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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.

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.

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.

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 ;-)

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)

ipc.de@... [xpantastic] wrote:

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:

Hi,

Just a quick note...

I've decided to init the patch to 'OBERHEIM', the basic patch, and will record the voices from the synth and upload them to my website.

I can move onto the other suggestions then.

Thanks,

Jeremy.

First my 6 voices with Oberheim patch (8MB):



ipc.de@... [xpantastic] wrote:

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

Just could the fuse blowing damage the voice chips.

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?

I had a 110v->220v power adapter. I had the Xpander on 110, and put in the 240v adapter in it and the 240 overloaded the 110v.

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.

Okay.

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.

It tunes fine.

As regards the voices, when using ROTATE assignment (standard), does each voice sound the same?

Check out the WAV above for that answer.

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 ;-)

Heh!

I don't want a mutant Xpander...

You (and others) please tell me how my WAV sounds.

Thanks and all the best,

Jeremy.

Jeremy Smith jeremy@... [xpantastic] wrote:

First my 6 voices with Oberheim patch (8MB):

Just to note so people can check their voices to mine: OBERHEIM patch is hold down Store and press Clear. Current patch isn't overwritten, so it's temporay.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

Jeremy Smith jeremy@... [xpantastic] wrote:

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?

To clarify...

I live in the UK where the power supply is 240v.

I had a 110v to 240v adapter for a synth of mine.

The Xpander was set (switch at the back) to 110v. Then, instead of plugging in the 110v adapter, I (accidentallty) plugged in a 240v cable (mains voltage). Double the input voltage blew the fuse in the PSU. I got a new fuse - of the right variety - and it worked again.

Since then (2005), the fuse has blown twice more, just to surges rather than the wrong cable. Again, seemingly no problems tuning the voices.

Hope that's clearer now.

Jeremy.

Karl Schmeer shire03@... [xpantastic] wrote:

Hi Jeremy,

Listening to your wav file, It sounds just like my Matrix 12's init patch. As soon as I figure out how to extract it I could look at it in
sound forge or some other wave editor and compare it against mine.

Great work for verifying this! Thanks for helping.

I can stop worrying about my synth's sound and start making some new patches - and some new music. :-)

I am a bit concerned though about your synth blowing fuses. I would recommend that you plug your OB into a surge suppressor type power strip. Are you sure that it blows fuses during a mains power surge? It is possible that the caps in the power supply are failing,
as this could cause a fuse to blow. It is a 30+ year old synth.

Well, I have 9 fuses, and it only happened twice in 10 years. If it gets worse, I can replace the caps, but it should be okay near-term.

Cheers,

Jeremy.

Hello friends out there,

It puzzles me, but how can even a considerable indentity in the "init patch" (which is a most simple patch) tell that a synth is technically fully functioning?? Like if you would judge the performance of a car just by listening to the machine idling.

I would say, the init patch of all things sounds most similar in all synths. I am sorry, the posted sound files sound much like a patch on my Roland alpha Juno. What does this tell us? Blow the fuse in your Oberheim and you have a Roland?

Cheers,
Mondo

deano deanolium@... [xpantastic] wrote:

Hi Mondo,

Whilst it doesn't check *everything* on the Xpander, the init patch basically has enough to ensure everything is working.

I was going to post to say just this, so thanks for verifying it.

On a simple scale, the Xpander has only a couple of sound blocks in it -- a VCO to generate the sound waves (two per voice), a VCF which does the filtering (modes are selected by basically messing around with some inputs on this), a VCA to do the volume, and then the CPU does everything else (LFOs, Envelope Generation, Tracking, etc). The init patch on the Xpander is a sound which uses both oscillators, the filter set to low pass 2 pole mode which is put around halfway of its range, and then a basic envelope. It's not a particularly interesting sound, but it does use all the elements which the Xpander uses to make sound. So if there's any faults, you would hear it here by things like distortion in the sound; the filter being either too closed or too open; one of the waveforms being missing; etc.

The only thing I needed from the comparison was the VCO's and waveforms, the thing I was most worried about. They compare well, so that confirms it.

And finally, every tune page is a 'PASS' so that confirms it. Nothing wrong with my Xpander.

To be honest, the Xpander's base sound of the oscillators and filter is ok, but nothing massively special. What adds the magic sauce is the complexity you can make of the patches and how good the sounds are when played on multiple voices. That is what sounds different to other synths.

I've been listening to Sasha's Xpander, and it really is amazing how good it can sound, when the basic patch is so mild. Not sure how many effects he used.

To test anything else on the Xpander would really just check the CPU/ROM isn't slightly dead in a way that makes everything work except one specific thing. This is incredibly unlikely (such faults would cause the CPU to quickly crash on startup).

Yup, all this works fine.

Thanks,

Jeremy.