Pitch table changes on the ASR

It has turned out that the virtual button press method for changing pitch
tables on the ASR and EPS-16 does not work as previously described. David
Doty noticed that it reset the viewable page instead of incrementing the
pitch table number. What it does is reset the page before the up-arrow is
recieved, so that you're now looking at layer 2! I then tried a "put
parameter" command to the pitch table parameter, but the OS blocks changing
this particular parameter, so this doesn't work either.

The only way to change this parameter which will really work and let you
change to any of the 8 possible pitch tables is with a "put layer" command,
which is possible at the beginnings of sections but ugly while you're
playing music. The other trouble with "put layer" is that it requires
handshaking, in which you send a header, the ASR sends an "OK" message and
then you send the data. This probably won't work if you're typing in sysex
from a sequencer.

It looks like the only way to switch pitch tables on the fly is to use the
patch select controllers, which only allows you access to four different
layers, or to use patch select between different instruments. You could
have eight instruments in sets of two, so that patch number 1 selects tables
1-4 and patch number 2 selects 5-8. This would give you at least four
tracks of different sounds. All of these solutions are a kludge and I admit
this was a design oversight. We're still the only sampler on the market
that lets you tune all 128 keys with non-octave tunings.

regards,

Steve Curtin
Ensoniq Corp


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