RE: delurking (synthesizer tuning capabilities)

> From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)
> Subject: Re: delurking
>
> Uhmmm, I must be missing something here: Why do you disagree that
> Ensoniq has the best microtonal povisions, if you have to limit yourself
> to
> 12-tone scales and use SysEx codes on the Roland instruments?
>
> My information may be out of date, but I'm not personally aware of any
> other machines with greater tuning flexibility than 8 (4 easily switchable
> at a time) completely arbitrary pitch tables (any key may play any pitch
> within the sound generator's range and pitch resolution) per
> instrument-sound.
> *************************
>
My opinion is based upon using Ensoniq samplers since 1989. If you want to
do a moderate amount of modulation in just intonation, 4 switchable scales
are not enough. Even if you use only fixed scales, if you want more than 8
different ones then you must store those scales as separate files and then
copy them individually to each and every sample instrument that you use.
This is due to the problem that the Ensoniq samplers cannot store program
parameters separate from sample data. So you have a choice, store
multimegabytes of samples just because you use different scales, or do a lot
of manual entry. That's user unfriendly, in my opinion. It's fine, though,
if you limit yourself to a few scales.

The other problem is that the Ensoniq pitch table sysex codes were never
fixed through 3 generations of samplers (EPS, EPS-16 Plus and ASR-10). I'd
call that limiting. That means you can't store the tables in your
computer's sequencer file along with your composition or update them in
realtime, both of which you can do with Roland equipment. Justonic's Pitch
Palette does not support Ensoniq samplers for this very reason, but it does
support Roland GS instruments.

The most flexible microtonal architecture I've seen in a commercial
synthesizer is the Yamaha TX802. You can define up to 64 keyboard scales on
a cartridge, and then assign each part to any of the scales.

John Loffink
jloffink@pdq.net