Benge gives us: Moog Modular pure 901 oscillators
The Moog modular synthesizers use the 900-series of modules. These modules, many of them designed entirely by Robert Moog, are examples of analog synthesis at its finest. The modules are actually quite musician-friendly with straight forward input and output jacks and clearly labeled knobs. There are no technical electronic diagrams silk-screened all over them or esoteric controls. They were very easy to grasp conceptually, making them perfect candidates for music labs and professional musicians alike.
The voltage-controlled oscillator modules produce stunning tones with only one real drawback…drift. Revised VCO modules (the 921-series) were eventually released that offered more stable tuning. But the legend of the Moog sound truly comes from the 24 dB/oct lowpass filter (the 904A). To this day, no one has come close to improving upon the original Moog filter and its patented ladder design. Additional modules include VCAs, envelope generators, highpass filters, equalizers, noise generators, a sequencer, and utilitarian modules such as audio mixers, control voltage processors and power supplies. There is no dedicated LFO module, however. Instead, one of the VCO modules has a rate slow enough (0.1 Hz) that it can be used as an LFO instead of a sound source.
Background video description:
Here is a little demo of the majestic R.A.Moog 901 VCO – the original and BEST VCO ever made! I’m really happy because this 901 (not to be confused with the 901 A B combo VCO) came with my original modular IIIC system that I bought in 1994, but it NEVER WORKED. Thats right – I tried a few times over the years to get it fixed but it seemed to beat the fixers – until last week when I took it to my friend. He fathomed it out and also did a simple mod to it on my request – I have added pulse width modulation on the square wave – something that Robert Moog himself didn’t think of implementing on the first generation of VCOs. So for the first time I have a 901 VCO with PWM and it sounds spectacular. In this patch I am using the 901 and two 901B oscillators mixed together, and a third 901B saw wave to modulate the pulse with of the 901. Unfortunately the MP3 encoding on the MOV file does terrible things to the purity of these sounds, it sounds nothing like the real thing, in fact nothing sounds as good as these up close
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