[LAU] A Bach in appology and completeness :-)

Niels Mayer nielsmayer at gmail.com
Tue Jun 22 01:14:22 UTC 2010


On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:
> BTW, every one is entitled to like what they like, and want the tools
> they want to use, but based on those two files (and I know only one was
> done on the XG) I'm not clear on what the fascination with the
> Yamaha DB60XG (NEC XR-385) is.  Do you have other files that better
> demostrate it?  How hard is it to get the card to do the flamenco guitar
> type stuff that the wikipedia page refers to?

I'm sure it's around -- in general, all the Yamaha XG demos are quite
amazing for their ability to cram an amazing amount of sound into a
relatively small midi file. Yes the db50xg emulates guitars nicely, if
that's what you're into. I'm more interested in the fact that this
card is basically a "postcard sized" rave ... just be careful licking
the stamps :-)

A single grand piano is probably the worst and stupidest use of this
card, unless you just happen to be listening to MIDI as a radio, which
I like to do, and which this card makes very easy, due to its
all-encompassing compatibility with every major midi standard. With no
setup whatsoever, I can click on any web or filesystem-browser MIDI
track, and if it's general-midi MIDI tracks, most Roland GS, and all
Yamaha XG tracks, it will generally sound close to the original
performer's intent.

The fascination is that it's a dirt-cheap full XG synthesizer for
$10-20 card ( http://cgi.ebay.com/XR385-YAMAHA-DB60XG-DB50XG-MIDI-Synth-Daughter-Board-/270594950044
) that fits inside your computer... which means you can have a slow
and outdated computer and a USB keyboard and a controller and perform
glitch and worry free.  The load to your computer is absolutely
negligible even with mad amounts of midi-controller data being sent to
this synth. It never crashes. It is rock-solid.

More important than being a full-XG synth, is that it's a fully
controllable TG300B synth when using
http://qxgedit.sourceforge.net ... making it much closer to a Yamaha
AN1X (analog modelling synth) or a CS1X or a QS300 ... for details,
see http://www.dancetech.com/item.cfm?threadid=328
http://webspace.webring.com/people/jt/the_qs300_website/

Speaking of the db50xg's negligible load, FYI, the recordings done
below were done while my son was playing UrbanTerror at 60-80FPS on
his linux box (since that's where the synth resides as I'm out of
slots). Qmid was running on my computer "gnulem" using jack to route
the MIDI via qmidinet to the computer named "coggie" housing the
Yamaha and the Terratec Dmx6fire soundcard breakout box that houses
the db60xg. The digital output from the Terratec DMX6fire is feeding
my "poor mans digital matrix switch" composed of radio-shack 4 way
passive video switch feeding the SPDIF on my computer's M-audio
delta66. The recording is of this SPDIF input....

The way I have things setup, I can simply click on
http://www.megatrade.ru/Midi/Isummer.zip
and then click on the enclosed file Intelligent_Summer.mid and
immediately hear this playback through kmid:
http://nielsmayer.com/npm/Intelligent_Summer.ogg (which is also a
better demo of this card, IMHO).

Or for piano-based music "Skyline\ -\ Herbie\ Hancock\ -\ TG300B.mid"
from http://www.blueman.name/Jazz.php becomes becomes
http://nielsmayer.com/npm/Skyline_Herbie_Hancock_TG300B.ogg

Next step: The -75db noise floor (per jnoisemeter), ancient D/A
converter (AK4510), ancient analog output stage (JRC 4570), as well as
the input analog stage (JRC4580) and input A/D converter on the
Terratec DMX6Fire will be completely bypassed when I tap into the TTL
SPDIF in on the AK4510 and connect it to the TTL-level CD input on the
DMX6Fire ... if it works, it will be quite the hack due to the ease
and $0.00 implementation cost (now, if I could only find my 25W
soldering iron so i don't burn the PC board and lift the copper pads).

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com


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