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Re: Hi-res XPander images
John Pallister
Hi Tony,
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Nobody's saying it would be easy to develop a new version of the Xpander OS, but it would certainly be much easier if there was a version of the source code to start with. Is your friend looking to form a small team to develop a new Xpander OS as a commercial product, like the Europa upgrade (which had a hardware and software component, and therefore would be a much bigger deal than a straight OS update)? If not, could he be persuaded to donate the source code to the Xpander user community (i.e. this mailing list)? Your allusions to the Xpander source code are very tantalising. There are people who would be interested in working with the source code if it became available; what exactly are your friend's criteria for releasing it? Cheers, John :^P On Tuesday, 3 April 2012 at 15:07, Tony Cappellini wrote:
A project like this is easily going to take 1 person more than a year, even ifYou've mentioned your friend before, although I can't find the reference. By >>"committed to the cause", do you mean "prepared to spend money"? |
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
@Jeremy,The decompiler is just for figuring out how code works, rather than recompilable C. Yes, it is 'structured' with loops, and no registers, etc. The whole point is to see the program at a higher level, but with far less effort than doing it by hand. Say, 2 weeks instead of 2 months. Cheers, Jeremy. |
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
>>You've mentioned your friend before, although I can't find the reference. By >>"committed to the cause", do you mean "prepared to spend money"?? A project like this is easily going to take 1 person more than a year, even if
they know 6809 assembly very well. For those who know the Jupiter-6, the Europa upgrade took something like 3-5 years before it was finished. Two people worked on the project initially, but I believe it was eventually finished by 1 guy.
Finding the right people to see this project to its completion isn't going to be easy.
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
John Pallister
@Kris,
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If he already supports the 6502 then the 6809 won't take him long to implement (if he hasn't already). @Jeremy, If Tony's friend could be persuaded to divulge the source code, we wouldn't need to decompile it; it has to be hand-coded assembly language, so turning it into C code is unlikely to help, I would've thought… I suppose you'd get "structured" assembly language, but then you'd have to feed any modifications back through a C compiler, which would be unlikely to produce machine code of the same density. But I'm just guessing here, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Personally, I think re-implementing it in a 6809 Forth would be the best basis for future work. Or replacing the entire CPU with a Raspberry Pi (). ;) I have looked at 6809 emulators and suchlike in the past in order to start reverse-engineering the Xpander OS, but the day job has kept me too busy to make much progress. Now my Xpander is on a ship heading towards me here in Blighty and my day job project is nearly done, so I'm hoping to get into this again later this year. @Tony, You've mentioned your friend before, although I can't find the reference. By "committed to the cause", do you mean "prepared to spend money"? How might we demonstrate our commitment to his satisfaction? Cheers, John :^P-- John Pallister john@... john@... On Tuesday, 3 April 2012 at 08:58, Do It Yourself Synth wrote:
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
Hi,
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I just go to your website, but unfortunately, you do not seem to support 6809 processors right ? Kris Le 3 avr. 2012 à 03:10, Jeremy Smith a écrit :
Tony Cappellini wrote:Hi, |
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
Tony Cappellini wrote:
Hi, I run a decompiler company and my software can reverse-engineer any assembly code into C. I could put your friend's comments into defined labels, then run the Xpander ROM through it,. The result is C code with variable and function names. Of course I'll do this for free as I love my Xpander. :-) Cheers, Jeremy. |
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
ah ok, I didn't realize noise was just a separate sound source being mixed with VCO1/2. So yea, adding VCO2 -> VCO1 sync would not have the results I'm looking for without the modifications you mentioned. -omar --- sent from iPhone On Apr 2, 2012, at 6:32 PM, Do It Yourself Synth <cjanot@...> wrote:
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
If any of you are **really serious** about re-writing the Xpander OS, I think I know someone who has the original source code (you really gotta luv 6809 assembly) and would probably be interested in contacting someone who is committed to the cause and has lots of time on their hands. On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 3:32 PM, Do It Yourself Synth <cjanot@...> wrote:
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
Nothing about the OS for now since I do not have an Xpander/Matrix for now ;-) So : I had to build my own toy first ;-)
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About VCO and noise, I do not understand. When I'm looking at schematics, the noise is just mixed with VCO1 and VCO2 just before the VCF. There is no direct link between the noise generator and VCO2. In order to use the white noise as a sync input, a few modifications are necessaries on each voices. But the OS had to be modified too.? Edit/Recall : Pure OS functionnality, but pfuuhh ;-) Individual volume control for each waveform : It may require a LOT OF mods on the voice schematics. And in the OS… Increased patch memory : I do not precisely analyze how are done the addresses allocation, but I suspect it will be very hard to do since the first half of the addresses space is shared with 24Kb of RAM and multiple devices (display, less, I/O, …) Modulation Routing Page : … So you will have to be very, very, very, very, very …. patient ;-) Kris Le 3 avr. 2012 à 00:11, Omar a écrit :
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
My first goal is to build a 'basic' 6 voices clone. Theorically, after studying the schematic, it seems that hardware support up to 24 voices (4 voices boards) is here. But I don't know if the firmware would support this. The second problem with a 24 voices system is the cost and the availability for 24 CEM3372 & CEM3374 !
There is still a lot of job to do. I almost finished to reproduce the schematics I found in the service manual. But there is a lot of debug to do on them and I need photos since there is some strange things on the service manual drawings. And finally, I will support more recent VFD displays. One more thing, the six voices won't be soldered on the voices board but they will be individually plugged into the voices board. So if CEM chips becomes too hard to find, it will be possible to replace these boards with new one with different filters and/or oscillators. |
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
please tell me you're trying to re-write the OS as well!
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I'm adding my wish list again: * VCO 2 -> VCO1 sync (white noise is only available on VCO2. So being able to use VCO2 as the sync master and use white noise as the sync master lends to some amazing tone and timbre coloration of the slave oscillator. the ESQ is amazing at this) * Edit Recall!!!! (for the love of god please!!!) * Individual volume control of waveforms on each VCO (I know, it's probably a stretch) * Increased patch memory * Modulation Routing page :):) Those are my top wishes On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 5:17 PM, tyrosine <nocontext@...> wrote:
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Re: Xpander with Volta/Silent Way
I would add here, that even though you can't get "snappy" bass sounds, you can still get "killer" bass sounds with the Xpander. Listen to Nitzer Ebb "Belief" or? "Showtime" and you'll hear the magic of the Xpander used for bass as well as buzzy seq type synth sounds. the 1 and 2 pole filter modes are very aggressive and when shaped properly, you can get some amazing buzzy raspy bass sounds with bite and cojones...especially when you put your primary zone in unison-low mode to trigger all 6 voices at once. monosynth what?? 6-voices of an Xpander in unison will eat your monosynth for lunch.
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-o On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 5:27 PM, tyrosine <nocontext@...> wrote:
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Re: Xpander with Volta/Silent Way
tyrosine
Omar is correct, the oscillators in the Xpander will not respond any more quickly if they are sequenced over CV (Silent Way, hardware sequencer, etc). The reason is that the CV/Gate inputs only accept pitch and Gate (note on/off) signals. Each patch on the Xpander has its own envelope settings and sending a CV/Gate signal will not change the existing limitations of the envelopes, it just plays the note as if you had connected a MIDI or CV/Gate keyboard. The Xpander is not the right synth for that snappy bass sound, though it can make a much wider variety of sounds than many synths that _can_ make that type of sound.
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--- In xpantastic@..., Omar Torres <holografique@...> wrote:
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Re: Hi-res XPander images
tyrosine
Please tell me you're making a 24-voice clone.
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--- In xpantastic@..., "c_janot" <cjanot@...> wrote:
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Re: Xpander with Volta/Silent Way
yes thats correct, but its just for triggering gate and pitch of each voice. Basically allowing you to trigger or sequence an Xpander without using MIDI. But this has nothing to do with the Xpander's "snappy" response issue. the lack of "snappy" that you refer to in the Xpander is due to the slow response of its software based envelope generators specifically when?modulating the?filter cutoff. You cannot get that characteristic "pop" when setting the envelope? "decay" to low values like you would on a Minimoog or a Roland System 100m for example, both well know for having very snappy envelopes. The only way?you could fix this with an external CV signal is if the Xpander supported the ability to let you select one of the external CV inputs as a modulation source, which would then allow you to route that to the filter cutoff and use one of the Silent Way software envelopes to get? a much more snappier response versus its internal envelope generators of the Xpander. Since the Xpander doesn't support this, there is no way to do what you are trying to do. -omar --- sent from iPhone On Apr 2, 2012, at 11:13 AM, Richard Taylor <rick@...> wrote:
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Re: Xpander with Volta/Silent Way
Richard Taylor
I'm not 100% sure on how to do it, as I don't have the Xpander in front of me yet. However in the Sound on Sound review of Silent way the reviewer states that they used SW's voice controller to play an Xpander polyphonically:
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By instantiating a number of Voice Controller plug-ins, assigning one as ‘master’ and the others to individual voice numbers, I was able to use my six-voice Oberheim Xpander via its CV inputs.? ? On Apr 1, 2012, at 10:40 PM, Omar wrote:
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Re: Xpander is skipping a voice
chris, I can take some for you. I have a US model. I'm assuming you just need pictures of the boards in their current mounted state inside the case. If you need both sides of each board then thats a lot more involved and I don't think I'm gonna be able to help you on that. -omar --- sent from iPhone On Apr 2, 2012, at 1:01 AM, Christophe JANOT <cjanot@...> wrote:
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Re: Xpander with Volta/Silent Way
I'm curious how you would make that work. My understanding is the CV inputs on the Xpander are hard-routed to pitch control of the VCO's only. Is this correct? I couldn't see anywhere in the manual or in the master page where you can setup the CV inputs to be used as a freely assignable modulation source.
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On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 10:13 PM, sonictransmissions2002 <rick@...> wrote:
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