> faxiomas@... <mailto:faxiomas@...>
> February 7, 2011 12:46 AM
>
>
> Hi David
> You should look at a previous step than the SH, which is KAS
> itself: basically you should look at the processing of pitch CV as
> serial and monophonic; the polyphony is helped by the gates straight
> into the SH, while the KAS internally makes possible to distinguish
> between the busy and the avaliable voices; this lets you have polyphony
> and mono unison according to the avaliable notes while in S-2...
> truncating notes...well it is a myth: you actually don't truncate
> anything but if you set long release for the envelope and at the same
> time you have ∗all∗ the gates in the SH open, you will definitely
> "hear" the monophonic allocation of the pitch, because the envelopes
> are still running...
Thanks Max - that makes sense. So, if you have a chord with a long
release time and let go - and then hit another key - the previous notes
do not get cut off, but the KAS assigns them all to the new key value so
you're getting a semi-unison mode. I wish I still had my little LED
board to show the trigger signals. One of those - plus another for the
KAS gates - would be cool to watch in this mode and make it clearer
what's going on.
The KAS is a wild and crazy chip! It has all sorts of strange behaviors
like this and the "note 8 won't play unless another key is held down".
It would be great to replace the KAS/SH/TKC boards with a simple
FPGA/PIC that would make things work more logically and also add a bunch
of features like unison (which would also be handy for tuning!), MIDI
in/out, keyboard assignment modes like the Oberheim 4/8-voice, etc. I
know there were a couple of folks looking into this kind of
mod/upgrade. And where do you stop? I could see tossing everything but
the card cage with the analog boards and the panel with just a big new
board to drive it from MIDI. It's just a lot of work for a
35-year-old keyboard with only about 400-500 still alive. But it would
look and sound cool as hell next to the new Oberheim SO4V!
We now pause while many folks in the group have their faces glaze over
and start drooling thinking of this :)
David
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