Speaking of Engine Optimizer settings- I found out something about my A6 that you might be interested in... I don\u2019t know whether such tiny variances are just incurable or "to be expected" with analog gear of this caliber.
First, about 3 or 4 of the voices seem to release more slowly on the left channel than on the right. To illustrate this most quickly, you would use the arpeggiator with very short pulses on a voice with 0 attack and 0 decay, and 100% sustain, with a saw wave on both oscillators, filter bypassed. As it cycles through the 16 voices, I hear some of them releasing more slowly in the left channel than the right- there will appear to be a sort of stereo lag. Strangely, the cure is to set the VCF engine optimizer at any speed faster than \u201cnormal\u201d (\u201dfast\u201d or \u201cultra\u201d knock this problem out). Yes, VCF, not VCA.
Second, but more importantly, when the oscillators are tuned very closely together in any particular voice, they each don't seem to hold "perfectly still" when beating against each other- they always tremble. That is, they seem to sort of "quiver" a little bit, as if the control voltage is constantly being recalculated, rather than just being allowed to flow (and, of course, slightly detune over time). I notice this phenomenon no matter whether the temperature compensation or background tuning are on or off.
When the oscillators on a Moog are closely tuned, they can undergo an apparent frequency doubling (that is, you hear an octave higher for a split second, which is beautiful). This is what I mean when I say that the oscillators hold "still-" they might drift over a few minutes, but at least they don\u2019t drift every 10 milliseconds or whatever. But, with the A6, I can't seem to duplicate this effect, due to the "shaking knees" of the oscillators. Perhaps my oscillators are defunct somehow, but because all 32 of them do this, I wonder whether this is something the a6 just does. Again, background and temp tuning are turned off during all of this.
Thanks very much, in advance, for writing back.
Jason Creek
Lawrence, Kansas
on 3/8/04 8:40 AM, its_peake at its_peake@... wrote:
Cool. Which Engine Optimizer setting did you use (VCA)?
Easier,
-Mike