscs is pretty weird, why did they make it work like that?

6. The sound dropped down too low when the resonance is turned up. That's one thing I hate about a lot of badly-programmed synths.

7. The self-oscillating filter doesn't have the right character. In MiniMax, it has a slightly theriman-like sound -- almost like a filtered saw wave, more inspiring. In MMV it's just a pure, boring sine wave.

8. As for the sound itself -- well, it just sounded slightly lackluster and "dead." The high notes sounded a little lopped off, not as biting and powerful as MiniMax. I didn't get the impression I'd ever let my mouth hang open, like I did when I first heard MiniMax. The bass sounded a bit whimpy too.

I'm sure a lot of people are going to like it unless they happen to have the original Moog or MiniMax lying around, and then they'll realize how cheesy it really is.

Shayne

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 10:24 am

I've tryed the demo too, and well, it is a good soft synth by all means, but it is EXTREMELY hungry on CPU, with all the problems that this can normally cause.

The sound impressed me well, comparted to any other VST Moogish imitation. I does have great posibilities, particularly in the creation of special effects.

The sound is rather good, reach, and tend to be quite like this to down or high frequencies regardless.

Minimax cannot be compared to it, it is not fair. Minimax is far a better sounding, more responsive synth. The sound is quite unique too.

I would say that, for people owning a Creamware board, to get the Arturia would be a mistake, you should really get the Minimax.

Kamurah · Post by **Kamurah** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 3:45 am

For anyone interested....
I posted a sound file comparing the two at identical settings.

It's in the 'Music' board.

Cheers

FWIW...I like the Minimax much better also.

bassdude · Post by **bassdude** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 4:26 am

There is quite a difference! The minimax sounds better to my ears too.

bosone · Post by **bosone** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 8:29 am

i have tried both arturia and minimax demo.
although i was impressed by the sound coming from arturia, i feel minimax was a lot better in term of sound quality... it gave me another "impression" while i was playing!
then, arturia is too CPU hungry... there are some preset really FAT with 3 unison voices, but they eat almost half of the processing power of my P4 2.4GHZ in standalone mode!!

btw... now that the VSTi people have a minimoog for 200$... it's time to lower minimax price, even because in order to run it you had to pay money also on a CW card!

(sorry...couldnt resist to write this!!)

Faybs · Post by **Faybs** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 11:41 am

Hope they will read you Bosone.

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 6:46 pm

I have a question about the Arturia: they made the "ramp" osc some weird saw/triangle combo that didn't sound anything like MiniMax's ramp. I don't believe that's acurate? I've never played a true MiniMoog in real life.

dland · Post by **dland** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 7:13 pm

I own an original Minimoog (midi'd by Studio Electronics), and the MINIMAX. I downloaded the Minimoog V demo. I dialed up some patches on the Minimoog, and then set the MINIMAX and MV to the same settings. The MINIMAX was more accurate, and the differences in sound could be attributed to calibration, and it was easy to adjust some knobs to get the same sound. The Minimoog V wasn't even close. It had me wondering if I had did something wrong.

I own the Moog Modular V, CS-80V, and even Storm. They are great tools, but at this point, I do not plan on purchasing the Minimoog V.

[ This Message was edited by: dland on 2004-03-03 19:14 ]

[ This Message was edited by: dland on 2004-03-03 19:14 ]

[ This Message was edited by: dland on 2004-03-03 19:15 ]

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 7:29 pm

So -- how close to the original MiniMoog *is* MiniMax? Obviously there are going to be a few differences, like not going out of tune, but otherwise how close are they? It's amazing how sloppy Arturia is.

Post by **hubird** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 8:02 pm

On 2004-03-03 19:29, Shayne White wrote:
So -- how close to the original MiniMoog *is* MiniMax?

German Keyboards magz said it's really a perfect emulation, absolutely a topper.
I would like to buy the one that is offered now on Ebay.de, but the end term is 7 march, I'm on holyday then