GEAR: Voyetra 8

[playthatbeat]

This is my favorite Polysynth.. A monster of Epic proportions..A bitch to edit without the training manual, but capable of some pretty complex sounds thanks to it's many routing possibilitys. The Unit itself is Built like a computer.. Rackmounted, motherboard, with plugin cards for voices and such. I got mine from DOUBLE TAKE in NYC in the 1995, a REV 3, prepared by Pete Lanzilotta - one of Octave Plateau's original staff.. It's worked solidly since then, but last month went back to Peter for an overhaul, since it had started to act insane, and only 4 of it's 8 voices would pass the tests at bootup. Service for these machines is no joke - cards have to be removed and mounted in a cradle to power them up, then they are calibrated over time. There are 4 voice cards with 2 voices on each, and AFAIK, only 2 cradles in the world - 1 in Brazil, and 1 at DoubleTake in New York..

There is an editing package for it, that runs in DOS, and requires a MPU-401 Midi card.. I used to use this editor when i had an MPU401 compatible port on my sequencer PC, but not anymore.. now i like to get in the menus and edit..

As of Dec 5th 2009, my V8 was still off being repaired.. I miss it so.

[vst]

A beauty of a synth. My favorite artists (Ulrich Schnauss) main synth.

[playthatbeat]

I emailed Peter at Doubletake this week, checking on his health, and the status of My V8.. Peter has been 'on a break' for a while, but is now back in the office, and there is a chance my V8 will make it's way back to Ireland again in the near future.. er.. i hope..

It's actually been ready to go for over a year, just Peter has had a 'soap opera' life recently, health issues, family trauma and a car-crash, so it's sat there waiting to be shipped..

The state of it when it went to new york to be fixed was very sad.. only 4 voices, and the control surface was not working as it should.. Some controls did totally different things to what they should do, and the final straw was when it would just go crazy - all the lights flashing, and parameters cycling randomly

Peter thinks this might have been down to contamination of the control-scanning matrix by Static electricity! Yup.. sounds about right to me..

ah well, i miss it SO much. really i do. want it back.

[as4]

Wait now - it's been in "repair" for 4 years and 3 months?

[playthatbeat]

Ehh.. maybe. Is it that long? Fu*k, i must be getting old.

No wait, it took a year from announcing it was to go for a service to actually shipping it.

[digitalallstars]

Your voyetra 8 has long been a fav of mine. The long swishy swirly decay on those pads, the way the voices interact with each other. V fancy.