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Altair 231 At a Glance
Picture needed	Released: 1984 \| Specifications User rating: Not yet Reviewed \| Read reviews (0)
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Basti writes:

The soviets used the parts they could get... This means that the resonance pot is inverted because they did not have reversed log pots. All soviet synths had a poor quality (ever played a Polivox?) but compared to other synths from the soviet era the keyboard is OK.

My Altair 231 was produced in April 1986 - the final inspection took place 11 days before the Tchernobyl disaster - 200 km south of the Tchernobyl nuclear plant!

The sound is excellent. No Voyager can touch the sound of just 1 VCO without the use of filter or modulation, while the envelopes of the Voyager are a little bit punchier to my ears.

Both synths are "Minimoog"-type and both sound very different.

For a dry bass sound (without much phasing) to be placed in a full arrangement and the Voyager wins hands down. The Voyager also has some really great modulation features you wonÂ´t find on an Altair 231... But for classic Model D sounds and slightly detuned basses and leads with a massive phasing the Altair 231 rocks the boat. And the analogue drum sounds I was able to produce on the altair appered to be more punchy than on the Voyager.

The Voyager and the Altair 231 complement each other very well.

Comments About the Sounds:
This is a soviet Minimoog clone. The basic sound is pretty close to a classic Model D - much closer than the sound of my Voyager! But this is no wonder since the soviets cloned the first generation of Minimoog VCO boards. Phasing of multiple VCOs sounds great. The VCOs tend to drift a little but overall there are no big tuning issues.

(Thanks to Basti for this info.)

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