From 3778fbfebf1cecda4036cd2a50e3b8239c80f1eb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Chris Xiong Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2019 01:05:18 +0800 Subject: Privacy Revamp. Removed recaptcha. New privacy policy page (aka. blog post). Links updates. Banner updates. --- blog/post/2019-04-25.html | 10 ++++++---- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) (limited to 'blog/post/2019-04-25.html') diff --git a/blog/post/2019-04-25.html b/blog/post/2019-04-25.html index de7f63f..8bb7c20 100644 --- a/blog/post/2019-04-25.html +++ b/blog/post/2019-04-25.html @@ -390,7 +390,7 @@ Drums

As claimed by the Sound On Sound review, the editor for SD-80 is very similar to the one for XV-2020. The editor exposes a generic sample-based synthesis engine quite comparable to the one found in HALion (with more restrictions, of course). It lets you take full control of the synthesis engine and even create new patches not found anywhere else.

The synthesis engine consists of four layers (with up to two samples [7] for each layer, plus frequency modulation), four filters (one for each layer), eight envelope generators (amplitude EG and filter EG for each layer), two LFOs [8] and a 4*4 modulation matrix. There are also 90 post-processing effects (some of which are combinations of multiple simple effects, hence the name 'MFX') to choose from for each channel.

Restrictions aforementioned include inability to use external samples so you are essentially locked in to 589 built-in waveforms (which is probably fine because it's not what the STUDIO Canvas line is aimed at), limited number of envelope nodes, limited modulation routing, restricted number of different MFX's that can be used at the same time (3).

-

The editor has quite terrible user experience. Guess it's common for such decades-old software.

+

The editor has quite terrible user experience. Guess it's common for such decades-old software. It comes with a twenty-page pdf manual (which contains a lot of excerpts from the XV-5080 owner's manual), which focus on the internals of the synthesizer, and a html manual, which focus on the interface of the editor.

I've also tried editor software for other STUDIO Canvas modules using the same generation of XV engine. The SD-20 editor works seamlessly with SD-80, and it only offers basic parameters editing just like TTS-1. The SD-90 editor, despite being extremely similar to the SD-20 editor, doesn't work at all, which is not surprising as it's essentially the SD-20 editor plus an editor for the audio mixer and audio effects processor found in the SD-90, which the SD-80 lacks.

By the way, if you have hi-dpi display and use Windows 10, be sure to use 'System (Enhanced)' scaling behavior for the SD-80 Editor. It scales perfectly that way.

I'm not going to scatter the post with even more pictures, so please follow the links for selected screenshots of the editor:

@@ -402,7 +402,7 @@ Drums

The SD-80 is GM2 compatible. However many midi files you randomly find may not play on it even when the device is in GM2 mode. If the midi file being played has any sort of bank selection event not recognized by the SD-80, the corresponding part will produce no sound at all.

If your midi file has NRPN messages, things will get even worse. These things are essentially undocumented for the SD-80. All I could say is good luck keeping your eardrum intact. [9]

The manual says 'This set ("classical" set) is also used when GM2 data compatibility is important'. However upon receiving the GM2 on message, the module automatically selects 'contemporary' set for every part. It seems impossible to change this behavior.

-

The XG Lite mode has way more instruments available than what the manual has listed. Bank 18 patch 1 gives you 'Piano 1d' (persumably 'Mellow Grand Piano' in XG specification), which is not listed in the manual. It actually has ~480 normal patches, ~50 sfx patches, 2 sfx kits and 9 drum kits [10]. It's quite irony to find out that they have more patches for their competitor's standard than their own legacy standard.

+

The XG Lite mode has way more instruments available than what the manual has listed. Bank 18 patch 1 gives you 'Piano 1d' (persumably 'Mellow Grand Piano' in XG specification), which is not listed in the manual. It actually has 489 normal patches, 49 sfx patches, 2 sfx kits and 9 drum kits [10]. It's quite irony to find out that they have more patches for their competitor's standard than their own legacy standard. However these sounds are relatively lame when compared with authentic YAMAHA XG synthesizers of the same period. Particularly some sounds in different variant slot of the same patch number sounds almost identical. Roland obvious put less effort in these sounds in terms of sound designing.

MIDI timing messes up if events flood in within a demisemiquaver worth of time. This quirk resembles the problem QMidiPlayer for Windows suffered from in its early days. But I'm pretty sure the cause is completely different. [11] Also this could be a common issue of old MIDI devices, as my old YAMAHA keyboards does the exact same thing.

The sound generated by the SD-80/90 is phasey as could be heard in ZUN's early works. If unsure, take a look at the spectrogram.

The module, as all electric appliances do, generates heat. The manual says "A small amount of heat will radiate from the unit during normal operation", and the chassis do get quite warm even when it is completely idle. This didn't become an issue until later.

@@ -514,13 +514,14 @@ Boot:5170[5170]1.01

MIDI and USB indicators blink on any screen with the top row saying Program Updater. Selecting a source makes the corresponding indicator constantly lit and the other go out.

If this mode is entered with the combination SYSTEM + PAGE◀ + PREVIEW, INST, EFFECTS, SYSTEM will do nothing instead. This combination is probably reserved for consumers.

Sound generation does not work in the program updater.

-

Persumably the update MIDI files are similar to earlier models: stream of system exclusive events containing firmware blobs. No program update could be found for the SD-80 on the Internet.

+

Persumably the update MIDI files are similar to earlier models: stream of system exclusive events containing firmware blobs. No program update could be found for the SD-80 on the Internet. There are update files for the SD-90 however, which updates its system software to version 1.03.

Messing around sans the chassis

As the two XV chips are arranged in a master-slave manner, I tried figuring out which one is acting as the master. I threw a bunch of midi files at it while measuring the temprature of the XV chips... with my fingers. Both chips turn quite toasty but IC19 is always warmer than IC27, sometimes it's even a little difficult to keep my finger stay on that chip.

When the action gets more intense, IC27 starts to warm up. Before I was just going to conclude that IC27 is acting as the master, I realized that I will never come into a meaningful conclusion without further reverse engineering: I have absolutely no idea how the load is distributed between the two XV's!

Frustrated, I entered testing mode to find out whether there's anything interesting if it's run with chassis removed. To my surprise, the device check failed with NG:XV2 and a bunch of other errors in the following tests. I thought I was doomed, but a reboot of the module solved the problem completely and it never show any trace of abnormality that day.

The other day, however, the problem returned. After messing with the SD-80 editor and creating random complex patches for an hour, I randomly decided to check out the testing mode again, where I was greeted by the NG:XV2 failure the second time. Again, a reboot solved the problem for the day. No amount of hardwork will put the SD-80 into a buggy state if it boot straight into normal mode. At this point I thought it could be a bug in the test or the device check could be quite sensitive to temprature, which is probably not a very good thing as there're ninno vent holes for airflow on the module whatsoever.

+

A few more days, I found my SD-80 frozen after keeping it on doing almost nothing for a day. In yet another case, it just randomly froze during playback after half day of usage. I'm unsure these unstability are specific to my machine.

Chart A

[14]

@@ -926,6 +927,7 @@ A E

Newer Roland sound modules?

Newer Roland sound modules such as SonicCell and the latest INTEGRA-7 seems to maintain the compatibility with their original 'XP' synthesis engine to some extent -- as they all support SRX expansion in a certain way. The synthesis engines are obviously improving over the years as Roland says the SRX expansion sounds built into INTEGRA-7 will sound a little different compared to earlier modules.

However, disappointment strikes as soon as I saw the 'READ' button on screenshots of the editor software for the INTEGRA-7. I felt Roland really need to make more use of the USB bandwidth: the presence of that button implies the editor software still can't reflect the realtime status of the synthesizer. [15] This is a huge drawback of using a hardware synthesizer that Roland still fails to fix to this day.

+

Also, the INTEGRA-7 is super expensive for an amateur and Roland ended their budget [16] SOUND Canvas / STUDIO Canvas product line years ago. So no more Roland sound modules for me I guess.

If you want to learn more ...


-
[1]: Pulseaudio sucks a lot less compared to the old days, it even switch automatically between built in Intel HD Audio and external USB audio device when it's plugged in / unplugged.
[2]: SD-90 doesn't seem to have a non-zero modulation level according to its manual. Interesting.
[3]: You can find the waveform list of SD-90/80 and XV-5080 online and do the comparison yourself.
[4]: 'Piano 1 st.' in TTS-1 is actually 'St.Piano 1' from STUDIO Canvas' 'solo' set. TTS-1 doesn't have a 'key scale panning' (this is XG terminology, which means 'wide' in Roland's wordbook) piano preset.
[5]: The drum set mapping of Super Quartet is not GM compatible. It comes with a couple of sounds the STUDIO Canvas lacks.
[6]: The SD-90 do have almost the same level of editability as the SD-80, which can be achived with the use of an updated version of SD-80's editor, however it seems that SD-90 can't save user patches. The SD-20, on the other hand, never enjoy the same level of editability. (The SD-20 is probably still editable by sending system exclusive messages directly?)
[7]: One on each stereo channel.
[8]: Vibrato uses a seprate LFO, so technically it's three.
[9]: NRPN message setting expression to 100% on one device may set filter resonance to 100% on another. Imagine that.
[10]: I counted the instruments by turning the knob. The knob sometimes skips forward and backward, so there's no way I count them accurately in a rush. I will probably make a complete patch list another day.
[11]: The problem found in QMidiPlayer can be solved by simply lowering buffer size.
[12]: In case you haven't yet noticed, there are two of those chips on the board.
[13]: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/sh/kernel/cpu/sh3/clock-sh7706.c
[14]: Data for all models except the SD-80 are from their service notes.
[15]: I did not do much research on this and I could be completely wrong on this topic.
+
[1]: Pulseaudio sucks a lot less compared to the old days, it even switch automatically between built in Intel HD Audio and external USB audio device when it's plugged in / unplugged.
[2]: SD-90 doesn't seem to have a non-zero modulation level according to its manual. Interesting.
[3]: You can find the waveform list of SD-90/80 and XV-5080 online and do the comparison yourself.
[4]: 'Piano 1 st.' in TTS-1 is actually 'St.Piano 1' from STUDIO Canvas' 'solo' set. TTS-1 doesn't have a 'key scale panning' (this is XG terminology, which means 'wide' in Roland's wordbook) piano preset.
[5]: The drum set mapping of Super Quartet is not GM compatible. It comes with a couple of sounds the STUDIO Canvas lacks.
[6]: The SD-90 do have almost the same level of editability as the SD-80, which can be achived with the use of an updated version of SD-80's editor, however it seems that SD-90 can't save user patches. The SD-20, on the other hand, never enjoy the same level of editability. (The SD-20 is probably still editable by sending system exclusive messages directly?)
[7]: One on each stereo channel.
[8]: Vibrato uses a seprate LFO, so technically it's three.
[9]: NRPN message setting expression to 100% on one device may set filter resonance to 100% on another. Imagine that.
[10]: I counted the instruments by turning the knob. The knob sometimes skips forward and backward, so there's no way I count them accurately in a rush. I will probably make a complete patch list another day. UPDATE: the complete patch list could be found here
[11]: The problem found in QMidiPlayer can be solved by simply lowering buffer size.
[12]: In case you haven't yet noticed, there are two of those chips on the board.
[13]: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/sh/kernel/cpu/sh3/clock-sh7706.c
[14]: Data for all models except the SD-80 are from their service notes.
[15]: I did not do much research on this and I could be completely wrong on this topic.
[16]: compared to their JV/XV products.