Messages

1

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Hiss

« on: November 23, 2017, 03:23:41 PM »

I have noticed quite pronounced hiss which occurs *only* when notes are playing, and is clamped thereafter.  Thus this seems unlikely to be the DAC, but is more likely something internal: perhaps the waveform resolution?  Some sounds have a more pronounced hiss than others; sometimes it's very loud, sometimes not, but it's always there.  Does anyone have a similar experience?  Any suggestions for dealing with it?

2

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: Preenfm2 with Roli Seaboard

« on: November 18, 2017, 07:50:59 PM »

i just received a Roli Seaboard MPE keyboard and i was wondering if anybody had experience with the last Preenfm firmware and the potential MPE functionnality.

The PreenFM2 cannot presently support MPE, and thus the full functionality of the Seaboard.   It would be a great idea to get MPE working on the PreenFM2.  However in order to do this, several things must be implemented:

• The PreenFM2 doesn't support RPN, which is critical to supporting MPE.  The reason for this is that RPN requires CC 100 and 101, and the PreenFM2 has assigned those two CCs for CC_ARP_PATTERN and CC_ARP_DIVISION.  These two must be reassigned to other CCs, leaving 100 and 101 free to do RPN.
    This will be a non backward compatible change.
• RPN (and NRPN) parsing needs to be implemented more properly than it is currently.  At present, the PreenFM2 cannot parse NRPN in a general form, and it can't parse RPN at all.
• The PreenFM2 would then need to handle MPE RPN commands to set up MIDI channels
• Finally, the PreenFM2 needs to handle per-voice MIDI assignment.  At present the PreenFM2 can assign different channels to different instruments, but not to different voices.

3

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: TX81z W1-W8 + Feedback Waveforms .txt

« on: November 18, 2017, 07:04:04 PM »

Many people have asked for feedback as an option and compared the PFM2 to Yamaha synths like the TX81z. While this is a completely different instrument I thought it might be interesting to add waveforms from the TX81z and varying feedback levels for each waveform. This took a very long time to get right. Considering the TX waveforms are 4096 samples and the PFM2 has a max 1024 samples they aren't 1:1 but sound basically the same.

I was looking for exactly this today.  However I'm a bit confused with the screenshots of the waveforms WITHOUT feedback.  The eight waves are just made up of pieces of cosine quadrants.  Waves 1 and 5 look basically right, and waves 3 and 7 look *roughly* like Yamaha claimed.  But waves 2, 4, 6, nd 8 look quite wrong.  Do you have any idea why this might be?  Was Yamaha's DAC that bad?

4

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: NRPN and MIDI documentation questions and issues

« on: November 18, 2017, 06:57:23 PM »

2. sin ^2 : sin*sin.
szer : sin on the first half of the period then zero.
spos : sin always positive.

Could you tell me if the Sawtooth wave is a saw up (a ramp) or a saw down?

5

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: TX81Z Waveforms

« on: October 05, 2017, 06:01:57 PM »

The second four.

6

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / TX81Z Waveforms

« on: October 05, 2017, 06:01:06 PM »

The Yamaha TX81Z has eight waveforms.  A few seem to be in the PreenFM2 (such as, of course, Wave 1)  But it's not entirely clear which ones are fully replicated in the PreenFM2 by default.

Given how famous and important the TX81Z is, and how common these eight waveforms are in the TX81Z and later synths, it would seem to be a very big win to have all eight of these in the PreenFM2.  Has anyone implemented these set as user waveforms?  How hard would it be to include them in the PreenFM2 by default?

I attach the first four waveforms here, and then the second four in the next message (the forum only allows four attachments per posting).  The waveforms are simply rearrangements of the quadrants of a cosine wave AFAIK.

7

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: Edisyn Patch Editor for PreenFM2

« on: September 30, 2017, 07:17:59 AM »

Writing a patch editor is a fairly monumental task, even if you knew Java really well.

However, the Nova has an *extensive* NRPN facility.  What I'd do is make a bunch of templates for the Novation SL Zero Mk II to control the Nova, assuming Novation hasn't done it already.  You can often get a Zero Mk II for about $100 on ebay (I did).

8

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: Edisyn Patch Editor for PreenFM2

« on: September 25, 2017, 10:27:02 PM »

The long-awaited Edisyn 11 is out, with patch editors for the Blofeld, Microwave II/XT/XTk, Matrix 1000, PreenFM2, Kawai K4, and Yamaha TX81Z.  Very extensive collection of patch exploration tools aimed directly at FM synthesizers such as the Preen.  It's a very major improvement over Version 10.  Please let me know if you find any bugs or problems.

9

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: Edisyn Patch Editor for PreenFM2

« on: August 30, 2017, 06:50:14 AM »

Writing a patch editor for a synth in *ANY* toolkit is hard because you'll have to do many of the following: (1) lay out the widgets (2) write the patch dump parser (3) write the patch dump emitter (4) write the code to issue requests for patch dumps etc. (4) write the code to send individual parameter changes (5) write the code to respond to individual parameter changes made on the synth. 

All synths do these things in completely different ways, have lots of bugs in their communication protocols, etc.  And to be complete you'd need to write separate editors for single-mode and multi-mode etc.

That being said, in Edisyn I tried really hard to make patch editors relatively easy to code, while at the same time providing a lot of flexibility so you can handle the particular weirdness of the synth you're dealing with. 

And Edisyn provides a whole lot of built-in features that you get for free: lots of widgets, MIDI handling facilities, CC or NRPN mapping, pass-through from a controller, saving and loading sysex files, and a host of exploratory synth programming options, like variable randomization and mutation, patch merging and recombination, nudging your patch towards other patches, and (soon to be released) a full-featured hill-climber.

BTW, you mentioned the Microwave. Edisyn already happens to have good-working patches for the Microwave II, XT, and XTk.  Not the Microwave I: I don't own one.

10

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Edisyn Patch Editor for PreenFM2

« on: August 21, 2017, 05:08:39 AM »

I have made a patch editor for the PreenFM2 for Edisyn, my patch editor tool.  Edisyn runs in Java and works on OS X, several versions of Windows (I am told), and Linux.  Edisyn's PreenFM2 editor is feature-complete.  Edisyn has a lot of facilities for exploratory patch programming -- and in fact over the next few months I'm going to use it as a basis for some new facilities to make FM programming easier.  Anyway, check it out.

11

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Arpeggiator Latch and All Sounds Off

« on: August 01, 2017, 12:03:19 AM »

This seems like a bug to me, but it's up to interpretation.  If the Arpeggiator Latch is ON, then sending All Sounds Off does not turn off arpeggiation.

Generally an All Sounds Off is used as a panic button: "make the dang synth shut up!".  But the PreenFM2 won't shut up in this context.  I note that the on-board panic button on the synth does shut the sound up.  It seems to me that All Sounds Off should do the same.

12

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Full-Speed NPRN dump crashing

« on: July 31, 2017, 06:25:50 PM »

It looks like I can't send a full NRPN dump to the PreenFM2 at full MIDI speed.  It crashes about one times in five.

I'm testing this on my patch editor written for Edisyn, and when I do "randomize" (which sends a random valid patch to the PreenFM2), it'll crash hard at about that rate.  If I force Edisyn to only send out NRPN once every 1ms (ugh) then the PreenFM2 doesn't appear to die.  Keep in mind that MIDI is about one byte every 1/3ms.  This means I have to wait for about two seconds :-( :-( to update a patch, whereas at full MIDI speed it'd be a small fraction of a second.

This looks like a buffer overflow.  All told I'm sending (I believe) 227 NRPN messages, so 908 CC messages or 2724 bytes.

13

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: Revised PreenFM2 MIDI page

« on: July 31, 2017, 04:58:23 PM »

I've found a problem with the Preen's NRPN dumps violating its ranges.

Bank 3, Patch 2 ("Resolead  MB").  When loaded, OM Index 1 is 18.0 and Index 2 is 25.0.  This sends NRPN values of 1800 and 2500 respectively, outside the 0...1600 range specified.  This causes two problems:

1. You can't use the knobs on the machine to go to 18 or 25.  So you can *load* this patch but you cannot *create* it (!?)

2. It's not clear what the upper limit is over NRPN.  What should a patch editor do?  Should I bound it to 0...1600?  Then if I send it back, it's a different sound.

14

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: NRPN and MIDI documentation questions and issues part 2

« on: July 31, 2017, 04:51:42 PM »

I'll take a look at your #3. Doesn't it work with my editor ?
(I cannot verify right now).

It's the NRPN closed with RPN 127/127 issue mentioned elsewhere.  :-(

15

preenfm2 and preenfm3 / Re: NRPN and MIDI documentation questions and issues part 3

« on: July 31, 2017, 04:50:12 PM »

Well, NRPN has always been very, very vague in the spec.  But here's the rules regarding receiving machines (see MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification 4.2, page 17).

"4. The receiver should be able to respond accordingly if the transmitter sends only an LSB or MSB to change the parameter number.  However, since the transmitter can't know when reception was enabled on the receiver which will be waiting for both the LSB and MSB (at least initially), it is recommended that the LSB and MSB be sent each time a new parameter number is selected."

and

"5. Once a new Parameter Number is chosen, that parameter retains its old value until a new Data Entry, Data Increment, or Data Decrement is received"  [I think this is interpreted as also permitting NRPN running status -- that is, a stream of data entry values -- though it's vague]

I think that this means that receivers are asked to be able to handle single LSBs, single MSBs, and LSB+MSB pairs (it doesn't specify the order).

Given that the PreenFM2's *primary mechanism* for control is NRPN, I'd STRONGLY recommend revisiting this to get it right.  The big issue is what happens if only a CC6 (or stream of CC6) is sent -- this is a common case and makes perfect sense.  For example, if I have a BeatStep and I want to control the Preen's Operator Modulation Indices, the BeatStep can *only* send either CC6 *or* CC38.  CC6 lets me change the indexes by a significant amount, CC38 does not.  So that means I can't really use a BeatStep with the PreenFM2 over NRPN.

Also, the inability to close properly with an RPN 127/127 is going to cause problems with a number of utility devices which were written to assume this.

I'll try to suggest a protocol that might work.  But it will almost certainly involve freeing up CC100 and CC101.