Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Hello all. new member here still getting acquainted with my xl-7, but i'm already in love. i was wondering how many people are still interested in blank ROMs, and maybe new sound sets for their command stations etc. I've looked through old posts, and the one site that sold blanks is nowhere to be found at the moment. i think i read once that the manufacturer will make more and sell them only in large batches. do we know how large, or how much that would be? sorry to come out so bluntly but i already see the huge potential behind these machines.

Burning blank Roms requires an Ultra Sampler, so getting a sample off your PC into the Command station would be a lengthy process I would think. I'd love a way to get samples into the XL-7 simply, i.e. via the USB port.....drool

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "john" <binkyj357@...> wrote:
>
> 
>    Hello all. new member here still getting acquainted with my xl-7, but i'm already in love. i was wondering how many people are still interested in blank ROMs, and maybe new sound sets for their command stations etc. I've looked through old posts, and the one site that sold blanks is nowhere to be found at the moment. i think i read once that the manufacturer will make more and sell them only in large batches. do we know how large, or how much that would be? sorry to come out so bluntly but i already see the huge potential behind these machines.
>

Yeah, i've been doing a little research on that end as well. I have no problem with buying an Ultra. I actually like the idea of taking the time to sample, process, burn. Part of my work is making sample packs and synth presets, so this is right up my alley. My main reason for asking was to see how many people still want brand new materials for their Command Stations and Proteus modules. Maybe it's just because i'm so late in the xl-7 game, but i would not mind having a fresh, consistent supply of ROMs at a non-ludicrous price. And yes, USB sample transport would be gorgeous, but one thing at a time.

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "nenad.lonic" <nenad.lonic@...> wrote:
>
> Burning blank Roms requires an Ultra Sampler, so getting a sample off your PC into the Command station would be a lengthy process I would think. I'd love a way to get samples into the XL-7 simply, i.e. via the USB port.....drool
> 
> --- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "john" <binkyj357@> wrote:
> >
> > 
> >    Hello all. new member here still getting acquainted with my xl-7, but i'm already in love. i was wondering how many people are still interested in blank ROMs, and maybe new sound sets for their command stations etc. I've looked through old posts, and the one site that sold blanks is nowhere to be found at the moment. i think i read once that the manufacturer will make more and sell them only in large batches. do we know how large, or how much that would be? sorry to come out so bluntly but i already see the huge potential behind these machines.
> >
>

I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item). 
I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.

I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.

my experiences (& YMMV):-

I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).

also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.

the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the various factory roms aswell.

I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.

it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-)  I haven't tried renaming the samples.....

biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.

(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)

but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 

you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.

the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 

I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 

the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

duncan/radio massacre international

duncan wrote:

> the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

Yo Duncan! :)

Getting samples into the Blofeld is still only a little less painful 
than gnawing your own leg off...
I'm sticking to my Nord Wave for this purpose (in fact have just been 
tranferring some of my fave mellotron samples to it).

-- 
Paul
---
"Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good 
musicians, but the jazz type." Harry J. Anslinger
http://www.smokyfrog.com

I'd be interested!!!!

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "john" <binkyj357@...> wrote:
>
> 
>    Hello all. new member here still getting acquainted with my xl-7, but i'm already in love. i was wondering how many people are still interested in blank ROMs, and maybe new sound sets for their command stations etc. I've looked through old posts, and the one site that sold blanks is nowhere to be found at the moment. i think i read once that the manufacturer will make more and sell them only in large batches. do we know how large, or how much that would be? sorry to come out so bluntly but i already see the huge potential behind these machines.
>

I 2 wood be interested in nu ROM 4 my XL7....witch of the ultra samplers is the 1 to by ?

--- On Mon, 1/4/10, bobsvitilla <bobsvitilla@...> wrote:

From: bobsvitilla <bobsvitilla@...>
Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, January 4, 2010, 6:19 AM















 
 



  


    
      
      
      I'd be interested!! !!



--- In xl7@yahoogroups. com, "john" <binkyj357@. ..> wrote:

>

> 

>    Hello all. new member here still getting acquainted with my xl-7, but i'm already in love. i was wondering how many people are still interested in blank ROMs, and maybe new sound sets for their command stations etc. I've looked through old posts, and the one site that sold blanks is nowhere to be found at the moment. i think i read once that the manufacturer will make more and sell them only in large batches. do we know how large, or how much that would be? sorry to come out so bluntly but i already see the huge potential behind these machines.

>

Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].

The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.

The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.

I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which other slots to
 emulate].

I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].

In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.






________________________________
From: duncan <goddard.duncan@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item). 
I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.

I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.

my experiences (& YMMV):-

I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).

also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.

the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the various factory roms aswell.

I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.

it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples.....

biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.

(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)

but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 

you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.

the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 

I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 

the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

duncan/radio massacre international 


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On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be 
> DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general 
> idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and 
> while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for 
> either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM.
===================

this is sounding awesome...

how do the samples get onto the SD card? if that can be done without an 
ultra, count me in!!! even if it does require an ultra, i may still be 
interested.

i've never programmed a flash ROM for these things, so i'm not sure what 
data they hold in addition to "just" the sample. i'd be happy enough with 
"just" 128M of samples in a command station or proteus (type) box.

if you can work out a platform neutral (java?) application for making SD 
images, i'd drop some $$$ on the cards!


-- 
         ...atom

  ________________________
  http://atom.smasher.org/
  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
  -------------------------------------------------

 	"More than any time in history, mankind now faces a
 	 crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter
 	 hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let
 	 us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
 		-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"

The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it on almost any computer). The most annoying thing is changing the file to load. If you've got a module in a rack (and even if you don't) opening it up to swap SIMMs (or in this case SD cards) is really tedious. I'd prefer to hack the OS to allow selecting the load file from the UI rather than change anything else. A P1K series module has a removable cover where the second MIDI port would be in a P2K module but the P2K has no easy way to provide access to a cable or selector switch of some sort without some sort of surgery (and a command station is equally recalcitrant). 

When you program a FLASH SIMM with an Ultra sampler you are only programming the wave memory - no presets. You can program the presets with the proteus module (singly or as a bank) but it is rather tedious. Definitely not recommended for pleasure.

I'm pretty sure that the structure of the SIMM wave and preset memory can be determined by inspection and/or disassembly of the P2K module ROM (which use them). Once that information is known I can write an application to pack waves into an image for loading into a card. Once you have the image sharing it is trivial...




________________________________
From: Atom Smasher <atom@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups..com
Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 8:56:03 AM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be 
> DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general 
> idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and 
> while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for 
> either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM.
============ =======

this is sounding awesome...

how do the samples get onto the SD card? if that can be done without an 
ultra, count me in!!! even if it does require an ultra, i may still be 
interested.

i've never programmed a flash ROM for these things, so i'm not sure what 
data they hold in addition to "just" the sample. i'd be happy enough with 
"just" 128M of samples in a command station or proteus (type) box.

if you can work out a platform neutral (java?) application for making SD 
images, i'd drop some $$$ on the cards!

-- 
...atom

____________ _________ ___
http://atom. smasher.org/
762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"More than any time in history, mankind now faces a
crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let
us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"

On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> on almost any computer).
===============

so the FPGA would "translate" from fat32 to emu-fs? then it wouldn't even 
take a special application to create cards... just some type of structure 
for naming and numbering...

no matter how you make it happen, i'm in! even if i have to open it up to 
swap out 128M cards!


-- 
         ...atom

  ________________________
  http://atom.smasher.org/
  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
  -------------------------------------------------

 	"The Army is the Indian's best friend."
 		-- General George Armstron Custer, 1870

kind of.

The emu ROM is not really a file system but just a structure. You would need an application to create the structure from (for example) .wav or .aif files or other samples.

Most ROMs are considerably less than 32MB in size (when you have the 'image' transferred to a file in an Ultra). But you also have an additional FLASH/ROM to hold the preset information (typically a 4MB ROM)  This extra ROM holds the presets and all the ROM dependant information including demo songs, arpeggios etc. It seems that the content of preset ROM is copied into DRAM during start up and the preset memory is not accessed again thereafter. Because of this the P1K series modules are not able to accomodate some ROM SIMM combinations because the total load combination is greater than the 4MB (minus space used for other concerns) DRAM installed. I don't know if there are any other limitations on how big the contents of the preset ROM is, but the largest DRAM that the proteus modules support is 16MB [needs to be 4, 8, or 16, but some 32MB SIMMs are useable as 16MB DRAMs]. SO I'm not sure whether its worthwhile but more information [as much as 32MB] is
 addressable in that memory space so theoretically the four SIMM slots can address 256MB of information, although only 128MB of that can be used for waveforms. I believe that bandwidth limitations prevents the preset memory being accessed (and causing sound playback problems) after boot, but I'm not sure of any other reason.

The bottom line is that you would need to have an SD card bigger than 128MB to make use of the entire SIMM memory space, and also there's the losses in the file system.




________________________________
From: Atom Smasher <atom@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 11:40:27 AM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> on almost any computer).
============ ===

so the FPGA would "translate" from fat32 to emu-fs? then it wouldn't even 
take a special application to create cards... just some type of structure 
for naming and numbering...

no matter how you make it happen, i'm in! even if i have to open it up to 
swap out 128M cards!

-- 
...atom

____________ _________ ___
http://atom. smasher.org/
762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -

"The Army is the Indian's best friend."
-- General George Armstron Custer, 1870

its not really a _card reader_, its a ROM SIMM replacement, that happens to get the information for the SIMM from an SD card, since a micro SD card socket should fit on the 1.25" x 4" space available for the SIMM. I suppose that [with some UI modifications] you could be able to 'select' the image to load, but I'm much more likely to make P2K module changes before I make command station changes. [I have 6 proteus modules and 1 command station so go figure where the priorities are...]

I would aim for a sale price of no more than USD300. Part prices are heavily dependant on quantities.




________________________________
From: Ivan Chaparro <jibarosoul@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 11:58:24 AM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
Wow! I never thought i would be reading this. A card reader for a command station?  All this sounds awsome. I consider myself to be a power user for my PX-7. It is the heart of my setup. If designed what would it cost? 

On Jan 4, 2010, at 4:38 PM, Jack Pratt wrote:

  
>
>
>Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].
>
>The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.
>
>The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.
>
>I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which other slots
 to emulate].
>
>I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].
>
>In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.
>
>
>
>
>
>
________________________________
From: duncan <goddard.duncan@...>
>To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
>Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
>Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
>
>  
>I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item).. 
>I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.
>
>I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.
>
>my experiences (& YMMV):-
>
>I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).
>
>also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.
>
>the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the various factory roms aswell.
>
>I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.
>
>it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples..... .
>
>biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.
>
>(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)
>
>but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 
>
>you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.
>
>the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 
>
>I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 
>
>the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.
>
>duncan/radio massacre international 
>
>
>
>
>
=

WHOA !  Jack Pratt no wonder your wife could eat no lean....you rock ! ! !

--- On Mon, 1/4/10, Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@...> wrote:

From: Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@...>
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, January 4, 2010, 2:38 PM















 
 



  


    
      
      
      Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].
 
The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.
 
The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.
 
I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which
 other slots to emulate].
 
I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].
 
In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.

 
 




From: duncan <goddard.duncan@ mtvne.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?


  

I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item).. 
I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.

I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.

my experiences (& YMMV):-

I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).

also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.

the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the
 various factory roms aswell.

I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.

it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples..... .

biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.

(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)

but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get
 it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 

you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.

the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 

I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis'
 soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 

the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

duncan/radio massacre international

Rock on wit' yer plans i,m all in to it !

--- On Mon, 1/4/10, Atom Smasher <atom@...> wrote:

From: Atom Smasher <atom@...>
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, January 4, 2010, 2:56 PM















 
 



  


    
      
      
      On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:



> I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be 

> DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general 

> idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and 

> while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for 

> either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM.

============ =======



this is sounding awesome...



how do the samples get onto the SD card? if that can be done without an 

ultra, count me in!!! even if it does require an ultra, i may still be 

interested.



i've never programmed a flash ROM for these things, so i'm not sure what 

data they hold in addition to "just" the sample. i'd be happy enough with 

"just" 128M of samples in a command station or proteus (type) box.



if you can work out a platform neutral (java?) application for making SD 

images, i'd drop some $$$ on the cards!



-- 

         ...atom



____________ _________ ___

  http://atom. smasher.org/

  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808

  ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -



	"More than any time in history, mankind now faces a

 	 crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter

 	 hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let

 	 us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

 		-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"

...um whatever, I'd read the manual first...look at all the notes and hints...make some cool sounds....yeah... actually make some cool soundz.... with what is there...then I'd get Abelton live...AYE!
cheers
RoM





________________________________
From: Smith <smithrsmith@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, 5 January, 2010 7:51:12 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

   
Rock on wit' yer plans i,m all in to it !

--- On Mon, 1/4/10, Atom Smasher <atom@smasher. org> wrote:


>From: Atom Smasher <atom@smasher. org>
>Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
>To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
>Date: Monday, January 4, 2010, 2:56 PM
>
>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
>  >
>
> 
>>      
> 
>On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:
>
>>> I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be 
>>> DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general 
>>> idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and 
>>> while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for 
>>> either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM.
>>============ =======
>
>>this is sounding awesome...
>
>>how do the samples get onto the SD card? if that can be done without an 
>>ultra, count me in!!! even if it does require an ultra, i may still be 
>>interested.
>
>>i've never programmed a flash ROM for these things, so i'm not sure what 
>>data they hold in addition to "just" the sample. i'd be happy enough with 
>>"just" 128M of samples in a command station or proteus (type) box.
>
>>if you can work out a platform neutral (java?) application for making SD 
>>images, i'd drop some $$$ on the cards!
>
>>-- 
>>         ...atom
>
>>____________ _________ ___
>http://atom. smasher.org/
>>  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
>>  ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -
>
>>	"More than any time in history, mankind now faces a
>> 	 crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter
>> 	 hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let
>> 	 us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
>> 		-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
>
>

Wow, this is going better than i could have hoped. Here i was looking to keep the old way going, and now we're talking about the new way. It crossed my mind that with current technology there should be a workaround, i just wasn't sure anyone cared enough to look. Reading this (and understanding it all, oddly) has made me even more excited to see it happen. Jack, both solutions sound really awesome and i don't think i'm the only one who would shell out for either. I understand what it's like having other committments, but i definitely want to hear more about this.

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@...> wrote:
>
> Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].
> 
> The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.
> 
> The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.
> 
> I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which other slots to
>  emulate].
> 
> I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].
> 
> In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: duncan <goddard.duncan@...>
> To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
> Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
> 
>   
> I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item). 
> I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.
> 
> I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.
> 
> my experiences (& YMMV):-
> 
> I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).
> 
> also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.
> 
> the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the various factory roms aswell.
> 
> I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.
> 
> it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples.....
> 
> biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.
> 
> (e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)
> 
> but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 
> 
> you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.
> 
> the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 
> 
> I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 
> 
> the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.
> 
> duncan/radio massacre international 
> 
> 
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$80 - 100 sounds very reasonable.   I would throw some cash on them by sure. 
Balma



________________________________
From: Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 4:38:34 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].

The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.

The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.

I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which other slots to
 emulate].

I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].

In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.






________________________________
From: duncan <goddard.duncan@ mtvne.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item).. 
I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.

I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.

my experiences (& YMMV):-

I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).

also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.

the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the various factory roms aswell.

I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.

it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples..... .

biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.

(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)

but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 

you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.

the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 

I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 

the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

duncan/radio massacre international

It does sound reasonable (expensive actually) but that's only the component cost [for the FLASH SIMMs] in small quantities {5 x FLASH chips at USD8 each, PCB for USD20, power supply for USD5, 4 x buffers for USD4 each plus sundary components}. There are also labour costs involed in both manufacture and testing, and there are a number of one off costs which would push the price up around USD150 unless those costs could be amortised over a large number of sales. Quantity price breaks (eg 1K, but even more for 100K) would see the price plummit. Could probably sell them for under USD50 each if there were 100K guaranteed sales. Of course the price is only covering costs, not making any $$$. Businesses usually need to sell stuff for at least 3 to 4 times the cost of manufacture (for a hardware product) to recoup development costs, to pay the costs of doing business, to pay for inventory, to finance other developments, and to provide profit margins for
 shareholders after allowing at least 30% discount for distributors [middlemen who like their gravy]. Of course greed or market pressures can affect that. [when the chinese (or others) steal IP they can sell for a little above the cost of manufacture which is why their products seem so cheap, but the cost is local employment]

- just musing on the costs of things 




________________________________
From: Mauricio Balma <balmaproducer@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, January 7, 2010 2:27:26 AM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
$80 - 100 sounds very reasonable.   I would throw some cash on them by sure. 
Balma



________________________________
From: Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@ yahoo.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 4:38:34 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].

The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.

The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.

I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which other slots to
 emulate].

I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].

In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.






________________________________
From: duncan <goddard.duncan@ mtvne.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item).. 
I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.

I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.

my experiences (& YMMV):-

I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).

also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.

the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the various factory roms aswell.

I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.

it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples..... .

biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.

(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)

but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now.....) 

you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.

the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 

I used to do the same sort of thing with alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 

the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

duncan/radio massacre international

On Wed, 6 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> - just musing on the costs of things
================

IMHO, the only sane way to approach a project of this scale is to think in 
terms of making what you want made, and having a small subsidy or small 
economy of scale consisting of others who also want it.

for the prices you're talking about, i'll definitely buy one for my XL7. a 
may also buy a second one, and a 1U proteus to put it in.


-- 
         ...atom

  ________________________
  http://atom.smasher.org/
  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
  -------------------------------------------------

 	"Patriotism is the willingness to kill
 	 and be killed for trivial reasons."
 		-- Bertrand Russell

Not to be a wet blanket ... but were100K plus proteus and command stations even sold? I'd guess about half that many with about 60% still in use. 

Just a guess.

By the way I like the thoroughness of your musings.

Como

--- On Wed, 1/6/10, Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@...> wrote:

From: Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@...>
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, January 6, 2010, 1:33 PM







 



  


    
      
      
      It does sound reasonable (expensive actually) but that's only the component cost [for the FLASH SIMMs] in small quantities {5 x FLASH chips at USD8 each, PCB for USD20, power supply for USD5, 4 x buffers for USD4 each plus sundary components}. There are also labour costs involed in both manufacture and testing, and there are a number of one off costs which would push the price up around USD150 unless those costs could be amortised over a large number of sales. Quantity price breaks (eg 1K, but even more for 100K) would see the price plummit. Could probably sell them for under USD50 each if there were 100K guaranteed sales. Of course the price is only covering costs, not making any $$$. Businesses usually need to sell stuff for at least 3 to 4 times the cost of manufacture (for a hardware
 product) to recoup development costs, to pay the costs of doing business, to pay for inventory, to finance other developments, and to provide profit margins for shareholders after allowing at least 30% discount for distributors [middlemen who like their gravy]. Of course greed or market pressures can affect that. [when the chinese (or others) steal IP they can sell for a little above the cost of manufacture which is why their products seem so cheap, but the cost is local employment]
 
- just musing on the costs of things 





From: Mauricio Balma <balmaproducer@ yahoo.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Thu, January 7, 2010 2:27:26 AM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?


  



$80 - 100 sounds very reasonable.   I would throw some cash on them by sure. 
Balma




From: Jack Pratt <woodsworth1@ yahoo.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 4:38:34 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  



Its actually not that hard to make FLASH SIMMs. The pin-outs are posted on the P2K group [I put them there].
 
The 32MB SIMM that I have has Intel Strata FLASH (J3A) parts on it. The current iteration (J3D) is programmatically compatible with the original parts so you should be able to make one that works identically to the original - ie you can program them in an Ultra and should be able to write the presets in a proteus module.
 
The difference between the audity and the proteus (in terms of SIMMs) is that the audity addresses 4 x 4MB devices and the proteus address 4 x 8MB devices plus the preset rom. I'm pretty sure that the content makes them incompatible also.
 
I have plans to make some SIMMs but I was thinking that they would be DRAM based so that the contents were loaded at power on. The general idea was that you have a micro SD card slot, an FPGA and some DRAM and while the proteus module (or audity - the FPGA could provide signals for either) is booting the contents of the SD card are copied into DRAM. Change the SD card and you get a different 'ROM'. It could also be modified so that the DRAM contents could be changed on the fly, but you'd need to patch the OS so that it will rescan the contents [or provide a UI for selecting the image to load from the SD card]. Other features of this SIMM would be that it could be 'seen' in up to 4 slots (ie 128MB DRAM plus the 16/32MB preset region) - it happens that the slot select signals can be 'decoded' from any slot [although you need to know which slot you're in to make sense of them, so you require that the SIMM be in slot 0 and then tell it which
 other slots to emulate].
 
I was also going to make a SIMM programming board that would allow one to read/write the contents of a FLASH SIMM (byte for byte, rather than what the Ultra reports). I have 22 of 23 ROM SIMMs [no composer ROM from a P2500 yet] so I have plenty of source material. I want to see how hard it is to make a FLASH SIMM look like a ROM to the proteus module. It would also be useful for copying preset information which you don't get from the Ultra - possibly you could coalesce the preset information from ROMs which have identical waveform information (eg the various XL ROMs) instead of having demo songs [after hearing them once, who needs them?].
 
In any case, a P2K FLASH SIMM would cost about USD80 - USD100 in parts depending on quantity but then there's labour and initial costs to make them happen. I suppose that USD150 would be reasonable target price for making them. Alternatively the cost for the DRAM solution would be perhaps double that. Hacking the P2K OS is just tedious & time consuming - I've started disassembling it but haven't gotten far because of other commitments.

 
 




From: duncan <goddard.duncan@ mtvne.com>
To: xl7@yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 4, 2010 11:31:40 PM
Subject: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  

I'd buy more in a blink, if they were a) available & b) reasonably priced (e.g. in the order of $200 for a 32MB; I realise that this is always going to be a short-order item).. 
I wish the firmware supported bigger memory too.

I have tried to buy more but the one outlet that claims to have stock is not responding.

my experiences (& YMMV):-

I currently have three of the 32MB (from emu) & one 16MB (ebay).

also, the "XL" expansion I bought for my audity 2000 is a crippled version of this same ram card, in that it is the same hardware but is somehow write-protected. it won't work in a proteus box, but is fine in my ultras. go figure, as they say.

the flash roms are shared by a regular p2k rackmount, a virtuoso rackmount, a planet-earth rackmount, an XL-7 command station & a PK-6 keyboard.... so, not enough custom rom to go around all the proteus I have, but just about enough if I juggle them with the
 various factory roms aswell.

I use them primarily for samples of my m400 mellotron which, with it's nine tapeframes, is just too cumbersome for active gig life. I also have some found-sounds & home-made stuff in there.

it doesn't seem to be possible to copy samples or presets from a factory rom in an ultra, in order to create a "best-of" rom. if anyone's done this, I'd like to hear how! :-) I haven't tried renaming the samples..... . .

biggest hassle is that juggling- how to keep track of patches I've made using the custom roms & the factory roms, if I keep moving them around. I have to do a lot of sys-ex dumps & even then, the naming & numbering convention of the roms & the soundsets is crucial & tricky.

(e.g. emu made at least two versions of the "composer" rom with different names but the same contents. they show up as different IDs.)

but the actual authoring process is quite sweet (once you
 get it working- I have an ultra 5000 that won't do it, no matter what, & an ultra 6400 that has no problems at all. luckily, these machines are quite cheap now....) 

you will have to keep tweaking the bank size; even if it says it's 32MB, the odd few bytes over this won't show up on the sampler's display, & will stop it fitting on the rom. a finished bank is made up of samples & sampler patches; the authoring process (which takes about ten minutes) creates a proteus instrument which retains the sampler's stereo placement, keyboard mapping & so forth.

the advantages that should be immediately obvious are that the samples are available instantly when the machine boots, you don't have to load from hard-drive (& if you use the rom in a proteus box, you don't have a fragile hard drive to worry about), & you have a better (IMHO) synth engine with which to process them. 

I used to do the same sort of thing with
 alesis' soundbridge & quadrasynths; the emu version is a dream compared to that nightmare! 

the nearest contemporary equivalent to this functionality is the waldorf blofeld with the sample option (keyboard or desktop). this lets you have 60MB of custom sounds on-board a pretty powerful synth engine, but the o/s is somewhat flakey at the time of writing, & the hardware options (audio outs & so on) are way weaker than the proteus. my blohard sounds amazing, but locks up all the time. the proteus is still the one for me.

duncan/radio massacre international

On Thu, 7 Jan 2010, Atom Smasher wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:
>
>> - just musing on the costs of things
> ================
>
> IMHO, the only sane way to approach a project of this scale is to think in
> terms of making what you want made, and having a small subsidy or small
> economy of scale consisting of others who also want it.
>
> for the prices you're talking about, i'll definitely buy one for my XL7. a
> may also buy a second one, and a 1U proteus to put it in.
>

I would be interested too (from Hungary).


Andrew




>
> --
>         ...atom
>
>  ________________________
>  http://atom.smasher.org/
>  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
>  -------------------------------------------------
>
> 	"Patriotism is the willingness to kill
> 	 and be killed for trivial reasons."
> 		-- Bertrand Russell
>
>

Count me as well (Hungary too).


Regards,

    Zsolt | http://adsr.hu





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Szonyi Andr\ufffds" <andras@...>
To: <xl7@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?


>
>
> On Thu, 7 Jan 2010, Atom Smasher wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 6 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:
>>
>>> - just musing on the costs of things
>> ================
>>
>> IMHO, the only sane way to approach a project of this scale is to think in
>> terms of making what you want made, and having a small subsidy or small
>> economy of scale consisting of others who also want it.
>>
>> for the prices you're talking about, i'll definitely buy one for my XL7. a
>> may also buy a second one, and a 1U proteus to put it in.
>>
>
> I would be interested too (from Hungary).
>
>
> Andrew
>
>
>
>
>>
>> --
>>         ...atom
>>
>>  ________________________
>>  http://atom.smasher.org/
>>  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
>>  -------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "Patriotism is the willingness to kill
>> and be killed for trivial reasons."
>> -- Bertrand Russell
>>
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

count me in also [taos]

--- On Thu, 1/7/10, Zsolt Szabó <zsolt.szabo@adsr.hu> wrote:

From: Zsolt Szabó <zsolt.szabo@...>
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, January 7, 2010, 6:33 AM















 
 



  


    
      
      
      Count me as well (Hungary too).



Regards,



Zsolt | http://adsr. hu



----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Szonyi András" <andras@...>

To: <xl7@yahoogroups. com>

Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 12:27 PM

Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?



>

>

> On Thu, 7 Jan 2010, Atom Smasher wrote:

>

>> On Wed, 6 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

>>

>>> - just musing on the costs of things

>> ============ ====

>>

>> IMHO, the only sane way to approach a project of this scale is to think in

>> terms of making what you want made, and having a small subsidy or small

>> economy of scale consisting of others who also want it.

>>

>> for the prices you're talking about, i'll definitely buy one for my XL7. a

>> may also buy a second one, and a 1U proteus to put it in.

>>

>

> I would be interested too (from Hungary).

>

>

> Andrew

>

>

>

>

>>

>> --

>>         ...atom

>>

>>  ____________ _________ ___

>>  http://atom. smasher.org/

>>  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808

>>  ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- -

>>

>> "Patriotism is the willingness to kill

>> and be killed for trivial reasons."

>> -- Bertrand Russell

>>

>>

>

>

> ------------ --------- --------- ------

>

> Yahoo! Groups Links

>

>

>

>

On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> on almost any computer).
==============

any progress on this? i've got an empty orbit-3 chassis (and $$$) 
waiting...


-- 
         ...atom

  ________________________
  http://atom.smasher.org/
  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
  -------------------------------------------------

 	"We don't know if lobsters feel pain... [but] since
 	 pain is a perception, we often don't know whether
 	 people feel it either"
 		-- Prof. Edward Kravitz,
 		Harvard Medical School

Its still on the cards. I have all the parts (apart from the pcb). Schematic is done. The logic device program has been written. 

The remaining things are:
  PCB layout
  MCU programming

Been busy with home renovations and the like. Should be able to get back to it soon.


 



________________________________
From: Atom Smasher <atom@...g>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, June 13, 2010 10:17:20 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

  
On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:

> The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> on almost any computer).
==============

any progress on this? i've got an empty orbit-3 chassis (and $$$) 
waiting...

-- 
...atom

________________________
http://atom.smasher.org/
762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
-------------------------------------------------

"We don't know if lobsters feel pain... [but] since
pain is a perception, we often don't know whether
people feel it either"
-- Prof. Edward Kravitz,
Harvard Medical School

jack, if you have a list of prospective customers, please make sure I'm on it too! :-)

duncan.

I'm sure a ton of these would sell-myself being a buyer of several, so add my name to the list! 






----- "Jack Pratt" <woodsworth1@...> wrote: 
>   
> 
> 
> 


> 
Its still on the cards. I have all the parts (apart from the pcb). Schematic is done. The logic device program has been written. 

The remaining things are: 
  PCB layout 
  MCU programming 

Been busy with home renovations and the like. Should be able to get back to it soon. 


>   
> 
> 
> 
From: Atom Smasher <atom@smasher.org> 
> To: xl7@yahoogroups.com 
> Sent: Sun, June 13, 2010 10:17:20 PM 
> Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs? 
> 
>   
> 

On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote: 
> > The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> > on almost any computer). 
> ============== 
> any progress on this? i've got an empty orbit-3 chassis (and $$$) 
> waiting... 
> -- 
> ...atom 
> ________________________ 
> http://atom.smasher.org/ 
> 762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808 
> ------------------------------------------------- 
> "We don't know if lobsters feel pain... [but] since 
> pain is a perception, we often don't know whether 
> people feel it either" 
> -- Prof. Edward Kravitz, 
> Harvard Medical School 
> 
> 


>

that's great news! i was beginning to think this had fizzled out. not to rush genius or anything but do you know when we might be looking @ the prototype? you've got my money already and i've been looking into a place to sell them through

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, gary higgins <heyrag@...> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> I'm sure a ton of these would sell-myself being a buyer of several, so add my name to the list! 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- "Jack Pratt" <woodsworth1@...> wrote: 
> >   
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> > 
> Its still on the cards. I have all the parts (apart from the pcb). Schematic is done. The logic device program has been written. 
> 
> The remaining things are: 
>   PCB layout 
>   MCU programming 
> 
> Been busy with home renovations and the like. Should be able to get back to it soon. 
> 
> 
> >   
> > 
> > 
> > 
> From: Atom Smasher <atom@...> 
> > To: xl7@yahoogroups.com 
> > Sent: Sun, June 13, 2010 10:17:20 PM 
> > Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs? 
> > 
> >   
> > 
> 
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote: 
> > > The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> > > on almost any computer). 
> > ============== 
> > any progress on this? i've got an empty orbit-3 chassis (and $$$) 
> > waiting... 
> > -- 
> > ...atom 
> > ________________________ 
> > http://atom.smasher.org/ 
> > 762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808 
> > ------------------------------------------------- 
> > "We don't know if lobsters feel pain... [but] since 
> > pain is a perception, we often don't know whether 
> > people feel it either" 
> > -- Prof. Edward Kravitz, 
> > Harvard Medical School 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> >
>

i'm in too.
--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "john" <binkyj357@...> wrote:
>
>    that's great news! i was beginning to think this had fizzled out. not to rush genius or anything but do you know when we might be looking @ the prototype? you've got my money already and i've been looking into a place to sell them through
> 
> --- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, gary higgins <heyrag@> wrote:
> >
> > 
> > 
> > I'm sure a ton of these would sell-myself being a buyer of several, so add my name to the list! 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ----- "Jack Pratt" <woodsworth1@> wrote: 
> > >   
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > > 
> > Its still on the cards. I have all the parts (apart from the pcb). Schematic is done. The logic device program has been written. 
> > 
> > The remaining things are: 
> >   PCB layout 
> >   MCU programming 
> > 
> > Been busy with home renovations and the like. Should be able to get back to it soon. 
> > 
> > 
> > >   
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > From: Atom Smasher <atom@> 
> > > To: xl7@yahoogroups.com 
> > > Sent: Sun, June 13, 2010 10:17:20 PM 
> > > Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs? 
> > > 
> > >   
> > > 
> > 
> > On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote: 
> > > > The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> > > > on almost any computer). 
> > > ============== 
> > > any progress on this? i've got an empty orbit-3 chassis (and $$$) 
> > > waiting... 
> > > -- 
> > > ...atom 
> > > ________________________ 
> > > http://atom.smasher.org/ 
> > > 762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808 
> > > ------------------------------------------------- 
> > > "We don't know if lobsters feel pain... [but] since 
> > > pain is a perception, we often don't know whether 
> > > people feel it either" 
> > > -- Prof. Edward Kravitz, 
> > > Harvard Medical School 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > >
> >
>

I spent a lot of time thinking about all this burning of simms/SD cards.  And honestly it seems like a good idea at first.  Then it hit me.  What are you trying to do exactly?  You want fresh and new sounds in your Command Station right?  Ok, why not use a hardware or soft sampler and just trigger the sounds via midi on external mode for each part?  Why reinvent the wheel?  I think people may be caught up a bit of just having their voices burned to a simm chip or whatever.  It's definitely taking the scenic route.  Me, personally, I will just trigger something like Kontakt.  It's all on the computer hardrive, it's fast and effective.  Soo much easier than burning memory chips.  Plus if you load Kontakt in Ableton than you have a million and one VST'(filters, effects, soft synths, etc).  And then all those VST's parmeters can be mapped to the Command Station's knobs.  Trust me I do it everyday and it's child's play but so incredibly effective.  It just doesn't make sense to be backing up EMU's cheese ball sounds or even burning your own rom chips.  Just use a sampler and be done with it.   That's my take on it.  It's just when gear starts to get so complicated by reverse engineering aeverything it turns into a total science project, and I start to get a tad annoyed. There has got to be a faster and better solution.  We're supposed to be making music with these things remember?


--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, Atom Smasher <atom@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Jack Pratt wrote:
> 
> > The SD card would have a FAT (cifs) file system (so you can program it 
> > on almost any computer).
> ==============
> 
> any progress on this? i've got an empty orbit-3 chassis (and $$$) 
> waiting...
> 
> 
> -- 
>          ...atom
> 
>   ________________________
>   http://atom.smasher.org/
>   762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
>   -------------------------------------------------
> 
>  	"We don't know if lobsters feel pain... [but] since
>  	 pain is a perception, we often don't know whether
>  	 people feel it either"
>  		-- Prof. Edward Kravitz,
>  		Harvard Medical School
>

On Fri, 30 Jul 2010, jamesulibarri wrote:

> I spent a lot of time thinking about all this burning of simms/SD cards. 
> And honestly it seems like a good idea at first.  Then it hit me.  What 
> are you trying to do exactly?  You want fresh and new sounds in your 
> Command Station right?  Ok, why not use a hardware or soft sampler and 
> just trigger the sounds via midi on external mode for each part?  Why 
> reinvent the wheel?  I think people may be caught up a bit of just 
> having their voices burned to a simm chip or whatever.  It's definitely 
> taking the scenic route.
================

yes and no... i use all hardware. compared to any hardware sampler i can 
think of, i see a p2k module as a very viable and competitive alternative 
platform.

among other things, i can get to a gig, and "just turn it on" and all of 
my samples would be there. loading samples into yamaha AxK memory can take 
a long time.

it's also more roadworthy than the yamaha AxK samplers.


-- 
         ...atom

  ________________________
  http://atom.smasher.org/
  762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
  -------------------------------------------------

 	"Fascism is capitalism in decay."
 		-- Nikolai Lenin

Well the command station's voices have never
been that hardware sounding to my ears.  Kinda thin
and weedy sounding.  So I figured if it's gonna be
thin than just use Ableton.  But we are talking to
a person who uses an sp1200 and an emulator II.
So thin means different things to different people
I guess.  The roms have always been weak sauce
for synth sounds.  Some of the drum tones are usuable
in beat garden and the protean px7 stick.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 30, 2010, at 1:23 PM, Atom Smasher <atom@...> wrote:

> it me. What > are you trying to do exactly? You want fresh and new  
> sounds in your > Command Station right? Ok, why not use a hardware  
> or soft sampler and > just trigger the sounds via midi on external  
> mode for each part? Why > reinvent the wheel? I think people may be  
> caught up a bit of just > having their voices burned to a simm chip  
> or whatever. It's definitely > taking the scenic route.  
> ================ yes and no... i use all hardware. compared to any  
> hardware sampler i can think of, i see a p2k module as a very viable  
> and competitive alternative platform. among other things, i can get  
> to a gig, and "just turn it on" and all of my samples would be  
> there. loading samples into yamaha AxK memory can take a long time.  
> it's also more roadworthy than the yamaha AxK samplers. -- ...atom  
> ________________________ http://atom.smasher.org/ 762A 3B98 A3C3  
> 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808  
> ------------------------------------------------- "Fascism is  
> capitalism in decay." -- Nikolai Lenin -- 
> Nu5vyccQf65XyHv1203kEhfizrUxgdqHvXq9gVG Content-Type: text/html;  
> charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> On Fri, 30 Jul 2010, jamesulibarri wrote:
>
> > I spent a lot of time thinking about all this burning of simms/SD  
> cards.
> > And honestly it seems like a good idea at first. Then it hit me.  
> What
> > are you trying to do exactly? You want fresh and new sounds in your
> > Command Station right? Ok, why not use a hardware or soft sampler  
> and
> > just trigger the sounds via midi on external mode for each part? Why
> > reinvent the wheel? I think people may be caught up a bit of just
> > having their voices burned to a simm chip or whatever. It's  
> definitely
> > taking the scenic route.
> ================
>
> yes and no... i use all hardware. compared to any hardware sampler i  
> can
> think of, i see a p2k module as a very viable and competitive  
> alternative
> platform.
>
> among other things, i can get to a gig, and "just turn it on" and  
> all of
> my samples would be there. loading samples into yamaha AxK memory  
> can take
> a long time.
>
> it's also more roadworthy than the yamaha AxK samplers.
>
> -- 
> ...atom
>
> ________________________
> http://atom.smasher.org/
> 762A 3B98 A3C3 96C9 C6B7 582A B88D 52E4 D9F5 7808
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> "Fascism is capitalism in decay."
> -- Nikolai Lenin
>
>

Atom Smasher wrote:

> among other things, i can get to a gig, and "just turn it on" and all of 
> my samples would be there. loading samples into yamaha AxK memory can take 
> a long time.

Aye. I use a Roland Fantom XR for the same thing. Only 1u and can access 
up to 528Mb of samples alongside its synth stuff, which is pretty good. 
In conjunction with my Proteus 2000 and hardware sequencer it's all very 
compact. After the gig I take out all my Proteus ROMs and put them back 
into my Proteus 2500 for the better UI. :)

Simple pleasures.

-- 
Paul
---
"Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good 
musicians, but the jazz type." Harry J. Anslinger
http://www.smokyfrog.com

james- no offence, but an enthusiastic market for this technology is established here, & your own mileage is plainly achieved on a different sort of fuel.

I started using the proteus flash simms when an emu hardware sampler (w/ syquest cartridges) let me down on the eve of a trip to the US. I have never looked back. in fact, I got started on this approach by burning flash cards for an alesis s4+. anyone who's tried that will understand that some people will not be put off by any amount of work if they can have unique sounding instruments.

so, the allure of having your own sounds sitting behind your favourite synth engine & UI is a powerful one. I do use samplers, but they are bolted into the rack in the studio. when a new sound is designed & sampled, I can have a solid-state version in the live-rig without worrying about whether the hard-drive has survived the trip in the back of some rust-bucket transit van.

sadly, emu didn't market the flash simm approach very well, & eventually wound up their hardware business, leaving those of us that invested in it searching ebay for scarce parts. 
that someone here has shown enough enterprise & enthusiasm (not to mention ingenuity) to find another way to get custom sounds into the p2k synth engine is proof enough that there's a small but real demand.

I'll keep doing it this way until waldorf fix the damn blofeld properly & make a rack version with same/higher spec as the p2k.

d.

James:

I think that makes a lot of sense. While I know I can create
great-sounding (to me) multisamples that are well-looped and so on,
they may not be to your taste. One way a FLASH SIMM vendor could
overcome that is by offering instrument groups a la carte - that way,
you could pick and choose the sounds you wanted from a menu of
selections. Hopefully some would be to your taste.

That said, offering a service to map out user-supplied waves could
also be an option. As a service, my sense is that it would not come
cheap. There is a lot of work involved in that process.

If I was going to create a ROM, I think my focus would be on synthy
spectra with longer loops, derived from a mix of modular synthesis,
FM, and physical modeling. Analog-flavor waves have been done
well-enough IMO, although including a basic set would take little
space anyway.


cheers,
Ian

I would expect that once the board is ready that there would be software to 
compile your own 'ROM' images from a variety of sources [such as .wav files or 
other formats (perhaps .e4b files)] and generate preset information as well. 
Then download them at your leisure. 


The biggest problem would be that until you hear the sounds you wouldn't know 
what presets would sound good, so the same software would probably need to also 
allow the user to "upgrade" the image with better presets from the user presets 
(perhaps through/via sysex)

The whole point of the new FLASH SIMM is to allow the owner/operator to put 
their own sounds through the effects/filters of the P2K series modules rather 
than being locked into the limits of whats available/affordable from ebay.

Not sure about the mad scientist sleight...




________________________________
From: Ian Lamb <ianblamb@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, August 3, 2010 4:49:30 AM
Subject: Re: [xl7] Re: Still a call for blank ROMs?

   
James:

I think that makes a lot of sense. While I know I can create
great-sounding (to me) multisamples that are well-looped and so on,
they may not be to your taste. One way a FLASH SIMM vendor could
overcome that is by offering instrument groups a la carte - that way,
you could pick and choose the sounds you wanted from a menu of
selections. Hopefully some would be to your taste.

That said, offering a service to map out user-supplied waves could
also be an option. As a service, my sense is that it would not come
cheap. There is a lot of work involved in that process.

If I was going to create a ROM, I think my focus would be on synthy
spectra with longer loops, derived from a mix of modular synthesis,
FM, and physical modeling. Analog-flavor waves have been done
well-enough IMO, although including a basic set would take little
space anyway.

cheers,
Ian