Sequential circuits samplers

Excellent response, and I can't thank you enough.

 

I'll write more later, but I think I better get cracking at that manual.

 

Thanks again,

 

Tom Hanser

Seattle, WA

 

 

 

  _____  

From: prophet2000@yahoogroups.com [mailto:prophet2000@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of duncan
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:14 AM
To: prophet2000@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [prophet2000] Re: Purchasing Sample Disks

 

>>It's hard getting used to using headphones - some notes are placed
LEFT, some are placed RIGHT.<<

that's the dynamic voice allocation. you can switch it off, & then
what happens is that the left keyboard map uses the left channel
voices & the right keyboard map uses.... but I'm a bit rusty here.

probably need to spend a few hours on my 2002 & get up to speed again.
I used to be (excuse me blowing my own trumpet here) sh*t hot at
programming the thing, but it's been a while. I used to gig with the
2002 & the 2000 keyboard, even. I made super-discs with half-a-dozen
different instruments crammed into the memory.... the crossfade
looping meant I could take the tiniest scrap of timbre & turn it into
a reasonable facsimile of a real instrument. I spent hours at it...

for each keyboard map in each preset, there are global & per-sample
adjustments for all the "synth" parameters. this means that you can
create interactions between (say) the global keyboard filter tracking
& the same setting for each sample. things like this enable you to
extend the useful range of each sample beyond what seems possible,
i.e. where it would normally be sounding a bit rough due to aliasing
artefacts.
I also used to alter the pitch of what I was sampling (using a
varispeed 1/4" deck) so that I could use a smaller sample & pitch it
down in the prophet. effectively, this is the same as sampling at a
lower frequency than the prophet allows; useful technique where one
would normally have wasted some bits, especially if the sound has
little or no high frequency content. it also changes the range over
which the sample will play. I need to refresh my knowledge of this,
but I think at the lower rate you got about an octave & a bit above
the root, & maybe an octave below it, for each sample. sampling the
sound at the wrong pitch changes it's natural location within this
spread, which can be useful.

>>incredibly slow speed reading a floppy. How did we ever put up with
this :-)<<

40 seconds, for some reason, springs to mind as being the time for a
full load. I guess I should know this... it's another way to tell how
much ram there is in the sampler. I always use to verify after a save
aswell, so I drank a lot of tea back then..... :-)

>>I'd be interested in trading disks, sure. I still need some basic
piano sounds, as well as strings, woodwinds, etc.<<

I'll dig some stuff out. I think I have some spare discs. I used to
keep two/multiple copies of important stuff too.

>>I better start reading the manual, and learning how to dump samples
to this keyboard. Any further suggestions?<<

no wavs, no, it's 12-bit this machine. but as I say, there was a way
to use the midi sample dump to get things in & out of it. this is fine
if you're a fan of watching paint dry.... I tried it a few times (with
sound forge) & besides the fact it took ages, the prophet was actually
better at looping than sound forge. so I gave up.

the manual is great once you "get it", where "it" is the underlying
architecture of the machine. took me a few reads to grasp it, but then
I was away.... "oh, so it's in two halves? & they are mirror-images of
each other? each with 4 voices.... half the memory...." which is about
the time I started making my 2-channel bitimbral discs & treating it
almost like two mono samplers (i.e. left & right outputs on fixed
assignment & appearing as two mono instruments on my mixer).

you might find that reverse-engineering an existing disc is the best
way to start, but the factory discs aren't quite as tightly packed as
the ones I made. I'm blowing that trumpet again.... :-)

ok. I've asked for it. I will deconstruct one of my more elaborate
discs & write a story about it for the files section.

d.