Behringer CAT

Behringer's emulation of the famous Arp Odyssey & MiniMoog challenger the Octave Cat synth from the latter half of the 1970's

The Octave Cat was released in 1975 as a cut price challenger to the Mini Moog & Arp Odyssey synths which were at the time the two main (& rival) portable all-in-one non-modular synthesisers on the market, used by the big synth/keyboard player names of the day. The Cat was Octave's first synth offering and eventually dragged the company into the ongoing Moog & ARP legal dispute circus, with ARP suing Octave for infriging on it's new filter design in the Mk2 2810 Odyssey which itself was re-designed because it infringed the Moog filter patent. ARP in fact claimed that the Cat synth had simply lifted it's duophonic circuitry from their Odyssey service manual.

Contrary to myth, while ARP did attempt to sue Octave, this didn't see the end of Octave who went on to release a new CAT SRM (Series Revision Model) version of the CAT (possibly to get around the legal attack by ARP) & the Behringer Cat emulation is in fact an all analog circuit copy of this second iteration CAT SRM all the way to using matched transistors & JFETs.

The newly formed Octave-Plateau company also released the the cut-down Octave 'Kitten' single oscillator synth & finally their big Voyetra polysynth which was released by a new iteration of the company called Octave-Plateau.

Octave-Plateau eventually morphed into Voyetra - taking the name of their final big polysynth - and Voyetra finally merged with Turtle Beach (a company that itself had started life by creating a PC editor for the Ensoniq Mirage sampler) to became the famous & massive Voyetra Turtle Beach PC audio & technology company of the mid 90's onwards, delivering such early products as the Voyetra Turtle Beach Tahiti soundcard providing soundcards & driver technology for millions of consumer PC units.

Here's the official Behringer blurb on their Cat

In 1975, a new synth strolled into town. The Cat as it was called was an analog, duophonic, three octave synthesiser that was very similar to the ARP Odyssey. Its keyboard would produce two control voltages that were routed into its two VCOs. An ultra-affordable and even more feature-packed homage to that iconic synthesiser comes in the form of the Behringer CAT. Conjure up the virtually any sound imaginable with incredible finesse and ease. The pure analog signal path is based on authentic VCO, VCF and VCA designs in conjunction with 4 variable and simultaneous oscillator shapes and Duophonic/Paraphonic capabilities. Owning a CAT is like having your own personal time machine, enabling you to freely embrace the past – or shape the future. And the best of all, it doesn’t scratch.

Great care has been taken in engineering the CAT, including the true to the original analog circuitry, legendary VCO, VCF and VCA designs that come together to recreate classic tones that are evocative of classic electronic music. This highly-focused attention to detail is what gives the CAT its ultra-flexible sound shaping capability. It gives you the ability to cover a lot of amazing tones from super-fat bass, tasty leads – and all the way to full on dreamy ambience from the far reaches of your imagination.