Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Ravi Ivan Sharma wrote:

> Paul, I don't think it does. I agree, I would love that--essentially a
> temp location or something like that. I would also love the related
> feature of a temporary patch dump location.

It shouldn't be that difficult to do.  It's what should have been done in
the first place.  Edit compare has been a pretty standard feature since
the DX7 popularized it (not sure if it was the first but that's not the
point).

When you load a patch into this kind of synth, it copies the patch data
out of non-volatile memory into an edit buffer in RAM.  Edit compare is
usually just a matter of changing the data pointer from the edit buffer to
the original patch, and back again.  It's dirt simple - I know, I cowrote
the Europa upgrade for the Jupiter 6, and it has this feature, because we
thought it's something that every synth should have.


> The current scheme where
> the patch number is built into an individual patch dump is a tradeoff
> I guess in some ways.

I think that's a terrible design choice.  If you're dumping the current
patch, it should, when loaded back into the synth, go into the edit
buffer.  How do people typically use individual patch dumps?  For trading
patches, and for taking a snapshot of the synth's setup to save with
whatever song they're working on.  In either case, you would almost always
want it saved to the edit buffer, not to a particular location in
non-volatile memory.

Including the patch # with the patch data DOES make sense when doing a
bulk dump.  And an editor/librarian should be able to request the dump of
a particular patch.

JDM

PS Yes, I know patches are called programs in Evolver-speak.