Fozzy The Bear

That'll be because it's an SSL..... Not because it's worth 100K. Like I said... You can get a 32 input Mackie that does 90% of what that SSL does for 5000.00 on the second user market, and in an audio comparison I defy nearly anybody at all to tell the difference in output quality. If you want totally analogue, then I know where there's a very nice 48 input NEVE with retrofitted mixmaster automation, going for less than 10K. For what you've said you want to achieve as an end result, you'll be spending at least twice if not three times as much as commercially available gear that will already do what you want to do. And if what you're doing is controling a virtual mixer running on PC Hardware it's impossible to go comparing that to an SSL. You're limited to the DAC quality on the PC it's running on. But if you only want people to tell you it can be done, then YES! it can be done. But at a cost in money and time and problems, that far exceeds what is already available off the shelf. I look forward to seeing the spectacular results. I wish you "Good Luck" with your project. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

I have to agree with Stuart here.... while it is possible to do it using multiple cores, the software needed to make it work is going to be very very complex. Certainly more complex than you at the moment, seem to understand. It's not that it's impossible... it's just that by spending 10,000 or more on it, you might as well be buying good desk off the shelf for 5,000 and having the other 5,000 available to spend on real hardware instead of virtual hardware (real synths, outboard etc etc) There are some spectacular bargains to be had. A good Mackie with automation (even a second hand one) will cost you way less than building this project. It's about what's practical, and what's realistic. I also think that given your comments above that "I'm no computer geek but I can get some help" I personally think this may be why you've underestimated the software programming involved to achieve this. Add another 1000 hours in programming time, and you might get close. "Is it doable to put a thing like this together or would I encounter several technical difficulties?" That question alone, says it all really... Several technical difficulties is something of an underestimate. I really don't want to dampen your spirits or your motivation, but you really need to think about whether you want to commit two to three years and 3000+ hours to this project. When you can get the same results from the real thing, for a lot less money. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Thanks for your thoughts on this Lyle. You're absolutely right. I should have done more research. I guess the answer on the whole, is, unless I want to re-write sections of MIOS to stick with the specified chips. I know they only cost pennies anyway, so it's not a big deal. I just thought there might be an easy way to press them into service. They came in allong with a lot of other components in a bulk deal. I'll stick them in the spares box for now until I find a use for them. Thanks again for your reply! Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi guys, Can anybody give me some pointers here..... I've got a shedload of 74HC164N shift registers in a 14 pin dip package. Are these interchangeable in any way with the 74HC165 shown as used in the DIN Module ??? I know the 74HC165 is a 16 pin package, so I'm guessing these are probably no use to me for this. If they are of use, then can anybody explain the difference between the two chips please. voltage requirements, performance etc etc.... Please bear in mind that my knowledge of this sort of electronics is very basic and I'm pretty new to some of this stuff. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Good point Phil! .... Yes he would need to do that. There is a way around that one where you can read the position of a single track fader as well, but what you say is certainly the easy way to do it. Assuming he finds some dual track faders that are the right value and travel. That's going to be the difficult part. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Ahhh!! OK! Thanks for that.... That's probably not a viable idea then. Way outside of my budget for this. Unless one comes up at a reasonable price, that is. I'll go back to the original idea of something like one of those M-Audio cards or the E-mu cards. They're cheap enough, have a DSP on board and and can output at 24bit quality. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Yes... You don't need them to do what you say you want to do. Think of a motor fader as two separate things... 1) It's a fader potentiometer the same as the fader pots you have now. 2) It's got a motor on it that can be controlled from a midibox and an MF Module for every 8 faders. 3) Both of the above separate things are contained in the one unit. All you have to do to get basic midi controlled motor fader function, for controlling the analogue audio signal, is to replace your existing faders with the motor fader. wire the pot into the channel circuit where the original pot was wired and wire the motor to the MF module. See: http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_mf.html This is assuming that you find motor faders with pots of the same value as your existing fader pots and the same travel. That will give you midi control of the faders... The applications here also have touch sensor feedback as an option, and you might need a couple of other boards for that. That is a very basic function though... It won't give you control of the pan pots or routing or muting or the EQ. But it is possible to do that as well. Gets more complex when you do, but it can be done. The secret with this forum is to read read read! All the info you need to do this is at: http://www.ucapps.de/index.htm Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi Guys, I thought I'd post this in flea market, in case anybody can help me with it. I'm looking for a Korg Oasys PCI Card... They were a sound card that was made by korg back in 1998 or 1999 that fits onto the pci bus of a normal PC running windows 98 or Mac running OS9 or lower. They were discontinued by Korg because they did not sell well. Mostly because Korg over priced them. It's needed for the project described in this forum thread: Prophet 5 Midibox Project Link. Happy to pay a sensible price + postage for one of them. Doesn't matter where you are I'll pay whatever the postage is to get one. I really want to get my project going with it, if I can. Please help me out if you can guys!! Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Another thought occurred to me today, in relation to the sound generation part of this project. A few years ago, (1998 or 1999 I think), Korg produced a PCI sound card that was designed to be plugged into a normal PC motherboard. If I remember correctly it came with plug-in soft synths, that used the DSP's on the board. It was called a Korg Oasys PCI. That had a very good Prophet 5 emulation. It was discontinued because it wasn't very successful, due to the fact that Korg overpriced it. But it was reported to have next to no latency because of the on card DSP's If anybody has one of those Korg PC sound cards, that they no longer want, and would like to get rid of it, please contact me. I am of course happy to pay a sensible price for it and the shipping for it. Ideally I'd need it to be complete with its software and driver disks and its break out cables because those don't seem to be available anywhere. The downside is, that because they dumped the product, no drivers have ever been developed that will work on anything newer than Windows98 or Mac OS9. But that shouldn't be a problem in this set-up. If anybody has any experience of those cards, I'd also be interested to hear from them. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Thanks Mike! I found some pictures that are clear on Prophet 5 Tribute Site I think I can see there how it should go, but if there's anything specific you want to point out, do let me know. Thanks again for all of your help, it really is appreciated that you've taken the time to help me with this. I'll update the details of the project as I progress with it. It might be a few weeks before I have anything to show and I've got to wait for components coming in before I can start on the electronics. But I will post again when there's something worth looking at or when I get stuck with stuff. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi Mike, I assume that there's something I need to see there to get it right?? If you're still having trouble uploading then, what I do is stick my photos onto www.photobucket.com and just post the http code links here. It's free, they don't charge for it. If it's a text file or a code file or something, then have you tried turning it into a zip or a rar file before uploading here? That might work. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Adding some pictures from the Sketchup 3D model.... I'm pretty pleased with the results. Comparing it to photographs it looks pretty damned close, thanks to the dimensions from Mike. It's cartainly close enough to actually start cutting wood. I only added the textures to the Sketchup model because it makes it much easier to see if it looks right. The "aggressive wedge" shape of the end is now obvious as well :D Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Just figured out the position of the front edge of the keyboard... :rolleyes: In line with the Pitch wheel box, which itself sits 1/2" or 12mm back from the front edge of the synth. It all fits together, much better now. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Yup! tried it out properly today... Connected the workstation keyboard to a separate PC that was only running the software emulations. Felt pretty tight... No lost notes, no hanging notes. Felt pretty tight all round. I was playing some fast runs and it was keeping up with me just fine... Threw it a MIDI song file and whacked the tempo up to 220bpm and it was still pretty tight on the metronome. This was even with both of the NI Pro53 and the Arturia ProphetV running at the same time on the one machine. So no problemo so far. I'm going to tackle the electronics in stages... get the KB Controller up and running first and feed that to the emulation and see what happens before I add the other sections. ROFL You're joking right, I daren't do that! I'd scare myself too much. To be honest I'm pretty happy that I can do it all for way less than half the price of one of those Creamware Desktop Prophet copies. The expensive parts are the replica prophet buttons and control panel knobs. They work out about £2.00 each for the buttons... I'm just going to buy one, take a mold off it and cast resin key-tops with microswitches under them. That way, I can make them myself and get them down to less than £0.30 each. Same thing with the control panel knobs. I've just seen a full replica set on e-bay and they want £62.00 for them!! :shocked: :frantics: Feck That!! I'll turn my own up from solid Aluminium. The reason I'm going this way, is that its actually cheaper. This is only because I have 99% of the physical hardware for that section and the keyboard I'm using is exactly the right size and feels good. The core for a KB Controller and the DIN modules to handle it are not really that expensive. At the end of the day, they're more flexible too, because I can program them to behave exactly how I want them to and re-program them any time I want to change something. Yeah! if you look at the KB Controller Section description, you'll see that I'm routing its MIDI in from a socket on the back panel of the synth. The MB Core modules can perform MIDI Merge internally if you give them the right commands in MIOS. So it should be able to handle MIDI input from the outside world directly. Thanks for your further thoughts on this. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

OK Chaps!! Time to take the plunge and order the electronics..... This is how I figure it should work, If anybody can spot anything I missed out or anything else I need to do then I'd appreciate the feedback. Keyboard Controller Section 1 X Core Module running self written software... (which I'll upload after it's written in case anybody else wants to use it or modify it for their own purposes) The functions required for this are quite simple and the software examples here give all the info necessary to write it. Including note on note off for each key plus de-bounce code which is already part of MIOS. I already write Visual Basic and the C Code seems to be very similar, so I shouldn't have any trouble with that. 2 X DIN Modules to handle input from the switches on 61 keyboard keys and + 2 buttons to set + or - for which MIDI Channel it's transmitting on. 1 X AIN Module to handle Pitch and Mod wheels, plus a couple of inputs for external volume and mod pedals. MIDI IN routed from synth rear panel with merge on. MIDI OUT routed to Panel Controller Section. Panel Controller Section 1 X Core Module running Midibox 64E 2 X DIN Modules to handle 26 Rotary Controlers 2 X DIN Modules to handle 37 panel push buttons + 8 64E Menu Buttons. 1 X DOUT Module to handle 32 LED Lights on buttons. 1 X 2X16 LED Module (backlit Red letters on Black background) for 64E Display. MIDI IN from keyboard controller section MIDI OUT to Synth Section. Synth Section Mini ITX Motherboard running a Flash Card instead of a hard drive, with XP and "NI Pro53" + "Arturia ProphetV" Which should give lots of sound options. Monitor, Mouse, Keyboard, ports routed to synth rear panel. 24Bit Sound Card, With Midi IO... and audio inputs/outputs routed to standard 1/4" rear panel instrument jacks. MIDI IN from Panel Controler Section. MIDI OUT routed to Rear Panel of synth. I'll start ordering the parts shortly. So if the above works out, then It's all good to go. As I said, any final input over anything I missed, before I place the parts orders, would be appreciated. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Now I know this... I can see it in this picture as well! Had you not explained that one I never would have noticed it.... But the angle at the back is very clear here. Only obvious now, because the machine in the photograph is upside down with the base pan removed. Makes complete sense now and yes it goes together nicely in the sketchup model. All the dimensions fit! Cheers Bud!! Beers are on me if we're ever on the same continent. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

AHHHHH!! OK!! Now I got it.... You know, that no matter how many photographs I looked at that isn't immediately obvious on it. Now I know that, I'll go adjust the model to match. Thanks again! Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Cheers Mike! That's exactly the dimension I calculated it at, so that that kind of confirms things for me. Here's a perspective corrected photograph... All the dimensions that you've given me fit it perfectly. Except for the total front to back measurement, which I get to 395mm on the longest edge (top) of the end cheek... It all fits at that. This is why I was struggling with the 415mm measurement you gave me on the case photograph. It seems that it's that one that's out by a bit. Thanks again for all your help! I can work everything on the dimensions from what I have now. I'll try and post the a pic of the Sketchup model later. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

No I haven't tried that. I'll give it a go!! Thanks for the tip! Thanks Mike, I think I need it... I've been laying it up in Google Sketchup today Just so I can get a handle on how it's assembled. I've got something wrong at the moment, but I'm not sure where the error is. I've got the following Pratt & Read Keyboard drawing, which seems to match up nicely with the keyboard I have, so we're good to go on that one: and I've laid in the wood panel behind that, but the space between that and the case back panel appears to be too large for the control panel by about 20mm or more... Sorry to be asking again Mike, but I wonder if you could give me the measurement of just the metal control panel from front to back please. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Yup! That's exactly what it is.... I more or less agree with you... But I look at it this way, that, if it doesn't work out, I've then got another core module to use in another project. As far as rubber keyboard switches go, I've repaired quite a few of them. They do wear and like you say, having things spilled in them is a disaster... The last one I repaired was back in October, when I acquired a Roland D5 for £3 because some of the keys didn't work! That one had had something spilled in it and the tracks corroded. Easy fix with a bit of conductive paint. But they're impossible when you need to solder anything to them. True enough... The one on my Moog Rogue is a pain in the rear for doing that no matter how many times it's cleaned or greased. But that has J wires on it. This one uses flexible springs instead of wires and the action is very positive. It has got a double bus bar on it, so technically it's possible, but the programming for that might be tricky. I'm happy with not having velocity sensing on this project though. If I do need it, then it's always available over MIDI and I can always control the synth from my Master Keyboard. Thanks a million for the dimensions!!! You made my day Bud!! I can get on with the woodwork now. :D Cheers!!! Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Thanks Mike.... OK Project update.... Digging around in my junk pile in the garage... I've dug out an ORLA DMK7 Midi controler keyboard. The electronics on this screwed the pooch a long time ago (early 1990's I think). The backlight would come on but the main board showed no signs of life. I powered it up today to see what was happening and one of the bead caps on the PSU exploded unceremoniously. Unfortunately, they're completely unmarked as to their value, and I really can't be bothered getting the ESR meter out to find out what the similar ones on the board are rated at, or what else that might have fried in the process. So I've now decided to scavenge the hardware from this dead dinosaur.... It has several advantages: 1) A nice weighted and sprung 61 note full size keyboard.. Ideal!! Not only that but it's of the best variety, being a proper bus bar keyboard and not one of those garbage rubber switch types. Very easy to solder all the new connections to. The keyboard itself is screwed to the case and has a good solid metal frame, and hinges to lift it for servicing. 2) A nice set of pitch and mod wheels which look almost identical visually to the Prophet ones. So I should have no trouble connecting the pots from those to the core (replacing the pots if necessary) and then fitting them in a new metal panel to the left of the keyboard. 3) A lot of salvageable chips that all appear to be nicely socketed. (they'll go straight in the spares box). 4) Lots of other bits of salvageable hardware plugs, sockets, cables, Midi Sockets etc etc... NOW! Here's the plan.... I figure it'll cost me no more to buy an extra Core Module than it will to buy a cheapo midi keyboard to gut as a controler... Plus it means that it's then programable. I figure that connecting the keyboard keys to switch inputs on the core will easily allow me to connect 61 Notes up as button inputs and have them transmit the correct MIDI note number and note off when they're released. Given that the core can scan the state of all connected buttons every 1ms the response time should be very good indeed! Then take the MIDI output from that Core and feed it to the MIDI input of the second core, with the merge on, and the second core should handle all of the Rotary Encoders and buttons on the front panel. It does mean that I have to write some of my own software, but hey! so what, the examples of how to read buttons in the OS are there for all to find. So it should work! If anybody sees any major problems with that plan do let me know. What I need now is some help with the dimensions for the new case Mike, I was wondering if you possibly have time to do that for me. I've attached a couple of pictures of the dimensions I desperately need... Everything else I can work out from that. If you have time to do that for me I'd really appreciate your help. Thanks again!! Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi Mike, Thanks for the links! I suspect that they might both be the same size as they're both listing the panel cutout as being 12.6mm wide. They sound more like Oberheim switches to me as well. Not sure of the exact switch size, but they sound a little bit too wide. Could you do me a favour Mate and measure what the actual panel cutout size is on your front panel please. That would tell us if they are the right ones. If they are as we suspect, Oberheim switches, then what I could do is draw the correct size switches up in the computer, cut a model for the top at the correct size, then take a rubber mold off that, and cast some button tops in a polyvinyl resin. There might even be a market for those if I can sell them cheap enough! LOL :D I do know that a company called "Powertran" used to use them as well... They used to make a couple of rack synth and reverb module kits back in the 80's and were UK or AU based, but went out of business some time ago. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi Mike, As a completely green with envy non Prophet 5 owner I can only agree that it's possibly one of the coolest pieces of kit on the planet. Yeah! I think that's the route I'm going, I've just spotted a Yamaha PSR for sale for very few sheckles locally. Sweet Deal!! I picked up my Maplin 5600S in swap for some software. I think that's probably my best deal to date. Agreed!! That's something I really need to keep tabs on with this project. Having played a Prophet 5 back in the 80's, I know what an astoundingly good response they have in comparison to other keyboards from the same period. So I have to get the same or similar results, or it'll just feel wrong. I did look at those... They're selling new for about £900 in the UK. I don't see them come up for sale second user very often over here. Even so I'm one of those people that derives as much pleasure from building something as I do from using it, so I really want to go the build it myself route. WOW!!! That would be astounding!! What a great addition to the project. As I said though, I'm in the UK.. South West Cornwall to be exact. So I don't know what the postage costs on something like that would work out at. It might be a bit of a killer mate! Worth investigating though. Because one of the things I'm struggling with is accurate case dimensions. None of the manuals or service manuals has dimensioned drawing in them. I don't think Sequential ever published a set of accurate dimensions for the case parts. So yes! I'd be interested in a front panel and any other parts people can help out with. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear)