greenfox

I have just had this exact same problem occur to me. This is the first time I have had need to modify my MidiBox MIDIO128 system for about 4 years. The system has been running beautifully for about 6 years and now I am adapting it to a new physical console. This new MIOS Studio and the MIDIO128 tool are very good and such a long way from how we used to have to configure the MidiBox. (I don't use Midi-Ox at all, as all functions are done beautifully in MIOS Studio) In the new console I am using 1x CORE8 and 3x DIN. I am using a MIDIO128 hex file that was distributed on the Miditzer forum. This hex file has been specially modified to activate 3x Analogue inputs direct on the CORE8 to pins on J5A. (I am not aware of an updated version of this file being circulated) [could the 3x analogue function be added into the standard application hex?] Most of my inputs are Program Change messages so the OFF function doesn't matter. I entered 25 lines of Note On - Note Off messages, up loaded it and all was good. I then went back, received the config so far and proceeded to add another 8 lines of Note On - Note Off messages and upload. They all checked out fine, but the notes of the previous 25 lines all kept playing. I went back and had a look and they all had disable in the OFF message side. I fixed them and went back and found that the other 8x had then done the same thing. I re-entered all 33 lines and everything is now fine. I can imagine if someone had many lines of Note On - Note Off messages this would cause a great deal of confusion and frustration. In looking at it in detail I can report that trying to load a saved .syx file doesn't show the Note Off messages, and retrieving the current config from the CORE8 doesn't bring back the Note Off messages. I hope this helps in trying to fix this. Regards Rick

has there been any progress on this project or similar?

I will be interested to try this if it could be done using a config file like MIDIO128. the 4x64 would be the easiest to work with for organs I think.

How is your progress Dave? Let us know if you need any more help.

I would be very interested in this SAM's driver project. I am not a programmer. I have used MidiBox to Midify an organ for use with Miditzer. I would love to extend the MidiBox to drive SAM's. As mentioned above, 200+ would be the minimum required.

The Trio is the perfect candidate for Midification. To use MidiBox MidIO128 you just need a switch contact for each note and pedal to get to base 1 of Midification. To be more precise, you need a voltage free switch contact which just means there is no other circuitry connected through that switch. Most older analogue organs have many switch contacts per note. Often 1 for each of the voices available on that note. When Conn organs updated their circuitry in the 1980's they were now using only 1x switch contact per note and left all the others spare. That makes the Conn 650 series organs the easiest to Midify and still keep the analogue organ function. For other analogue organs you can add another switch contact (the easiest way is probably using small magnetic reed switches), or disable at least 1x switch function from the analogue circuit. (there may be 1 analogue voice you can live without without dumping the lot). Other Midi systems will cost 10x times more than MidiBox, or will have functional or expansion limitations that will only come to light when you feel the need to add to your project. I have used MidiBox to Midify a Yamaha E5AR. I am now looking at ways to add a third keyboard. Best of luck with your project.

I have not had any problems with cable length. I suspect any problems in this area are caused by some other problem. My project has 4x DIN to CORE1 and 2x DIN to CORE2 with the cores connected via Midi merge so only 1x Midi input to the PC via USB. I have still not finaliased the position of the CORE PCB's so have experimented on the floor and in the upper console and one in each position. I have 2m and 3m long cables from DIN's to CORE's. My current arrangement for CORE2 has a DIN in the upper console connected to pistons, this connects to the DIN on the floor for the pedals and this then connects back to the CORE2 mounted back up under the lower keyboard.

Great job Philip. I am glad I was able to be of some inspiration and assistance. You have surged past my project which has gone on hold for a while. We have decided we want to sell our house and most likely build a new home. Getting ready to sell included getting our timber floors polished (you may have noticed the floor under my organ in the photos was bare unpolished floor boards). My organ has had to move into storage under the house and all my 'spare' time is being spent on house renovations. The good news out of all this will be that the new house will have a dedicated music room to house the organ, piano, keyboard and piano accordion. I will be able to close the door and work or play to my hearts content without disturbing the rest of the family or being tripped over and having to pack up all my things after each splurge of activity. I may need to ask you for some pointers when I get to setting up my expression pedal. It is an interesting idea it looks like you have used the rhythm buttons as pistons. Regards Rick

There is a lot of discussion about this at: \http://www.virtualorgan.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=165 There is information on how to specially modify the core syx file to allow the use of up to 8x (I think) analogue inputs. Your question may be just asking if you can use six digital ins to give your required signals. I think this is possible, but the analogue custom addition may also be of interest to you.

good stuff. ;)

The DIN board provides the 5v dc for the switches. If you measure the voltage to ground from each of the pins they are already at 5 v dc (you don't need to supply it). You just connect the other end of the switch to the common ground.

Hi Nacho Well done with your project so far. What you need to do now is get the zip folder of mk_midio128_syx and read mk_syx in the HOWTOs section at the bottom of the left menu of this web site. You are almost done. The section on MIDI codes in Wiki will also help on what HEX codes to use for your channels and notes.

Once you get involved in this, I think you will find you might want pistons and expression pedals. A good option to get a pedal board is to look on ebay and/or your local weekend news papers for old organs for sale cheep or even give away (I got mine {complete organ not working} as a give away but had to pay $100 for the stool). You may need to get a complete organ and dump the parts you don't want. Keep in mind you will need a suitable stool that needs to be the right height and be able to span the pedal board. These can be hard to find and expensive if you try to find separately. Another option is that you will likely find a local music shop with dozens of relics from the 70's & 80's or a repair technician with a shed full of old organs.

Hello SounDuke It looks from your number of posts that you have had a fair bit to do with MidiBox. A CORE & 1x DIN will give MIDI to your planned keyboard. AGO is, I believe, the most common specification of pedal board. I can certainly say they are the best to play. Once you have your pedals you could add some spice to your Bach with Miditzer http://www.virtualorgan.com/. There is a lot of shared information on the Miditzer Forum about Midi Organ projects.

Hi Guys, interesting discussion. I apologise Organgrinder that I had not understood the depth of your question. I do understand better now and started heading in that direction at first with my VTPO project as I figured it would save me a lot of money (not having to buy amps and speakers) and should have been made for the task. When I ran the audio through the original organ amp and speakers I was extremely disappointed with the sound. This was for 2x reasons. a/ the Yamaha has a poor amp and speaker system (probably part of the reason why I never liked their electronic organ sound) and b/ the Softsynth uses both channels of stereo to give true effect to the sounds particularly the tremolo-ed voices. My home stereo gives a very pleasing sound to the output of Miditzer (I realise this is very subjective) however, I have very few opportunities to play the organ out loud (particularly with the emphasis on loud) as it is not appreciated to the same extent by other house residents. For this reason I need to make do with headphones most of the time. It has been mentioned that Leslie speakers should be the best way to get the Tremolo effect. In the past I would have agreed. I never found an organ without a Leslie that gave a pleasing sound. The other side of the coin, is that I can’t enjoy playing a Leslie organ with headphones on, as you can’t get tremolo through the headphones. I do enjoy playing Miditzer with headphones. I find the sound very pleasing. The Leslie speaker was invented to make an electronic organ simulate the tremolo pipe organ sound. Yes it was a much better effect than electronic waveform manipulation, but still a simulation of the genuine sound. It seems to me that the improvement in modern spatial sound generation as used in the Bruce Miles sound fonts has made great improvements in emulating the wonderful sound of a pipe organ with tremolo. There may be better ways to set up the audio of a VTPO, however on my limited budget, I am pleased with the results I am getting using headphones and my stereo. I agree with the direction PK is heading in his thoughts in this area. Building new enclosures for existing speakers and using existing amps to drive them. These will be in stereo pairs for each sound card he uses. There has been quite a bit of discussion about amps, speakers and their positioning on the Miditzer Forum. http://www.virtualorgan.com/forum/ The other aspect that has attracted some discussion and experimentation is reverb options.

Glad to hear it is working now for you Robin. I will try my 2x cores in different order to see if it reduces slight delay I find in my pedals. Have you tried Miditzer? http://www.virtualorgan.com/ It uses the PC to generate the sounds and has a much lower trafic rate through Midibox.

Software like Miditzer uses the computer hardware (processor & sound card) to generate the audio (or can use MIDI as Jim has mentioned). It is just a matter of connecting the sound card audio out to your other amplifiers. Sound card audio output usually uses a 3.5mm (1/8") stereo mini jack plug for its output. (there are some other options for newer systems like 5.1 & 7.1 surround sound but we don't want to go there). If your organ amplifiers and speakers are powered and working, you should be able to connect the sound card output direct to the RCA input using a cable you could buy from any audio shop for about $5.00. If you want to make your own you can find the wiring details on the web or I can sketch it for you. My Yamaha had just 1x RCA input. This worked, however the bass response from the Yamaha speakers was awful so I don't use it. If you don't know what each of your RCA inputs are connected to, just try them 1 at a time. Just be careful to only make the physical connections while power is off and always have all volumes at minimum before powering up. You will soon hear which is Leslie, reverb etc. and can chose which channels give you the sound you like. Miditzer will sound best if you can give it 2x balanced channels.

Hi Paul I would suggest you try to find a service manual to sort it out to that level. Once it is in the disconnected state you mention with no markings or indication of how it should connect you would be asking for trouble to try and guese it. You may be able to find a local organ technition that recalls working on these organs or has a manual in his collection. Otherwise try to find one on the web or on http://organforum.com/

Hi Paul I noticed your post on the other thread but didn't have time to respond. With my limited audio experience I would say that what you need to work out is the input sensitivity on the amplifier circuits. You could do this the technical way of setting up a signal generator and measuring everything or you could do it the trial and error way and just be careful and start off very low. Make up a connection lead from the audio out of your computer sound card to where you think you can tap into the organ amplifier system. Before connecting make sure all items are at minimum volume. Turn off power to all items and make the physical connection,power up the organ and the computer, bring the organ expression pedal up to about 1/3 then very gently bring up the volume of your computer sound card. If you get a good sound without distortion everything will be good and easy. If you get very faint sound or dramatic overload you will need to put a pre-amp in between the devices. If you get nothing at all you will need to go back to the drawing board and rethink where you are connecting into or get some other advice. If you need a pre-amp you could think about buying a kit from an electronics shop or a pre-made device from an electronics shop or audio shop. I did this with my Yamaha E5AR and got very disappointing results. The Yamaha has a very strange large speaker that is not round. It had very poor low end response (much worse than my home stereo) otherwise it was OK and yes very strong. I would hope you will get better results with your Conn amp and speakers.

The other project on my MidiBox to-do-list is: 3x analogue in signals on the CORE I use for pedals and pistons. This function will give 2x Swell (Main & Solo) and 1x Crescendo pedals. A couple of the members of the virtual organ forum have got this working. It requires a few modifications to the MIDIO128 main hex. (Aparently an analogue input card is not required as the CORE will accept I think 8x analogue in's direct on the PCB) Talk about MidiBox growing into new applications. It may be useful to wright this function into the standard MIDIO128 files so it can be easily activated and configured through the "mk_midio128.syx" configuration.

With my project I have put reed switches on a strip of timber under the toe end of the pedal board. I have screwed doenut magnets to each pedal. This means the pedal board is self contained with one DIN and a CORE (I am currently building a second DIN and banks of pistons). I did this for similar reasons to what you mention. I currently have 1x Casio keyboard and plan on a second and third. I will use the pedal board and pistons with both the portable set up and the E5AR setup. The Yamaha has tongues that press switches in the body of the organ (witch I do not use but have left there). From my experience console organs either use the tongue method or reed switch and magnet method.

As some of you have already noted, I have already headed down this track (see Midifying Yamaha E5AR). I made the decision to cut out the existing circuits. This was an easy decision for me for a number of reasons. A/ I never did like the sound of Yamaha organs. B/ I paid next to nothing for the organ with this intent to Midify it. C/ It had numerous electronic faults which would have taken a lot of work to fix and with experience in trying to do this can often cause new problems and no sooner things are fixed than something else falls over. Having said this, if it was a Conn 650 I was planing to work on which was in good working order, I would have great difficulty in cutting its heart out. I would like to find myself a Conn 650 some day. There are 2 ways I would contemplate doing the Midification without destroying the original organ. A/ chose one of the buss bars to use as the Midibox switching. It will mean disabling the original sounds switched by just this one buss bar. B/ install reed switches and magnets to create a new set of switches completely independent of the original organ circuitry. I cannot see any way of using Midi signals to play the original organ circuitry. You would need DOUT signals for every buss bar of every note. I am also hard pressed to think of many reasons why this would be needed. It is certainly a good idea to use the existing amplifiers and speakers if they give a good sound. This was not practical in my case with the Yamaha as the sound through the amplifiers and speakers was very poor. I have found the sound of Miditzer and the true-to-history function of the organ, far and away exceeds any electronic organ I have had the privilege to play.

Hi Nacho All good questions and not clear in all the documentation. 1/ yes, the items you have ordered will do 32 switches, so will do your pedal board. (For the relatively low cost of the DIN kits I would have ordered 4x but that is your choice.) 2/ yes, the PIC chips supplied by SmashTV are able to be reprogrammed over and over again. (Thankfully, because I have made and continue to make changes to mine.) Just to help at this point, there are 3x steps to load your PIC configuration. SmashTV will supply with the boot loader, then: A/ upload the MIOS B/ upload MIDIO128 at this point your switches will give out default MIDI messages play your pedals and write down what MIDI message comes from what note (this is where the LCD is useful, or I used MIDIOX) now customise your MIDI OUT configuration using “mk_midio128†C/ upload MK_MIDIO128 3/ no, you don’t need to touch any configuration of the DOUT. It has been recommended that even though it is not used you just leave the script in the config file. 4/ below is a section of the config file from my pedal configuration file. Each switch does have an ON and an OFF message in the script. (You will notice they are not in note order. I wired up the switches with the ICD cable neet. I then corrected the switching in the script.) [MIDI_OUT] ########################################## # Pin # On Evnt # Off Evnt # Behaviour # ########################################## 1 = 92 2A 7F 92 2A 00 @OnOff 2 = 92 2B 7F 92 2B 00 @OnOff 3 = 92 28 7F 92 28 00 @OnOff 4 = 92 29 7F 92 29 00 @OnOff 5 = 92 26 7F 92 26 00 @OnOff 6 = 92 27 7F 92 27 00 @OnOff 7 = 92 24 7F 92 24 00 @OnOff 8 = 92 25 7F 92 25 00 @OnOff 9 = 92 31 7F 92 31 00 @OnOff 10 = 92 30 7F 92 30 00 @OnOff 11 = 92 33 7F 92 33 00 @OnOff 12 = 92 32 7F 92 32 00 @OnOff 13 = 92 2E 7F 92 2E 00 @OnOff 14 = 92 2F 7F 92 2F 00 @OnOff 15 = 92 2C 7F 92 2C 00 @OnOff 16 = 92 2D 7F 92 2D 00 @OnOff

Hi Paul That’s quite a project. Apart from a big Rogers or an Allen, the Conn 650 series is certainly the closest console to replicate the Wurlitzer Style 216. I am a little sad to hear you have stripped out the original keyboards. The Conn keyboards have a quality feel that is not matched by any other keyboard I have ever played. They are a joy to play for hour after hour. I don’t think your plan to have all the stops connected through Midi is likely to cause latency. Latency issues were the legacy of earlier versions. Try the latest beta version http://virtualorgan.com/FileLib/Miditzer216_0714Install.exe to take advantage of improved softsynth sound generation. If you do decide you want to go with a second PC, the logical split is the two chambers, solo and main. You can feed both PC’s the same Midi signals with each only producing the sounds of its own chamber. There is discussion about these setups on the Miditzer Forum. http://www.virtualorgan.com/forum/default.asp I can’t see how you could split the function of stops to a different PC. The stop function will not be a big load on the system as there is really not a lot of traffic for this function. Having the tabs move when pistons are pressed will be an interesting challenge. I look forward to hearing how your project comes along. Some pictures will be great as things come together. Rick

Just to agree that MIDIO128 is the way for you to go with 1x CORE and 3x DIN (32 contacts in each). The only reason you might want a DOUT card would be if you wanted LED or lamp indicators showing the status of things like pistons or stops. I have built a system to midify a 2x 61 note keyboards and 25 note pedals. Mine required 2x CORE and 5x DIN plus a further DIN for pistons and other controls. Magnetic reed switches are how I have set up the switching on my pedals. It may be a suitable way for you to provide your keyboard switching also, as it can often be done without major hardware changes. I bought kits from Smash TV, however if you carefully read all the information, you should be able to buy everything locally and get circuit boards printed locally using the plans provided. You will need to build or buy a PIC programmer to be able to load the initial MIOS operating system. Once this is loaded you can then upload custom configurations through your Midi interface.