Retro midi machine!

[Nayrb]

(08-26-2019, 12:01 AM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Speaking of synthwave and the resurgence of analog synths: my daughter is a HUGE fan of Stranger Things. She basically wants to be Eleven. She walked in on me yesterday while I was checking this thing out, browsing through the presets, meaning to ask me this or that. She shot the synth a jaded glance and said, "so that's a new thing you got, huh?"

"Yeah," I said, and started playing the ST main theme. And I kid you not, IT BLEW HER MIND. She was not expecting it and her jaw dropped, and moments later she was begging me to teach her how to play it.

Sometimes all you need is the right angle to spark an interest in something.

That's awesome.

The score to Stranger Things is pretty killer. I haven't watched the latest season, myself, though. I think the first one will always be my favorite.

[Samulis]

Indoctrinate early and often.

[Mattias Westlund]

(08-27-2019, 11:35 PM)Samulis Wrote: Indoctrinate early and often.

I've been trying for the past ten years, but kids are fickle

[Mattias Westlund]

Here's something that showed up in my news feed, posted just yesterday:

Yamaha CS1x: The digital synth with an analogue style

Maybe I got this thing just in the nick of time. When nostalgic articles like that start popping up, it's usually only a matter of time before you see a price increase.

OK, I'll shut up about the CS1x now and go make some music with it instead

[Mattias Westlund]

The RMM hard drive just died on me. No biggie really, as I have a complete backup from just a few days ago. And I also have a whole box of IDE drives. Here's the problem though: these drives range from ancient to just old and even if they're working right now, who knows how long they'll last. If I just pop another hdd in there, I might very well have to go through the whole reinstalling business again before long.

So I'm thinking of getting some SD-to-IDE adapter and remove mechanical hard drives from the equation entirely. It's a music making system after all and requires more reliability than I would demand from e.g. just a retro gaming machine. Since these things aren't available locally it'll probably be a few weeks before I have this old beast up and running again. Which sucks, as I was just getting back into working on some music on it. But getting rid of the hdd is probably the wisest long-term choice.

[Mattias Westlund]

I've been using these Edirol "micro monitors" as computer speakers for an old PC, but I realized they go really well with the CS1x. They're just as blue, and just as plasticky!

Seriously though, it's not just cosmetics. Having the synth off to one side of my main monitors makes it difficult to hear what I'm doing when playing and programming. So a bit of extra monitoring really does help.

[Samulis]

(09-11-2019, 09:51 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: I've been using these Edirol "micro monitors" as computer speakers for an old PC, but I realized they go really well with the CS1x. They're just as blue, and just as plasticky!

Seriously though, it's not just cosmetics. Having the synth off to one side of my main monitors makes it difficult to hear what I'm doing when playing and programming. So a bit of extra monitoring really does help.

Those colors work perfectly! Awesome! 

[Mattias Westlund]

(09-11-2019, 10:12 PM)Samulis Wrote: Those colors work perfectly! Awesome! 

Funny thing is that the speakers are some ten years newer. So either the CS1x had some forward thinking designers in 1996, or the Roland people were behind the curve when designing the speakers in 2005 or so.

[Mattias Westlund]

Long time and no updates again. Here's what's going on with my RMM.

I ordered a SD2IDE thingy from ebay back in September. I never got it. I got refunded so no skin off my back, but still. The whole procedure -- waiting for the thing to arrive, realizing that it likely wouldn't, getting back to the seller, and getting my money back -- it all took like a month and a half. Then I managed to get hold of a similar unit from a Swedish retrocomputing group on Facebook. Got it delivered in three days -- yay! Sadly this was not to be the end of my troubles. As it turns out, it would not play ball with any of the larger SD cards I had on hand. Either the PC would not detect the card at all, or Windows 98 would not install properly, failing with weird disk-related error messages. I messed around with this for weeks on and off, got no further, and was finally left with two options:

1) Try to source an SD card that will work. Which is a total crapshoot as I have nothing to go on.

2) Put the whole damn machine aside for the time being and install a new (old) hdd when I have the patience and energy to mess with it.

As you may have guessed, I opted for 2). The RMM isn't even plugged in right now; I have moved the romplers and the Lexicon Alex over to my main DAW system, the Digitech unit sits in the FX loop of a guitar amp, and the rest of my rack units are in a closet. I'm sure I will return to this PC eventually, but right now I feel that a Win 98-based music making system is too damn unreliable to be of any serious use. At least with the TG-100, M-GS64 and CS1x I can get some retro sounds with my modern PC (I just need to get a proper USB midi interface so I can use more than two units at a time).

[Mattias Westlund]

A guy I know who runs a studio is getting rid of a lot of his old gear and has offered to sell me an Ensonic EPS 16+ for 2000 SEK, which is around $210. It's tempting since I don't come across hardware like this very often, but I would need to raise the money somehow, and even if I manage to do that I have no idea whether I'll get along with it.

Sam (or anyone who might be familiar with stuff like this), you think I should get it?