K5synth

Hi metaphor,

metaphor20032003 a \ufffdcrit :
>    Hello to All:
>                 
>                  I have noticed that the group had been somewhat 
> dormant for awhile so I decided to post this message to awake you 
> all, at least the moderators :)
>   
Yes, I get more new member authorization requests than posts...
>   Anyway, first I wanted to thank Antoine Deschenes for his previous 
> answer to my related enquiry and at the same time I wanted to 
> apologize to him for not doing so before.
>   Anyway, I have two issues I wanted to discuss. The first is 
> basically just a question: 
>
> (1)Has anyone had any experiences with any of the sounds/patches for 
> the K5 that are offered/sold on ebay or would care to elaborate on 
> the quality of the sounds?. The active link right now is the 
> following: 
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/Kawai-K1-K3-K4-K5-XD-5-Patches-Manuals-
> More_W0QQitemZ7408738756QQcategoryZ29552QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
>
>  I figured I would ask here because the vendor could be one of the 
> members of the group.
>   
Maybe he could be in "kawaisynths", since there are more than one 
models. I have the impression that they are just the original 11 Kawai 
banks put on a CD-ROM though.

>   The second question is related to Overtone. *SKIP* I have concluded that 
> somehow there is an apparent problem with the buffer of the K5 and 
> faster computers.    ...    *SKIP*
>  By the way, just as Antoine had mentioned in his reply one of the 
> problems with Overtone is that it is a DOS based software program 
> and that posses a problem , at least for me right now, in terms of 
> ideas/options as to how to interface with it since most newer MIDI 
> interfaces are likely to be USB based. So with that in mind, my 
> question is: 
>   (2)Does anyone know of and/or could recommend a fairly inexpensive 
> MIDI interface with variable IRQ and port settings that would work 
> in DOS and could work with Overtone?
>   

OK, about the timing problems, it's possible because when I used 
Overtone in real DOS mode on my 350MHz, the K5 sometimes stopped 
responding.

I think that a firmware upgrade to v1.3 would solve my problems, since I 
have 1.0. (And some of the changes in v1.2 are related to MIDI and SysEx 
bugs)

If you want a MIDI interface, a computer motherboard with an option for 
MIDI thru the joystick port should work. You get an MPU-401-compatible 
port that way. Or, in the version changes included in one of the text 
files in the Overtone ZIP file, there is a possibility to use a serial 
port. I wonder if any of the DIY MIDI port interfaces would work with this.

But there is a probably simpler solution, which would be to use a DOS 
emulator. There is DOSbox, which can be found here : 
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ that supports MPU-401. You can then run 
DOS programs on Windows, Linux or MacOS X. Yes, Win9x could run DOS 
programs, but not Overtone...

Cheers,
Antoine