Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

Eric Lawson said  on 5/26/2005 9:00 PM:
> I posted this on the Keyboard Forum, but these are kind of detailed 
> questions and I believe there are a lot more subject matter experts 
> here!  
> 

I dont have a rack yet, but I plan on adding one.  they keyboard is just 
so good, and 8 voices would be heaven...


> 1) In order to "sync" the sounds in both units, could I just go 
> through and rewrite the programs (some or all) and this would sync 
> them? Or is it easier to do some kind of sysex program dump using a 
> PC? Would the PE Rack need to be upgraded to the newest software rev 
> to support any of this? Where can I get the upgrade & how is it 
> loaded? Lots of similar questions!  
> 

you dont have to sync the units from what I understand.  when you select 
a patch on the PEK, the rack gets the patch sent to it.  I do not know 
how combi mode works.

Having the latest software is always a good idea. 
http://www.davesmithinstruments.com/ is where they will be.

> 2) If I use another keyboard MIDI'd to the PEK (with PEK chained to 
> the PE Rack), will the controller fire all 8 voices, or just the 
> PEK's 4 voices? I am assuming that the Poly Chain feature hopefully 
> acts like a MIDI thru when this kind of setup is used. I would like 
> to have my S90 serving as Master to do automatic patch changes on 
> certain songs. I would mainly play the PEK's keyboard, but wanted to 
> know if the S90 will indeed control all 8 of the voices when set up 
> like this. To add another wrinkle to it, are there any conflicts 
> when using Poly Chain to a PE Rack and MIDI thru to another keyboard 
> altogether?

I would imagine this must be the case, otherwise dynamic voice 
allocation would not work, and MIDI sequencing would be ludicrisly 
difficult.  I cant imagine Dave Smith would f#$@# up the MIDI spec that 
badly.

Tony