Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Korg DW8000, Mono/Poly, MS-20...

I just uploaded a ZIP file that contains the original factory cassette tape's patches on both
sides (Bank A and Bank B) as Windows WAV files. (You don't want to use .mp3 because it
uses lossy compression that throws out anything an algorythm thinks a typical human
won't hear, but in the case of a data file it isn't a human ear you're playing it for, so you
want to retain the full spectrum of the file.)

It's a piece of cake to hook a 1/8" mono patch cord (1/8" mono phone plugs at each end)
between the audio output of a computer and your DW8000, for loading the patches into
the DW8000.

I've also uploaded a ZIP file with .jpg scans of the original factory patch name cards,
complete with their curious names and spelling mistakes (e.g., "Space Gohst"). I've never
found it terribly useful, but at least it gives you an idea what sort of sound they were going
for when they developed the patches.

Now that I've said all that, I'd like to personally go out on a limb and state that the WAV
files of the original patches are a convenient way to get your DW8000 back to "ground
zero" if you've lost all your patches due to either use or dead battery, or whatever; but I'd
really recommend taking the next step and dedicating a computer to your DW8000. You
only need a bare minimum of computing power to run any of the handful of simple
DW8000 patch librarians that were written for both Macintosh and PC. This will allow you
to save your patches as either individual patches or entire banks of 64 patches as Standard
MIDI files, which you can then name and organize to your heart's content. I find it very
useful to have my patches organized by various instrument types such as "Electric Pianos",
"Organs", "Strings", "Woodwinds", "Sound Effects"; etc. -It allows me to locate an
appropriate patch in a very small amount of time.

The patches as Standard MIDI Files are so small that you can store a virtually limitless
number of patches on even a small computer hard drive. I've found old laptop computers
to be very convenient as a portable patch-vault for the DW8000, using any old simple MIDI
serial interface. Most of the old patch librarians run on Operating Systems so old that you
can't run them on modern computers anyway, so you can get away with a great portable
patch librarian vault for a very small amount of money, often much less than you'll pay for
a used DW8000.

For a bit more money you can get a combination patch librarian/patch editor, which gives
you a powerful graphical editing environment to tweak and create new sounds.

There are also newer, current, and more expensive patch editor/librarians that will run on
modern, powerful computers, although it's a bit overkill just for a DW8000. Check out
either SoundQuest's MIDIQuest for Mac and Windows, or MOTU's Unisyn.




If you do want to use a modern computer then you can