I am sorry, but I forgot to add to my previous post that for checking the consistency of the six voices you will have to:

(1) acitvate ALL six voices in the master menu (ON/OFF VOICES menu)
(2) perform tuning routine
(3) check, if still all six voices are ON (tuning routine might switch off an un-tuned voice, without the unexperienced user knowing)
(4) set assignment (ZONE) to ROTATE
(5) play the same note consecutively (six times in a row),
(6) repeat (5) for different settings and listen carefully.

With ROTATE, each time the note is played by another voice. After six notes the same voice plays. So if you hear a different sound after six notes, one voice is different from the others. With a good ear you might spot even tiny differences between the voices. To locate the voice number, look at the left most display. Each voice is represented by a dot.

First try the clean waveforms of each OSC1 of each voice with open filter (4LP, Fc=127, Res= 0), then the same for OSC2. If all VCO waveforms are consistent, go to the filter settings, try different settings of Fc and of Res for each voice, try LP, HP and BP settings. If the six voices are consistent in all these aspects, then most probably there is no problem with the voices.

Despite their high prices on the market and their essential function to the system, the CEM chips are not very prone to fail.

Much more prone to fail are CMOS chips. They are used to switch and mix waveforms and filter characteristics in the XPander voice (CMOS 4016/4066, CMOS 4053). That's why I recommend to test all waveforms and filter modes.

The are also used to distribute the CVs from the DAC to the voices, but the latter will probably be detected by the TUNING routine. If not, you may find out by testing different Fc and Res levels in all voices (see above)

You are sure that the voices aren't as good as before. So, what is your question?

I would like to help, but it is unclera to me what actually happened that blew your fuse ;-)
You used as different power cord? Where did you plug it in? at 230V mains or at 110V mains? Where do you find 230V and 110V mains in the same home installation?

The switching power supply of the XPander has, due to its nature, protection against surge and overvoltage, i.e. setting to 110V and plugging in 230V.
The primary (mains)? side of the PSR does not let more current in as needed no overvoltage should occur on the secondary side. Besides, the voltage supply for the voice chips have additional linear voltage regulators, that assure +/12 Volt output even if the input is three time as much.
The only thing that would suffer from overvoltage is the transformer, because approx. twice the current would flow at twice the voltage. That's why the fuse blew.

On the other hand, there might be a problem to the PSR itself that blew the fuse, which is not in direct relation to the "change of the power cord", in particular if you never applied overvoltage. But you reported that now the XPander is operating normal and even is performing the tuning routines.

As regards the voices, when using ROTATE assignment (standard), does each voice sound the same? Use different filter settings and different wave form settings. IF in all instances all voice sound the same, I seriously doubt that there is damage to the voices. Damage is something unpredictable. Else, we will have to claim that there is a stable condition 1 for all voices which existed before the fuse blew, and a second stable condition 2, after the event. This is very unlikely. If yes, you have created an all new version of Oberheim Voices and you should sell your XPander to a collector of rarities ;-)

Thomas Dial dialtr@... [xpantastic] wrote:

Have you tried running the tuning procedure?

Yes.

Everything checks out, I did entire diagnostics.

But I'm SURE the voice chips aren't as good as they were when I bought it.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

Thomas Dial dialtr@... [xpantastic] wrote:

That's cool, Jeremy!

You've inspired me to share a track I wrote soon after I got my Xpander. It's done entirely with the Xpander except for the AIR Piano plugin that comes with ProTools.

It's a rough cut and there are some audible mistakes,

It's a lovely track, thanks for sharing. Nice melody, nice production.

Some nice XPander sounds there. I'm convinced my Xpander's voice chips are faulty, I don't know if mine sounds like yours anymore. :-(

Jeremy.

Hi folks,

Soon after I got my Xpander, I had it on 110v and plugged in a 240v cable.

The fuse blew and I got some new fuses from Maplin. It seemed to work okay afer replacing the fuse.

My question is: Could the power surge blowing the fuse, have damaged the voice chips?

I'm convinced it doesn't sound as 'fresh' as a functional Xpander.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

Hi folks,

Here's my new album :



I'm just posting it here because I need some people to listen to it -
and buy it!

'What Is Life' is not the Xpander, but the Korg Z1.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

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??? (1) With UNTUNE VCOs of lower voice board sound about? one octave (1.2 Volts) lower than VCOs of upper board. Are there different default values for lower and upper boards? Same O.S. installed on both boards.

??? (2) DAC OFFSET service routine only works with lower voice board. How to adjust DAC offset on upper voice board?

??? (3) Coding jumper decides which board is "upper", which is "lower". Is it possible simply by way of swapping jumpers to make upper to lower and vice versa?

Many thanks for help and insights!?

Hello brothers!

Anybody have a wav file of a suitable click track for the trigger input?

I have tried a few, but no luck yet...

Thanks

trev

Agreed. The Xpander/M-12 factory patches have to be some of the worst ever and are pretty embarrassing given the power of the synths.

There really isn't much out there in terms of downloadable patches that I've seen, but I recently came across a site with five different custom banks and I loaded them all. Among those five hundred sounds or so, there were really only 3 or 4 really interesting patches that warranted saving. I guess the bottom line is that if you want decent patches for these machines, you have to program your own!

I did, of course ;-)

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