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Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-11 by david_tkach@...

Hi everyone,

Thanks for having me, excited to dive into this great resource! I have a troubleshooting question.

I am extremely impressed with the CS for sequencing external gear, and I was lucky enough to get one very cheap. I bought it without any ROMs, and then soon after got a Composer. I've had strange issues with it since installation. Some presets work fine by themselves, and then as soon as I start layering, the sounds will often 'glitch' or even play different presets for an indeterminate amount of time. It usually happens when several presets are sounding at once, or with the more 'complex' ones - drums seem mostly to work, but as soon as I try something like pads with delay-type washes/effects/etc., things go strangely. Often the glitching preset will skip back to what it should be, only to go weird again.

The CS has OS 2.00. I've tried reinstalling the ROM in all four expansion slots, ensuring that I was grounded every time I touched the card. It's the same through the headphone jack and the line-outs. The glitchyness can be processed through the filters, too, which leads me to believe there's something happening in the playback of the preset samples themselves. I've communicated with the seller who says it worked fine in the Proteus 2000 it was taken from. Could there be something going on with the CS itself? Like a 'CPU overload' or something like that? I notice that the tempo LED sometimes flickers when the presets start to glitch. Or could it be that the Composer was made for 12-knob machines while the CS is 16?

I've searched the Interwebs to see if anyone else has ever experienced this problem, and haven't found anything.

Thanks in advance for any forthcoming help!

Re: [xl7] Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-11 by Bruno

To be honest, the best advice which comes to my mind would be to ask if there's anyone with CS/P2K living nearby, so you could test your ROM in another device - and vice versa.

Bruno

2015-02-11 21:08 GMT+01:00 david_tkach@... [xl7] <xl7@yahoogroups.com>:


Hi everyone,

Thanks for having me, excited to dive into this great resource! I have a troubleshooting question.

I am extremely impressed with the CS for sequencing external gear, and I was lucky enough to get one very cheap. I bought it without any ROMs, and then soon after got a Composer. I've had strange issues with it since installation. Some presets work fine by themselves, and then as soon as I start layering, the sounds will often 'glitch' or even play different presets for an indeterminate amount of time. It usually happens when several presets are sounding at once, or with the more 'complex' ones - drums seem mostly to work, but as soon as I try something like pads with delay-type washes/effects/etc., things go strangely. Often the glitching preset will skip back to what it should be, only to go weird again.

The CS has OS 2.00. I've tried reinstalling the ROM in all four expansion slots, ensuring that I was grounded every time I touched the card. It's the same through the headphone jack and the line-outs. The glitchyness can be processed through the filters, too, which leads me to believe there's something happening in the playback of the preset samples themselves. I've communicated with the seller who says it worked fine in the Proteus 2000 it was taken from. Could there be something going on with the CS itself? Like a 'CPU overload' or something like that? I notice that the tempo LED sometimes flickers when the presets start to glitch. Or could it be that the Composer was made for 12-knob machines while the CS is 16?

I've searched the Interwebs to see if anyone else has ever experienced this problem, and haven't found anything.

Thanks in advance for any forthcoming help!


Re: [xl7] Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-12 by david_tkach@...

Thanks for the response! I've put out a call to Montreal folks (presumably there must be other Proteus 2000/Command Station folks somewhere in this city). Hopefully someone responds. In the meantime, I'm making some very strange glitchy electronic music, luckily perfectly in time due to the CS's great sequencer!

Re: [xl7] Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-12 by david_tkach@...

Thanks for the response! I had a feeling this might be hardware-related. Do you think the average synth tech would be able to diagnose/resolve the problem?

Re: [xl7] Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-12 by Daniel H

did you go into the diagnostic menu and reinitialize the unit first?
i've experienced a somewhat similar problem when sequencing multiple tracks (12+).. however the symptoms were note drops and lag.. the processor can only handle so much
it would be useful if you could test another ROM to see if the issue is specific to your composer rom or something with the CS itself.

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 8:20 AM, david_tkach@... [xl7] <xl7@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

Thanks for the response! I had a feeling this might be hardware-related. Do you think the average synth tech would be able to diagnose/resolve the problem?


Re: [xl7] Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-13 by Daniel H

to clarify i mean the rom could not cause program changes as the OP has described. reinit and download the composer user presets from the files section and send them over via midi. see if the problem persists after doing so

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 8:24 PM, Daniel H <xxxdna@...>; wrote:
the ROMS are interchangeable between any Proteus 2k style unit (command stations included). if he still had the xl7 user presets installed they would simply not sound. they wouldn't know where to access the ROM samples as the ROM ID would not match up to what the CS is trying to access; the XL ROM and Composer ROM have different ROM ID's so the instruments would appear as "????" if they were trying to access a ROM that is no longer installed.
anyway, I don't see how the ROM itself would cause this problem; it has nothing to do with playing back sounds aside from providing the sample source and the preset config. Best bet is to reinitialize and run the diagnostic tests to make sure the unit is functioning normally...



On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 5:30 PM, smw-mail@prodigy.net [xl7] <xl7@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

Also, is the glitchiness coming from the main outs as well as the subouts?



Re: Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-13 by david_tkach@...

Thanks for all the info, folks! So helpful!!!

The Composer is from a Proteus 2000, so I guess it's designed for 12-controller stuff. As far as I can tell, I'm only using ROM presets as the CS had nothing in its memory when I got it.

I read all these messages too late to actual try doing some diagnostics and reinitializing. I'll try this stuff out (as well as checking the main outs signal) on the weekend. I do think, the more I try this out, that it must be something happening in the CS hardware itself. Most of the time, one preset with no filter adjustment works fine. It's as soon as I start getting multiple channels playing presets, or tweak filters, that things go haywire.

A question, once I get to this point: there are a couple of different sets of preset files related to the Composer in the Files section here. Which one would be appropriate for me and my MP-7?

Next month I'll be visiting another city, and someone there may have some other ROMs for me to try out to see if the problem persists. Until then, I'll keep hammering away.

Thanks again for all the help, everyone!

Re: Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-15 by david_tkach@...

Thanks for that info! I'm a bit hesitant to try out that stuff as I'm quite new to the world of MIDI dumps and am worried about bricking, so perhaps I will try that when I'm feeling more confident.

It seems the MP-7 has a couple of built-in arpeggiator settings (or 'patterns,' like up, down, up/down, etc.) that I've got to work with some of the presets, but as far as I can tell there is nothing in the Composer ROM. I have a lead on an Xtreme Lead and a Mo' Phatt that I'm going to try before committing to purchase... in the meantime, I'm almost positive it must be a RAM issue because as soon as I reduce playback to one channel with no effects, most of the Composer presets seem to work fine. It's like my MP-7 is running out of breath playing too many things at once! I assume the hardware architecture is such that the sequencer and the synth function separately, as the sequencer never hiccups timing-wise when the presets are getting weird.

Strangely, I checked the RAM and ROM (as well as everything else that I could) in Diagnostic mode, and reset/erased anything user-related. RAM and ROM both 'passed.' The glitchy problem still persists, unfortunately. I'm going to see if there's a local synth tech here in Montreal that might be able to take a look at it, if neither the Mo' Phatt nor the Xtreme Lead work out.

On the bright side, I have some pretty sick random/sliced percussion patterns ready to go! :)

Re: [xl7] Re: Weirdness with Composer ROM sounds

2015-02-16 by david_tkach@...

Yeah, at least amongst folks I know, no one here has this late-90s/early 2000s E-Mu gear.

In my attempts to see how many sounds I can get going at the same time without glitching, I noticed another thing last night as well, when I switch tracks (using the Track/Channel button beside the LCD), it seems like the effect settings for each preset 'take over' the entire CS output. Like if Track 2's preset has a deep reverb, when I switch to Track 2, everything is covered with that reverb. If this is something easily turned off, sorry not to have read the manual beforehand, but this doesn't seem like it should be happening...

So thankful for everyone's help!