K5synth

Oh, and when I told that DOSbox was MPU-401 compatible, I meant to say 
that it can emulate it and redirect it to any MIDI device the OS supports.

Antoine Desch\ufffdnes a \ufffdcrit :
> 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
>