I had a lovely day today… set up an original Taurus I and a new Little Phatty, hooked them both up to an oscilloscope and good headphones, and tried to see how closely I could match the sound of the Taurus presets using the LP sound engine. I think I got pretty close!
Here is a preview; try it out and tell me what you think.
This is inspired by the “Taurus” preset, filter all the way open, Decay (we call it Release these days) turned off. If you want the sound of the Decay switched on, try setting the LP volume envelope Release to about 3596 in Precision mode… the Taurus patch has about nine seconds of release time (!) when the Decay switch is on.
Of course, your LP may sound different than mine… but even if this wouldn’t fool Geddy Lee, it’s still a nice bass patch. Have fun, and play some music this weekend!
Can anyone please explain to me how to set up MIDI-OX to be able to send the patch to my LP?
I have no problem using Cubase to send and recieve data, backing up, etc. But I can’t import the patch to Cubase and therefor have to use MIDI-OX.
Open MIDI-OX,
Go to the Options menu and select “MIDI Devices”
click on your correct MIDI input and output devices and press OK.
Go to the View menu and select “SysEx”
This should open the Sysex View and Scratchpad window.
Make sure your LP is on the patch you want to replace - sending a file will over-write the current patch without confirmation, so be careful!
Click on File in this new window and choose Send Sysex File.
select the sysex file you want to send, and hit OK.
The patch will be sent, and in a moment you will see the new patch name on your LP, saved in the currently-active slot.
Before you do this you might want to save the presets on your LP… this is also done from the “Sysex view and scratchpad” window.
In this window, go to the Sysex menu and select “Receive Manual Dump”
MIDI-OX is now waiting to receive sysex from the LP.
On the little phatty, go to the Master Menu, SysEx Menu, and select Send Cur Preset to send only the currently-selected preset, or Send All Presets to send all 100 presets as one Bank file. Press Enter and you should see the data coming in to MIDI-OX. Once the LP is done transferring data, click OK in MIDI-OX. The data is not saved yet! To save the data on your computer, go to the “Display Window” pull-down menu and choose Save SysEx. Name and save your file and you are done.
I have already done exactly what you write in the first part, but it doesn’t work. MIDI-OX says it’s sending but nothing happens with the LP. I just doesn’t react.
I can’t see what can be wrong. I have done the back up you suggested but with Cubase and it works perfectly.
Do I have to do some MIDI channel settings too in MIDI-OX?
Assar, I think it is a buffer settings problem in MidiOx. Sometimes the default buffer size is too small.
In the main MIDIOX window, go to the Options menu and select “Configure Buffers.” On my computer I have the SIZE = 256 bytes and NUM = 1024 for both input and output. Try that and see if it helps.
Assar, that’s unusual. Have you tried the FireBox MIDI output connected to your LP? (click on FireBox MIDI Out in the MidiOx MIDI devices window first)
I always set the LP to channel 1 for this as I believe that’s what MidiOx uses by default.
The strange thing is that there is absolutely no problem if I use Cubase. Then I can send files back and forth between the LP and the PC and it work perfectly.
I have also tried channel 1.
Another strange thing is that I have 2 PCs with different midi interfaces. It is the same thing with the other pc, it works perfectly with Cubase but not with MIDI-OX.
well it’s not as easy as copying the parameter values from one synth to the other, unfortunately. I made the Taurus LP patches by listening to the Taurus and the LP side by side, and looking at the waveforms from both on an oscilloscope as I tweaked the LP patch to get as close as possible to the Taurus. If I did a Voyager version, I would want it to be via the same process. Not a bad idea, though…
Come to think of it, I did use a very tiny bit of Overload to try to simulate the Taurus’ unusual overdriven sawtooth waveform… there is some subtle magic about the Taurus that neither the Voyager nor the LP can imitate with 100% accuracy. On the other hand, I think it might be possible to get more bass out of the Phatty than the Taurus…
It just happens that I am writing a lot of Little Phatty patches this weekend, making some new presets for the Stage II. So, I just missed Friday, but happy Saturday, for sure!
So, a Polymoog string patch? OK! I don’t have a polymoog, but I have the Samplemoog VST, and it has samples from the real polymoog… You will have to tell me how close I got it!
Of course the Phatty patch is monophonic, and you will have to turn up the mod wheel on the LP to get the vibrato and PWM.
