OBERHEIM SYNTH

Sounds like you don't have enough level out of the tape deck to make  
it work.  You must come out of the HEADPHONE jack, which you probably  
already know.  They were designed to work with portable cassette  
players so you could take them on the gig and the interface worked  
well providing you had enough output level.  Sounds like you are very  
close to making it work.

> so here's a question i should've asked in the first place:  if the  
> battery dies and is replaced,
> does that literally mean there should be NO SOUNDS in the OB-8?   
> that they MUST be
> reloaded from the tape, almost like samples?  or is the tape just a  
> bunch of presets?

There should be some sounds.  You should be able to grab a few knobs  
and dial in a "sound" manually.  If it won't do that, I'd suspect  
other problems.  The oscillators and filters, etc should all work even  
without the PROGRAM loaded in.  All the cassette data is, is the  
settings of the knobs for each patch.

Hope this helps and good luck with the old girl!  I sold my Xpander  
and miss the sounds of it in my music already.

Charlie

On Mar 13, 2008, at 12:13 PM, chthonic wrote:

> ok, thanks for the help so far.  our resident techy band member has  
> gotten the cassette
> interface light to come on and all others shut off as they should.
>
> however, it still doesn't seem to be receiving the cassette signal.   
> i did as the manual said
> and watched the level on the 1980's cheapo tape deck i bought just  
> for this purpose...as
> soon as the tone came in i pressed PLAY on the OB-8  it lit up, but  
> no "banks lighting up
> in sequence".
>
> in fact, i don't hear the screeching data sound coming from the  
> OB-8's output.  i did
> awhile back when i was trying to boose the signal from a regular  
> tape deck through a
> mixer headphone jack, but it was way quiet and distorted.  in fact,  
> the regular sound i hear
> out of the OB-8 is a low-level buzz.
>
> so here's a question i should've asked in the first place:  if the  
> battery dies and is replaced,
> does that literally mean there should be NO SOUNDS in the OB-8?   
> that they MUST be
> reloaded from the tape, almost like samples?  or is the tape just a  
> bunch of presets?
>
>