mythicbeast

bump.... this would be aswome.

was just making a post about the same question. the chip used in ensoniqs old synths and samplerslike themirage is the same chip that runs the soundcard in an apple IIgs, which I also remember for its crispy sample playback. I think that the IIGs chip or the chip from a sega genesis, which is supposed to do FM and sample playing, would be good candidates.

Allright... its been almost a year since this thread started, but the idea has been popping into my head again, so I'm ressurecting it now that actually have a bit of electronics (but digital circuit) experience. some encouraging replys on this thread: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=4067.0 its interesting thatthe faq answer is mentioned because I hadn't read it sounds damningly true; that if you have to answer thequestionat all you probably won't be able do do it. still the things you could get out of that chip would be pretty awsome. most of all the proscpect of sampling, and cheap wavetable synthesis. but the sampling especially. I do have the esq-m and I have to say, the presets are terrible. also any digital fetishism that maid me buy it is really not there inthe sound of it, the filters gloss everything over. its actually too analouge! if you turn the filter off, the loaded patches are actually designed too well, its actually more realistic than alot of 90s era digital synths. anyway, if I thought I could do it, I might just take the chip out... another possibility though, would be to try sample playback or wavetable stuff without changing the hardware (on the esq) but instead interfacing some how with the eprom cartridge input to dump new waves into it that could correspond to wave slices of a sample and then have the machine cycle through the patches. thats beside the point though... I guess the question I have is: If the mirage which is a sampler uses the same chip as the esq, or a IIgs, then what is being done to the chips to have them utilized so differently? it makes me think that making a midiboxed ES-5503 super synth/sampler box. would be possible after all, think about the possibilities: sampling, cheap sample manipulation-type effects, user wave based rom (or ram) synthesis, wavetable etc...it could be pretty good box if buildable

allright, well I found that the last os for the IIgs came with an application called synthLAB that could control everything in that chip on a really basic level. there are windows emulators called xgs or kegs32 that come with a rom called crate which will run that os. what I was thinking of i gues would just be a hardware box dedicated to running synthlab, -which also can load user waves and sample in a really primitive way- it would be pretty good i guess, just synthlab with a built in midi interface and possibly sampling, but no computer. anyway, I would never try it now that i have the software. too much work. thanks for the help

what I mean is I bought a used ensoniq synthesizer that uses the same chip thinking it would sound something like the sounds an apple IIgs would make, but it does not sound anything like that. so the IIgs chip must have some kind of default waves, right?

so that would mean any game on an apple IIgs could load any custom waveform it wanted? that must be why those synthesizers sound nothing like the computer does, it would probably be easier to find a way to midi control a IIgs emulator

man... I have no idea about that DIP SMD jargon, but that second link from drin is pretty comprehensive, it seems like its just a digital rom synth with a few waveforms and amplitude modulation

Hi, I am a complete newcomer to this,and haven't tried to build anything, but I was thinking of using the midibox platform to control the chip from an apple IIgs... would this be prohibitivley hard for a novice to do? has anyone tried it before? or is there any way that anyone knows of to controll an intact apple IIgs's soundcard through midi, or some sort of apple software?. thanks for any help...