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

Niels Mayer nielsmayer at gmail.com
Tue Jun 22 19:16:51 UTC 2010


On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 2:46 AM, Julien Claassen <julien at c-lab.de> wrote:
> Hello Niels!
>  Thanks for these demos and the explanations about your card.
>  I have one question: Can you really turn the card into an an1x? Can you
> somehow control it and build sounds with it? I once had an an1x and it
> wasn't bad as far as these things go.

I don't have an AN1X and don't need it, since I have the competing
Roland JP8000 ( http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jp8000.php ),
however I've seen plenty of comparisons between the AN1X and the
db50xg/sw1000xg -- it's appears to be a follow-on using much of the
same architecture. Alas, I think i was slightly confused, as the AN1X
is related to the db50xg, and i have midi tracks for the AN1x that
sound quite nice on the db50xg, the "analog" modulations of sound
parameters come through on the db50xg too...

In reality the db50xg/db60xg is closer to a CS1X, which is a pretty
respected synth in it's own right, esp in waveblaster card format for
$10.00 and taking up no space.... Fortunately, many of the
slider-controls on the JP8000 just happen to map directly to the
DB50xg -- so i can easily control "ADSR" on the filters, as well as
control of resonance and frequency, as well as ADSR on the amp. Or use
qxgedit to control various parameters in real-time.

To get the equivalent of a db50xg and an AN1X "in a box", get an old
MU-100R or MU128 (
http://cgi.ebay.com/YAMAHA-MU-128-XG-Sound-Module-QY-SU-Motif-VL-WX-PLG-RY-/300439559975
) and a PLG150AN daughterboard (
http://cgi.ebay.com/Yamaha-PLG150-AN-Analog-Modular-Synthesis-Plug-In-MOTIF-/300439402586
): http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan00/articles/yamahaplgs.htm .

The following article gives a pretty good idea of the constellation of
synths from Yamaha that are all similar in architecture, right up to
the Motif series. The biggest difference seems to be that the db50xg
has 4MB of onboard (compressed) samples and waveforms   whereas the
higher end and later synths can have up to hundreds of megabytes...
(if you care for long wooshy samples that sound cool in the music
store, but aren't worth wasting precious ROM on, IMHO).

http://interviews.sonikmatter.com/2001/nick_howes.php

................................
 Nick: The best for me in the past 10 years have been the VL1, the
FS1R, SW1000XG and the AN1x. All of which were pretty ground breaking.
....
The An1x was the closest thing to a Prophet 5 (a synth I owned and
sold...DUHHH) I ever heard. It really did capture the Prophet sound
quite well.
 .....
New project which was to become the DB50XG daughterboard....
...
He then contacted Yamaha R&D's sound designer; a guy by the name of
Dan Powell. They told him to talk to me, about possibly getting
involved with some synth voice development. I had that year been
working for Ultravox (the pop group), on an album and world tour as
programmer and keyboard tech, so I had some credentials in this area.
Dan gave me a prototype keyboard to do 32 voices for (the W7 as it
turned out) of which 31 were accepted and made it into the voice ROM
(apparently a very high percentage for a new guy!). I then took the
job full time at Yamaha Kemble doing tech support and tech sales, but
always hankered for the job at R&D London (sales never being my
"thing").

After about 18 months at Yamaha Kemble, I received a call from the
head of the European Music Software section at the R&D center. He was
asking if I wanted to work for him developing voice data, and also
building the new Yamaha.co.uk website (something I was getting into at
the time was web development), and also work on a new soundcard
project.

I moved down to the London office (a very nice place to work, believe
me), and continued to work on soundcard R&D (SW1000XG), voice design
and development (QS300, CS1x, CS2x, CS6x, An1x, Motif, AN200, DX200 to
name but a few synths I have voiced, and websites ( yamaha.co.uk,
xgfactory.com and yamahasynth.com ).
.................................

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com

PS: After reading the above article, we know why Yamaha synths sound
like Ultravox: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeWySiuq1I (ah,
Vienna!)


More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list