K5synth

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 :)
  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.
  The second question is related to Overtone. Although I now have 
and know of other options as far as editors (e.g. Midi Quest and 
Terzoid Noize) I am still interested in getting Overtone to work 
because I do have tons of sound/patches that I had already 
programmed in Overtone format and I can no longer use them because I 
am "now" having problems with Overtone. Since purchasing Overtone 
years back and acquiring many sounds for it I had abandoned the k5 
for some years and "recently" resurrected it but find myself with no 
way to get it to work with my new settup. I have concluded that 
somehow there is an apparent problem with the buffer of the K5 and 
faster computers. How did I arrive to that conclusion is as 
follows.   As I mentioned previously I a chance to try Noize and I 
was unable to use a UBS based Midi interface to talk to the K5 in 
order to upload the sounds residing in the K5. Then, when on the 
same computer I added another fairly "older" interface, this one a 
ISA based MIDIMAN interface, I was able then to talk to the K5 and 
successfully upload the patches in the K5 to Noize in order to be 
able to edit them.
 Previously also I had noticed the same type of apparent Midi 
congestion when I tried to communicate via MIDI with the K5.
 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?

  Thanks in advance;

metaphor

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

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
>