Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

Hi:

               P A R T   O N E 

I am asking here because I am a member of this forum, not the TS one. I asked to join that one, but that can take hours or weeks.

I am looking for a TS10 and need to know the magical key combination that lets you know what OS it has.

I read the manual and couldn't find the combo.

I know some of you will know.

_____________________P A R T   T W O _________________________

With the SD-1 sequencer on extremely busy drum parts, the timing is sloppy. I was wondering if the cpu of the TS series were faster, or if it were very same chip.

Some of you will know that one.

1) Not all MIDI devices use MIDI for internal communications. Many don't. 
PArtly because of the limited resolution of MIDI....
2) the processor speed of MIDI devices can have very strong affects on its 
ability to process MIDI messages in a timely manner, affecting its device 
timing.This is why many midi devices, especially 80s devices made with 80bit 
processors, are known to have 'sloppy midi timing' or are 'sluggish when 
responding to MIDI commands'
3) not all MIDI devices process (i.e. send and reiceve) MIDI at 31.25 Kbaud. 
That is merely MIDI's *maximum* data rate. Many early devices used the 
'half' data rate allowed for in the MIDI spec.
4)31.25 KBaud means that the eight bit word of a standard MIDI message takes 
.25 ms to transmit. Since the human perceptual limit is somewhere between 7 
to 9 ms for most things, that is effectivel;y simultaneous. Any standard 
midi command (note on, not eoff, sending CCs)  is a single eight-bit word, 
itsonly with things like SysEx where you really start cramming the data....


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "STEPHEN PRATT" <alto.sax@...>
To: <Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2013 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Ensoniq-VFX-SD] TS10 / TS12 Questions for VFX Folks


Sorry didn't see your second question.

Midi is a serial interface.
Midi is only capable of playing one note at a time. By "playing" I mean 
executing a NOTE-ON or any midi command.
Any perception of simultaneity from a Midi instrument is just an illusion 
based on our limited human time resolution (the same way that we can't tell 
the difference between 30 frames per second video and reality).

Also: a midi instrument uses midi for it's internal communications.
So the processor speed is not really a factor.
The limiting factor/bottleneck is midi itself.

Specifically:
MIDI messages are made up of 8-bit words, and are transmitted serially at a 
rate of 31.25 kbaud.
This nonstandard transmission rate was chosen because it is an exact 
division of 1 MHz, the speed at which many early microprocessors operated. 
(From Wikipedia).
So A:  MIDI is slower than a 56K modem!
And B: any processor faster than 1MHz can transmit/receive/execute the full 
MIDI bandwidth.

The bottom line is that if you ask midi to do/execute 16 things at once (ie 
start playing 16 notes) you are going to run into problems.
Note, that that is different from having 16 sounds/voices sounding at once. 
That's an oscillator issue - not a midi issue.
I'm talking about issuing 16 note-on commands at the "same" time (or even 
worse if you've played the drum parts in from a keyboard note-on + velocity 
+ note-off commands).
If you are taking up bandwidth by using any continuous controllers (pitch 
bend - mod wheel ....) that will make things much worse.

On Mar 3, 2013, at 2:54 PM, cyyoung2012 wrote:

> Hi:
>
>
>
> _____________________P A R T T W O _________________________
>
> With the SD-1 sequencer on extremely busy drum parts, the timing is 
> sloppy. I was wondering if the cpu of the TS series were faster, or if it 
> were very same chip.
>
> Some of you will know that one.
>
>