Discussion about the Korg PolySix synthesizer

> I don't know how the files section is set-up here, but I think we
> should be able to upload our dumps there (hahaha).
> seriously though, why not?
> -chromatest

This is something I have also wanted for a long time. I am also a
user of the Korg X5 list, and there is a vivid exchange of sounds.
It's easier of course as all excahnges are in sysex and x5 edtor
format.
With the PolySix we will have to agree upon file format, and not the
least on sample resolution. But I have downloaded as many patches as I
could find on the web - which wasn't a lot - and I have also dumped my
own settings simply for backup purposes.

Here I have a question for the truly experienced PolySix user: Suppose
I did the mod on the LFO range. (I really,really would like to take
the LFO into the audio range). If I did this and made a setting with
the new higher LFO frequency, would that setting then be saved as part
of the sound patch, or does it still depend on the value of the
resistor
controlling LFO speed?
The thing is I have made a number of sounds that really depend on the
arpeggiator, and unfortunately the arpeggiator setting are not saved
as
part of a patch. They are obviously considered sort of 'performance
parameters'. Too bad, because a fast arpeggiator is really cool for
making
very living sounds. So I have had to make a sheet of paper describing
the
manual mods I have to apply to get to the final sound in some cases -
very
much in MiniMoog style. I wonder if this also applies to the LFO mod?

Cheers

Frank Carvalho

At 12:26 PM 01/29/2002 +0000, you wrote:

>With the PolySix we will have to agree upon file format, and not the
>least on sample resolution. But I have downloaded as many patches as I
>could find on the web - which wasn't a lot - and I have also dumped my
>own settings simply for backup purposes.

Here's what I have done. I saved the dumps as .wav files on my hard drive
and then burned them all to a CDR and use my laptop to load them in the
synth. I have a simple text file that has the names of the patches in each
dump so I know what is what. As these all come straight off the synth, I
think it would work fine for uploading these to the Files section, along
with a text file of the names. Thoughts?

Like you, I found a few on the web but not much.

Mike

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>Here's what I have done. I saved the dumps as .wav files on my hard drive
>and then burned them all to a CDR and use my laptop to load them in the
>synth.

That's pretty cool man... just struck me as funny, what with an old
analog interfacing with a laptop...

Lava (who'd forgotten he was on this list...)

Well, I've dumped mine on an old laptop too. It actually only requires two
mono jack to
mono mini-jack chords. It's very handy to have the entire setup stored in
one small
portable computer along with all the paches for the MIDI gear. And people
get impressed
when you set up the laptop there next to the synths.

But, when I mentioned that we have to agree on format, then I took .wav for
granted, but we
should agree on a standard for resolution. 44.1kHz, 16-bit usually never
fails, but does take
some 250-500kb. It's OK on modern computers. If you want to use floppys then
it's a
bit too much, but it's still my preferred format. I have succeeded in using
lower resolutions
though. Has anyone tried to use .mp3s ?

Cheers

Frank Carvalho
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Moho Disco [mailto:moho@mohodisco.com]
Sendt: 29. januar 2002 17:20
Til: PolySix@yahoogroups.com
Emne: Re: [PolySix] upload our dumps

>Here's what I have done. I saved the dumps as .wav files on my hard drive
>and then burned them all to a CDR and use my laptop to load them in the
>synth.

That's pretty cool man... just struck me as funny, what with an old
analog interfacing with a laptop...

Lava (who'd forgotten he was on this list...)


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

At 11:15 PM 01/29/2002 +0100, you wrote:

> And people
>get impressed
>when you set up the laptop there next to the synths.

Yep. Mine is an ancient Dell laptop, but it does the trick, and makes it
easy to change banks of patches. Plus I can pull up the text file so I know
what I'm doing...most of the time. <g>

> Has anyone tried to use .mp3s ?

Would the synth read those? I wouldn't think so. For me, good old wav files
are fine. I guess you could zip it to reduce size to send.

Mike

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi everybody!

I don't think there would be any problem for the polysix to read an mp3-file
with pretty high resolution (192kbps or something). It would save a lot of
space and especially save a lot of time when downloading the dumps. I suppose
everybody have an mp3-player in the computer??

/Simon Kallioinen

--
Get your firstname@lastname email at http://Nameplanet.com/?su

Hi folks,

>I don't think there would be any problem for the polysix to read an mp3-file

In fact as the tape dump audio just consists of either a 1200hz tone or a 600Hz
tone in rapid succession (or something like that, the freq's are probably wrong
but you get the idea)
and since MP3 encoding effectively does a vocoder on the data and splits it
all into frequency bands there might well be a really low bitrate sweet spot
where
it all works perfectly.

I'd offer to experiment myself but my polysix is up on blocks waiting for me to
get
the time to repair some leaky battery damage, if you play back via winamp
or another player that has a graphic EQ built in then turning all but the
500hz-2khz
sliders down would help too.

The tape dump type audio data is almost crying out for a specific compression
algorithm, the way I'd approach it is to have a (perhaps quite slow)
compression prog which analyses the wav file, works out which two keytones
are being used then saves a file with data on the two frequencies in the header,
and all the rest as straight binary. then the playback program just needs to
read the header,
synthesise a couple of sin wave samples of the right frequencies and play them
back
at the appropriate rate (oops.. got to get that stored in the file header too)
That way all your patch dumps will be at the most a few k each, probably less!

Just thinking out loud,
Robin.





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PolySix@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> Here I have a question for the truly experienced PolySix user: Suppose
> I did the mod on the LFO range. (I really,really would like to take
> the LFO into the audio range). If I did this and made a setting with
> the new higher LFO frequency, would that setting then be saved as part
> of the sound patch, or does it still depend on the value of the
> resistor controlling LFO speed?

I am not sure about what you mean with "the LFO mod", but I suppose
that is a simple modification of the frequency range of the LFO by
changing a resistor or cap (C19 of KLM-367 is the timing capacitor
of the LFO circuit). It will be then still controlled by the saved
patch setting.

> The thing is I have made a number of sounds that really depend on the
> arpeggiator, and unfortunately the arpeggiator setting are not saved
> as part of a patch. They are obviously considered sort of 'performance
> parameters'. Too bad, because a fast arpeggiator is really cool for
> making very living sounds. So I have had to make a sheet of paper
> describing the manual mods I have to apply to get to the final sound
> in some cases - very much in MiniMoog style. I wonder if this also
> applies to the LFO mod?

If you really want, you can make the ARP speed programmable, too. The
ARP clock is generated by an 555 timer. The 555 in astable mode can
be voltage controlled on pin5, which is bypassed in the Polysix
(btw. the 555 resides on KLM-371, under the front panel, directly
beneath the ARP speed control knob). The data book says that the
control voltage should be between 1.7 Volts and Vcc (5V in this case).
The question is where to get the control voltage from. If you study
the sound parameters of the Polysix then you will find out that
one bit of memory is unused and that the PWM Speed control voltage
is (obviously) used in PWM waveform only; when playing Saw or Pulse
wave the PWM Speed control is unused. The same goes for the Effects
Speed/Intensity control with effects off.
I used the PWM speed for a (programmable) white noise source in
my MIDI retrofit kit ( http://analog.no/polysix/index.htm ) and the
free bit for switching the Pitch Bend wheel between VCO (Pitch Bend)
and VCF (Filter bend). If you want to have details on the circuit
you may email me.

Cheers

Johannes

PolySix@yahoogroups.com wrote:

>
> >> I don't know how the files section is set-up here, but I think we
> >> should be able to upload our dumps there (hahaha).
> >> seriously though, why not?
> >> -chromatest
>
> This is something I have also wanted for a long time. I am also a
> user of the Korg X5 list, and there is a vivid exchange of sounds.
> It's easier of course as all excahnges are in sysex and x5 edtor
> format.
> With the PolySix we will have to agree upon file format, and not the
> least on sample resolution. But I have downloaded as many patches as
> I could find on the web - which wasn't a lot - and I have also dumped
> my own settings simply for backup purposes.

I am a interested follower of this discussion topic. There was even
the idea to write a program that decodes the FSK modulated tape dump
to get the binary data of Polysix's patch memory. While this seems
to be an interesting project, you may have the binary data from me.

But you can go even further. I have and still offer a MIDI retrofit
kit based on the design made by Ricard Wolf from Sweden
( http://home.swipnet.se/ricard2/p6index.html
http://analog.no/polysix/index.htm ).
This retrofit can do (in contrast to others commercially available
retro kits, e.g. from a company with the letter 'K' ...) Sysex and
individual parameter update via MIDI.
Besides MIDI it adds some other features to the Polysix: Hold
footswitch, 128 patch memory, programmable white noise source and
some more...

Johannes

Hello Johannes!

> I am not sure about what you mean with "the LFO mod", but I suppose
> that is a simple modification of the frequency range of the LFO by
> changing a resistor or cap (C19 of KLM-367 is the timing capacitor
> of the LFO circuit). It will be then still controlled by the saved
> patch setting.

Yes, that is exactly the mod I have in mind. There's a resistor somewhere
which can be
changed to obtain a faster frequency. But I was considering making a switch
somewhere
so I can have both normal LFO range and audio frequency range - that is not
a permanent
change. Will the patch still recall the fast frequency if the switch is in
normal range position
do you think?

> > The thing is I have made a number of sounds that really depend on the
> > arpeggiator, and unfortunately the arpeggiator setting are not saved
> > as part of a patch. They are obviously considered sort of 'performance
> > .....
>
> If you really want, you can make the ARP speed programmable, too. The
> ARP clock is generated by an 555 timer. The 555 in astable mode can
> be voltage controlled on pin5, which is bypassed in the Polysix
> (btw. the 555 resides on KLM-371, under the front panel, directly
> beneath the ARP speed control knob). The data book says that the
> ...

It's an interesting mod, but is still a workaround. The ARP speed is not the
only parameter that needs
to be remembered. One of my patches depend on a very fast ARP speed, and the
switch in 0 octaves
position (in which case the up/down doesn't matter). That way I can make
certain sounds that I have
heard Richard Barbieri do on a Prophet 5. Other sounds may also need
programming of the up/down
switch as well. I also have some sounds where the relative frequencies of
the ARP LFO, normal LFO
and PWM LFO provide sub-frequencies that can be used for even more very
interesting sounds.
Essentially what I am always trying to do is to achieve different kinds of
intermodulation between the
LFOs, so full programmability of all three would have been fantastic, but is
probably not possible
without ripping the whole thing apart and rebuilding it. It would be even
cooler if it could remember
intervals played from the chord button.
Well, one is always allowed to dream.....

Cheers

Frank Carvalho



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, frankcarvalho wrote:

> With the PolySix we will have to agree upon file format, and not the
> least on sample resolution. But I have downloaded as many patches as I
> could find on the web - which wasn't a lot - and I have also dumped my
> own settings simply for backup purposes.

Just wanted to point out that I've got one of my dumps in .wav-format on
my Poly6-list digest page. It contains 32 sounds and there's also an
realmedia-file there for you to listen to the sounds in action before
loading them into your Polysix. The Poly6-list digest page:

http://www.ing.umu.se/~me96kus/p6digi.html

Happy synthing!

regards,
Kristofer Ulfves, Uppsala, Sweden

At 01:39 PM 02/05/2002 +0100, you wrote:

>Just wanted to point out that I've got one of my dumps in .wav-format on
>my Poly6-list digest page.

Yes, thanks, Kristofer! I had gotten them a few weeks ago and have been
playing with them since. Very nice!

Best,
Mike


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