Rhodes Chroma Polaris

Hi there,

Just wondering if anyone notices a difference in volume when playing the Polaris keyboard or by using an external midi keyboard.

It sounds to me that using a midi keyboard gives a louder output. This in result seems like the Polaris is clipping by the midi signal. Has anyone experienced this?

> From: conorstrachan@...
>
> Just wondering if anyone notices a difference in volume when
> playing the Polaris keyboard or by using an external midi keyboard.
>
> It sounds to me that using a midi keyboard gives a louder
> output. This in result seems like the Polaris is clipping by
> the midi signal. Has anyone experienced this?

It would have to be a difference in the velocity curve. There's no reason to assume they'd be the same. Does the MIDI keyboard have a touch adjustment?

I can see wanting to use an external keyboard, since the Polaris's Panasonic keyboard is pretty crappy.

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Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco
Paul mailto:pderocco@...

Hi Paul

Well main reason is I have different keyboards all over the place and my main master one is at the desk.
I route things all around. I have a board with PolyAT as well so use that quite a lot.

If I am sending just note on and note off data it should be the same? I set up a patch with no velocity.
Does the internal keyboard not run through midi? It sounds to me that sending Midi to the Polaris makes it run hotter. Maybe there is some compensation needed to adjust to this.

> From: conorstrachan@...
>
> If I am sending just note on and note off data it should be
> the same? I set up a patch with no velocity.
> Does the internal keyboard not run through midi? It sounds to
> me that sending Midi to the Polaris makes it run hotter.
> Maybe there is some compensation needed to adjust to this.

If both envelopes are set to FIXED in the patch, and you're sending data in on the basic channel, the same channel that the internal keyboard plays on, then I don't see how they could sound different.

If either envelope is set to TOUCH, then the velocity curve of the keyboard becomes a factor.

If you're sending MIDI into a different channel, then the levels could be set differently between the basic channel that the internal keyboard plays on and the other channel that the external keyboard is playing on. The Polaris uses control change 0 for volume (this was before the MMA assigned that to Bank Select, and assigned 7 to Volume). On startup, the Polaris sets this to 96, I believe, and I don't think there's anything that changes that internally. Is it possible that some higher value of CC0 was sent in from the external device? Or do you have a way to send arbitrary values? If you do, you could try sending CC0 = 96, and maybe that would equalize it. But I wouldn't expect any of this to be necessary.

--

Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco
Paul mailto:pderocco@...