Octave Plateau Voyetra 8 - Good investment, scary investment?

[sleepwalker]

A friend has a Voyetra 8 for sale. It's $1500 and comes with the keyboard.

Anyone know if this synth is worth pursuing?

I love polysynths and this one is definitely cool, but I'm also wary of something so rare. For the same price I could get something more reliable.

Horror or love stories?

[chrisso]

I wouldn't say horror story, but I looked into the Voyetra about ten years ago and concluded it might be a maintenance nightmare, not to mention needing a science degree to program it.
A nice instrument however.
I owned a Prophet VS for a while too.
It sounded amazing, but once I realised it contained so many obsolete chips (unreplaceable) I decided to sell it.
I'm not sure if the Voyetra is in the same bag, but a lot of the synths from this period contain hard to find, unique components.
Having said that, I see the VS is still used by a lot of players, although it's a lot of money to spend on something that might be a white elephant.

[alexstringer]

On paper, it looks like you're about to make an incredible deal, however understand this:

The Rev4 are the most stables. The revisions that are not stable are the rev1, rev2, a few rev3's and whichever early revision that was built around those cream color motherboards.
If you want to buy one, make sure it has a green or even better blue motherboard.

The Voyetra is a very sophisticated machine When you have a problem on your Voyetra, the source may not be always on the circuit board of the Vco or Vcf if that's one of your problem. It may be triggered by something different. I think a tech require special training to fix those unit. If you bring yours to a tech than have never seen or worked on any before he may just mess it all up. You really have to familiarise yourself with the machine so you understand it and knows how to threat her well as a user so you extend its lifetime.

All parts to service a Voyetra are available to my knowledge, even the DAC (Digital to Analog) boards if they need to be replaced ... All VCF/VCA/VCO chips sells on the market. Like a lot of analog gear, the oscillators stabilise when they reach room temperature. The Autotune function is also very handy as it tunes the beast for you.

The Vpk5 is useless. If you want to control the Voyetra 8 midi, then you can't use the Vpk5 controller: It's either one or the other. If you want to exptend poplyphony, you can also chain 2 Voyetra's together and have a 16 Polysynth Voyetra like i do.

If you don't want to spend too long learning how to navigate thru it, do like me and use this application:
http://www.squest.com/Windows/Instru...ra8/index.html

[sleepwalker]

It's a Rev3. Thanks for the librarian link.

Interesting comment on the keyboard.

I wish someone would make a cool analog polysynth these days. Maybe I should just stack monos

Originally Posted by alexstringer

The Rev4 are the most stables. The revisions that are not are the rev1/2, a few rev3's and whatever Voyetra that was built around those cream color motherboards. If you want to buy one, make sure it has a green or even better blue motherboard.
All parts to service a Voyetra are available from my knowledge, even the DAC boards ... All VCF/VCA/VCO chips sells on the market. Like a lot of analog gear, the oscillators stabilise when they reach room temperature. The Autotune function is also very handy as it tunes the beast for you.
The Vpk5 is useless. If you want to control the Voyetra 8 midi, then you can't use the Vpk5 controller: It's either one or the other. If you want to exptend poplyphony, you can also chain 2 Voyetra's together and have a 16 Polysynth Voyetra like i do.
If you don't want to spend too long learning how to navigate thru it, do like me and use this application:
http://www.squest.com/Windows/Instru...ra8/index.html

[alexstringer]

Also, understand something :
Midi quest XL only work with Rev4's, since this is the last revision released for the Voyetra . It offered extended midi capabilities.

[analogbass]

Rev 4 would be worth owning. No maintenance probs as long as you're willing to send it to a guy in NYC who services them. Has a very heavy industrial sound, something like a Memorymoog, but with more options. The main shortcoming is that like some other polyphonic analogs it has some midi latency when using it with a sequencer.

[Jesse Skeens]

Always wanted one of those after reading New Order used them back in the day.

[axisdreamer]

Back before midi came out there was a keyboard called the Soundchaser that hooked into an Apple 2 computer through a ribbon cable. I think I still have mine although it's been years since I used it or hooked it up.You might be able to get them on ebay cheap now.It was a cool sounding synth that you could draw your own wave forms on the screen and stack the waves for pretty big sounds.The more waves you stacked the less notes you could play of coarse.I think it was 8 bit but it still sounded very cool.It sounded like no other synth and still does.I spent three years just creating sounds on it.It had a seq software that you could record tracks with it in the apple as well.This was before sampeling was even out on synths.Brings back memories.

Stace

[alexstringer]

Originally Posted by axisdreamer

Back before midi came out there was a keyboard called the Soundchaser that hooked into an Apple 2 computer through a ribbon cable. I think I still have mine although it's been years since I used it or hooked it up.You might be able to get them on ebay cheap now.It was a cool sounding synth that you could draw your own wave forms on the screen and stack the waves for pretty big sounds.The more waves you stacked the less notes you could play of coarse.I think it was 8 bit but it still sounded very cool.It sounded like no other synth and still does.I spent three years just creating sounds on it.It had a seq software that you could record tracks with it in the apple as well.This was before sampeling was even out on synths.Brings back memories.

Stace

It sounds like your talking about the Waveterm used with the PPG...Same principle if i recall...

[atol]

Would anybody know by any chance how one upgrades the ROM/OS on a Voyetra 8?
(from a REV3 -> REV4?)

[NWSooner]

If he doesn't chime in on this thread you might try PMing 'dougt' as I think he knows about this stuff. Or call Peter Lanzilotta at (212) 685-7900, he's the one that did all the work on my rev 4.

[dougt]

Rev3 to 4 is more than just ROMs there's hardware changes too which Peter has been out of for a very long time I'm afraid..

[atol]

Thanks! I'll try to reach Peter....

[alexstringer]

Originally Posted by dougt

Rev3 to 4 is more than just ROMs there's hardware changes too which Peter has been out of for a very long time I'm afraid..

+1 The Rev 4 circuit board is different than the rev 3. The stock of Rev 4 circuit aboard has been out of stock for almost 10years. No upgrades are anymore possible!