KVR Audio

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 4:11 pm

arkmabat wrote:The cymbals are technically copyrighted so that may present a problem.

It also may not. All copyright claims are not equal. I'm not sure what the actual status is on the 909 roms. Roland recently lost a battle with a video game emulator group over the copyright of the MT-32 ROMs owing to the lack of any copyright statement in the ROM and some other technical legal details. The key issue in that case was that the law changed in 1988 or 1989 and so when the work was produced matters. The legal issues that applied in that case would be different for a work produced today.

I don't know what the actual status of the ROMs is, and I know Roland has made a fuss over these things in the past, but, just because it is a sample, doesn't mean that it automatically gets the hyper copyright protection that many KVRers seem to believe applies to all samples.

AstralExistence · Post by **AstralExistence** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 4:58 pm

there is no best 'vst' the best tr 909 808 is http://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/transistor ... ii/pid106/

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:26 pm

Err the Roland groove whatever. Forgot the name...

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 pm

arkmabat wrote:Err the Roland groove whatever. Forgot the name...

D-50 ?

1wob2many · Post by **1wob2many** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:47 pm

arkmabat wrote:Err the Roland groove whatever. Forgot the name...

Groovesynth.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:51 pm

No pretty sure it is the D-50

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:58 pm

MC-303 Groovebox, of course

But seriously, it's the GrooveSynth:

"Roland GrooveSynth provides genuine Roland groove box and synth sounds."

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 9:00 pm

DJMaytag wrote:What's the going rate for Drumazon in the marketplace?

I'm not sure about the MarketPlace's pricings, but Guitar Center often has it on sale for $29.99. I just checked and it's not currently on sale, but it has been for most of the last six months or so. The reason I check so often is that I'm hoping to see Nepheton go for the same price someday, but for some reason, it never is.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:10 pm

Uncle E wrote:MC-303 Groovebox, of course

But seriously, it's the GrooveSynth:

"Roland GrooveSynth provides genuine Roland groove box and synth sounds."

Well, if they're genuine.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:13 pm

ghettosynth wrote:Well, if they're genuine.

Super legit MC-303 and MC-505 sounds.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:38 am

TheoM wrote:so there was no d/a conversion then at output? just pure analog? that makes sense then.

Well, it's not really making sense. What happens is that the samples are compressed and then expanded with a very simply expander. There is absolutely a D/A converter, however, it's extremely simple as it's just six resistors tied to the output of a latch. This feeds into a VCA, this is really the only "analog" processing of note. The gain of the VCA is controlled by an anti-log converter driven by the cymbal envelope, and the cymbal accent. This is the expander half of the cymbal companding, the compression half is done to the original samples. The envelope is rather simple, it's a ramp created directly from the address lines that drive the rom which plays back the sample. The ramp then gets converted into an exponential ramp with the anti-log and, voila, dynamic range restored. The output has a low pass filter, yes, but it's a simple non-resonant filter to eliminate digital noise.

It's a very crude expanding D/A converter built from low precision parts. I'm sure that the crude methods contribute to the sound but it's a bit misleading to refer to the output as "pure analog", that isn't what's happening at all.

Interestingly, the roms used are eight bit roms but the samples are only six bit, that is, the roms could store higher quality samples, but, companding would still be necessary. This would have added at least one additional chip and would have put additional demands on the simple D/A converters.

Note, you can't just read the raw samples from the roms either as the address and data lines are swapped, most likely to make routing the PCB easier. After you read them in, you have to manipulate them with respect to the swapped address and data lines, fun.

Mac of BIOnighT · Post by **Mac of BIOnighT** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:19 am

I guess somebody mentioned this already, don't have time to read all the other pages, but Maxsynths just released this http://www.maxsynths.com/vsti_dr910.html I have it and it's well worth having it

DJMaytag · Post by **DJMaytag** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:25 am

cryophonik wrote:
DJMaytag wrote:What's the going rate for Drumazon in the marketplace?
I'm not sure about the MarketPlace's pricings, but Guitar Center often has it on sale for $29.99. I just checked and it's not currently on sale, but it has been for most of the last six months or so. The reason I check so often is that I'm hoping to see Nepheton go for the same price someday, but for some reason, it never is.

Good to know. I saw that mentioned in the bargain center thread and wondered about how that's affecting the second hand market.

I see GC is blowing out a lot of boxed products at stupid prices. They're doing Drumazon with Komplete Elements for $50 right now. The latter is pretty useless to me though.

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:43 am

What exactly is the draw of these sounds? Why aren't people tired of hearing them yet? I get the sense of immediacy and live tweakability with the hardware, but that's about all...

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:52 am

Jace-BeOS wrote:What exactly is the draw of these sounds? Why aren't people tired of hearing them yet?

Why aren't people tired of hearing acoustic drums, or congas, or a piano, or an acoustic guitar, or an opera singer, or a cello, or......

the best vst emulation for roland tr 909?