Moog Music has announced a sale on the Moog Voyager XL synthesizer, to celebrate getting named Best Keyboard/Synthesizer at the 2012 NAMM Show by Sound On Sound.
Every year, the editorial team at Sound On Sound get together to nominate between ten and twelve products in each product category, before asking its readers to vote for their favorite products.
Moog will be selling the Minimoog Voyager XL for $4495, $500 off the original price.
$4495 is still pricy – but the Voyager XL is arguably the best monophonic synth of all time.
See the Moog site for details.
at this price, wouldn’t you rather buy a used Andromeda? Personally I can’t justify spending that kind of money on a monophonic synth. How much of that bloated price do you think is just the Moog brand? But then again I’ve never owned or heard one so I might be out of line when I make a comment like that. I’m sure a lot of people can justify the price but what are some reasons? I’d like to know.
The Andromeda is a nice synth – but it’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison.
The Voyager XL is an advanced semi-modular synthesizer. So a more apt comparison would be to look at the cost of a high-end modular synthesizer, keyboard and touch controllers. It would be hard to find something comparable to the XL without looking at modular synths.
@synthhead Well I guess that explains the price then. I didn’t know that’s what market they were trying to cater too. It makes sense though since the Moog Modular is highly sought after and this seems like an inbetween for synths and modular gear. Is it just too pricey with modular stuff to get more polyphony? Or is it just the standard that monophonic is the way to go and you don’t need anyhting more than that?
Doing polyphony – as in playing chords – in the world of modular synths hasn’t been explored much because of cost and the logistics of patching.
It’s not uncommon at all for synthesists to spend a couple of grand to get their modular synths to a state where it can be played like a monosynth. And that’s with just a few oscillators.
To play polyphonic chords, you’d need to do several things:
First you’d need to duplicate the modules in your modular monosynth several times over to allow for multiple voices.
Then you’d need to implement a way of synchronizing the settings for the multiple voices – so if you make a patch, it will match in all the voices.
Then you’d need to design a system to manage voice allocation, so that when you play a chord on your keyboard, your modular synth voices are intelligently allocated.
For most synthesists, this is where the flexibility of modular synthesis loses out to cheap software or polyphonic synth keyboards.
I think this is going to change in a few years, though, when modular synth prices start to plummet. But that’s a different discussion!
That bass is worth every penny.
At this price you can buy two Dave Smith Tempests and a few cans of Red Bull, too.
I am lucky enough to own an XL and an Andromeda. The XL does (amongst others things) bass like no other synth I have owned, and to me that’s a really important part of my sound. Don’t get me wrong, the Andromeda also does very nice bass, but its not a Moog 🙂 They complement each other very well.
I used to have a Moog Voyager and then sold it as my dream has always been to have a fully modular synthesizer. The reason for that is the experimental, exploratory interest I have in synthesising sound. So even this Moog Voyager XL isn’t as flexible as a true modular but that’s not the point of the Moog. It just has a beautiful tonality that can no more be exactly replicated by anything else than a Guarneri violin can although I guess those violins are one step up price-wise even from the Moog XL 😛
I guess what I’m trying to say is that after a certain point, the technical specification of an instrument isn’t what dictates the choice of instrument…
Oh, boy! I have been waiting for the price to come down!! I’ll buy 5!
Personally I find this synth to be rather ridiculous. A five octave keyboard doesn’t really make sense unless you’ve got some polyphony going on.
I agree the five octave keyboard doesnt make sense and i rarely find myself using the full range thats true. But it does look good doesn’t it 😉
My musical partner, who works 90% with software synths (which is perfectly fine incidently, not looking for a soft vs hard war here :-), came to my studio recently and absolultey fell in love with the XL. Both the sound and the hands on tweakability was something he hadn’t experienced before.