Published on Dec 6, 2018 UVI
"PX V8 is based on an exceedingly rare American polyphonic analog synthesizer, the Voyetra Eight. Released by Octave-Plateau Electronics in 1982, this unassuming 3-space rackmount synth is a 78 lb. analog powerhouse sporting 8 voice cards and an incredibly deep modulation system. With 6 pages of parameters to customize the Voyetra Eight was nothing if not flexible, but in the end it's the sound that counts and it does not disappoint. Thanks to subtle differences in each of the voice cards and a powerful unison mode, the Voyetra Eight delivers a wonderfully uncompromising analog sound with rich, powerful leads, thick basses, warm, modulating pads, strings and more. A unique instrument with a sound greater than the sum of its parts, the Voyetra Eight packs a huge analog punch into a small frame that until now has largely been lost to time.
PX V8 has been a passion project, it took us 2 years to track down a Voyetra Eight, and even then it required significant work to restore to factory condition. Our sound designers spent over 6 months creating sounds with the Voyetra for PX V8; learning the instruments structure, designing patches, exploring possibilities, recording and editing. We tested numerous configurations of cables and converters to ensure you'd experience the highest quality sound before settling on Vovox and Prism, the results are clear.
PX V8’s sampling was made per-key for every patch we designed, both with and without unison mode engaged allowing you to enable genuine hardware unison on any sound in the library. Just like on the Voyetra Eight you can load two layers at once, and with the unison mode engaged you can create truly massive analog sounds without worrying about an 8 voice ceiling.
In the end we recorded over 25,000 samples from the Voyetra - packing PX V8 with a whopping 400 presets made from 176 layers, divided into 10 categories including bass, brass, keyboards, leads, misc, organs, pads, poly, strings and waveforms. Each of the sounds is fully customizable and can be used straight-away or as the starting point for a new sound. Raw waveforms are also available for those who want to create sounds from scratch.
PX V8's aesthetic was adapted to closely mimic design cues from the hardware, giving you the feel of the original instrument as you easily tweak and edit the oscillators, envelopes, multimode filter, LFO and step modulators, dual arpeggiators and a featured effect section including EQ, drive, Thorus, ensemble, Phasor, delay and Sparkverb.
Rare and relatively unknown, the Voyetra Eight is not the simplest synthesizer to master - but the sounds it can create are brilliant, making PX V8 one of our most unique and inspiring libraries yet.
