The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

This is getting WAY off topic and I'm assuming Jon is starting to get annoyed,
so let this be my last statement on the subject here. I'll carry this on via
private email or over on the Gearhead list (gearhead@...) if desired.

Bruce Wahler said:
> Hi Mike,
>
> I hear where you're coming from, but REAL polyphonic aftertouch is expensive
> to implement -- remember how expensive the CS80 and Multimoog were?

Horse puckey. The CS80 was expensive because its guts were hard to build
stably and reliably, and AFAIK the Multimoog didn't have poly aftertouch, it
had a "force bar" like the Liberation's (still the most fun-to-play aftertouch
out there; the entire keybed moves up and down by more than an inch!).

I can get an Ensoniq EPS on Ebay, with floppies and road case, for $330 "Buy
It Now" today, and have real poly aftertouch delivered to my door in a week.
(Why don't I? Because the EPS relies on floppies to upload its OS every time
you turn it on... this was years before cheap Flash ROM to hold OS boot data.
I'm currently looking at a VFX or VFXsd, or even an SQ80, if one's reliable
and affordable enough)

Ensoniq licked the "costly sensor" thing reliably and reproducibly over a
decade and a half ago; the only reason their gear got a bad rep is because
there were faulty ribbon connectors holding the two parts of the main board
together, which would fail and make the keyboard crash and die. Fix those and
you have a terribly reliable, very expressive keyboard. But you get, with that
keyboard, a heavy and outdated synth with not so good S/N, or a very heavy and
very outdated sampler that is doomed forever if its non-standard internal
floppy drive bites the dust. I want the keybed of an Ensoniq in a USB device.

> All of
> these USB keyboard controllers have their own set of rules, and the first
> three or four of those rules say, "The street price should be under $300US."
> What you're really looking for is a $600-1,000 USB MIDI controller, and the
> market isn't there.

I disagree. The Roland A-37 isn't much under $600 and Roland is selling them
like hotcakes. Putting poly aftertouch in would be a breeze, and has some
other advantages. For instance, the Roland A-50 had poly aftertouch, and one
of the coolest things that let you do was to have different AT response on
each side of a split, so pressing hard on the left sound didn't add AT
modulation to the right sound.

> Also, poly-AT eats MIDI bandwidth for breakfast, while everybody expects one
> keyboard to be a whole band these days.  There's no way you're going to
> support multitimbral, full-band MIDI and have room for poly-AT, too.

Now THIS is a legitimate concern, if one considers the bandwidth limitations
of standard MIDI connections. On the other hand, a USB implementation of MIDI
I/O would be able to handle poly AT from ten nimble fingers without breaking a
sweat, no? (Yes, this smacks of "MIDI 2.0" but I'm just playing Devil's
Advocate here...)

> I can
> sympathize:  I'm a Hammond organ nut, and while the clone market has improved
> in the last few years, there are certain things that I'd love to have -- like
> 9-contact key response, or an effects loop on digital clones -- that aren't
> going to happen anytime soon.  It's nice to dream, though, isn't it?

Your dreams will come true long before mine. There are many more Hammond
players with money to spend and visibility in the market than there are people
who want to work with poly AT.

mike

ps. I actually almost bought a DX1 for this very reason; a local used gear
shop had one for $1000, marked down from its original $14,000. While I was
figuring out where to put it in my studio, the shop caught fire and the DX1
was destroyed. :(

pps. To the original poster: don't worry... this wasn't a flame war, this was
a friendly chat. If you want FLAMES, I can oblige, but not over this. :)

-- 
"I can out-pedant anyone." (s. pride)
"Well actually, pedant isn't a verb." (n. rothwell)
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metlay / atomic city / metlay@... / http://www.atomiccity.com